StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm

“StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm” is the second episode of the continuation of one of the most popular real-time strategy in the history of computer games. The game presents three races – terran, protoss and zerg at the turn of 25th and 26th century. The first part of this series was released in 1998 followed by an expansion “Brood War”. The second installment consists of three episodes: “Wings of Liberty”, “Heart of the Swarm” and “Legacy of the Void”. All these games were developed by Blizzard Entertainment.

“StarCraft II” resembles the first part published in 1998 because the core remains the same. Players choose one of three races and try to win by expanding the base, gathering resources, developing technology and training army to defeat the enemy. The game is divided into several missions presenting a story (full of twists) of the chosen race.

“Heart of the Swarm” is the second part of a trilogy whose first part was “StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty”. While in 2010 players played as terrans this time they are offered over 20 missions in zerg campaign. The key figure is Sarah Kerrigan, who after the events presented in “StarCraft II Wings of Liberty” wants to take revenge on emperor Arcturus Mengsk – because of him she was captured by the zerg and became the Queen of Blades. To achieve her goal she must unite dispersed Swarm under her command.

The single player campaign includes numerous characters from the previous series, e.g. Jim Raynor, Nova, Matt Horner or Valerian Mengsk. The developers added some action RPG elements – Kerrigan takes an active part in most of the missions. Before each mission you can choose a set of her special skills. During the game you can improve your units – they can evolve into more powerful variants after infecting other worlds visited by Kerrigan and her army. You will visit some previously unknown places, e.g. icy Kaldir. To achieve the ultimate goal, Queen of Blades can consult her two advisors Izsha and Abathur.

“Heart of the Swarm” features considerable changes in the multiplayer mode. Apart from adding new units for each race (e.g. widow mines for terrans, oracle and storm for protosses and the vipers and the carrier of the swarm for zergs) the game interface has been simplified and options such as clan creating and gaining experience levels have been introduced. New options have been offered to players observing and commenting the games.

The audiovisual layer benefits from improved version of the engine used in “Wings of Liberty”. The developers decided to improve the physics and some graphical effects (e.g. visual quality of zerg’s biomass). Music reminds some pieces from “Brood War” full of passages recorded on electric guitar and dark pieces referring to the style of ruthless, biological zergs. As in case of other games developed by Blizzard, high-quality movies and cutscenes created by the game engine are praised by the players.

Last updated on August 14, 2015