Starcraft 2: Heart Of The Swarm Game Review.

I missed yesterdays review because i was putting together ikea furniture, it took about 11 hours to make a chest of drawers and a friggin bookshelf, so today we're gonna pick up right where we left off, Starcraft 2 recently went free to play and i thought there isn't a better time than now to review the expansions as we get a new influx of players into it, we covered the first installment, Wings Of Liberty and today we're going to cover the 2nd Installment, Heart Of The Swarm, as they game play doesn't change too much from game to game i'm going to be focusing mainly on the story line and new modes it adds, so lets jump right into it.

The journey so far.

Wings of Liberty ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, after the Terran invasion of Char and the revelations by Zeratul about the fate of Kerrigan, we find ourselves on a very secluded planet where Kerrigan, now human once again, is trying to adapt to being human again and living with what she did as the Queen of Blades, under the guidance of Valerian Mengsk and Jim raynor she attempts to regain control of her abilities as not only a ghost but the Queen of the Zerg.

Heart of the Swarm begins within the secret facility as Kerrigan tests herself attempting to control the Zerg there and create a working army, after a few mishaps she learns she can still control the mindless zerg units but higher intelligence zerg units will more than likely resist her still, mid way through her discovery however they're attacked by Emperor Mengsk who has found the planet they've been hiding on.

After the events of the facility Kerrigan is cut off from Raynor and journeys to the Hyperion to look for him, when she learns that Raynor has been captured and executed by Mengsk she returns to the zerg worlds to rebuild the swarm to finally attack Korhal, however most of her former zerg queens now vie for control of the swarm and refuse to recognize her in her human form, so she must show the ruthless cruelty of her former self to them to prove she is still the same Queen.

Kerrigan is still trying to hold onto her humanity a trait the zerg see as a weakness, she become increasingly hostile with zerg who question her until eventually the zerg realize she is still the same queens of blades and begin to come back into the fold, however the whispers of doom Zeratul mentioned in his prophecy in Wings of Liberty is starting to come true, just as Kerrigan begins to retake control of the swarm, Hybrid monstrosities begin to show up everywhere, half zerg, half protoss.

They have began to tear apart all sectors of space, Zerg, Protoss and Terran alike, Kerrigan slowly realizes that even though she is still the queen of blades she needs to evolve even further to not only take the fight to Mengsk, but to fight the rapidly approaching void, she then learns of Zerus, the Zerg homeworld that holds the first spawning pool the zerg ever came from.

After a huge showdown with the Primal Zerg factions, Kerrigan awakes as the primal queen of blades, a being of nearly pure psionic energy capable of ripping even the strongest primal zerg and hybrid apart, she gathers the leftovers of the primal zerg packs who recognize her power and begins her final assault on Emperor Mengsk and the dominion homeworld of Korhal.

Heart of the Swarm.

Heart of the swarm adds a fully fleshed out new campaign focusing primarily on Kerrigan, however Heart of the swarm has a special place in the story line as it ties up loose ends from Starcraft 1 and Brood Wars, characters who haven't been seen for a while show up and other familiar faces who weren't who they appeared to be, it also brought a whole host of new multiplayer modes and maps.

I think personally this is when Blizzard realized that they could make it something more than just an RTS with custom maps, entire new game modes and side missions came out as well as increasing the strategy of the multiplayer game in general by adding new units,mutations and balancing certain overpowered strats from Wings of Liberty, it also increased on the control fidelity of the game.

I believe the Starcraft MMO came out with the developer kit from Heart of the Swarm and a lot of other fan favourite game mods including co-op missions in their very basic form, however the missions ranged pretty differently than in Wings of Liberty, instead of wide spread RTS action some missions focused instead of small, precise game play, the mission that comes to mind is the zerg larvae on the protoss ship that must consume biomass in order to grow into a full swarm queen.

Critical Review

If you enjoyed Wings of Liberty, there's really nothing more i can add to the critical review, Blizzard has a habit of producing games that the players expect and ultimately receive(aslong as it's now WoW) Heart of the swarm has the exact same controls and features as Wings of Liberty but as most sequels should have, adds even more to an already fantastic game.

The story line gets very interesting half way through the game and sets up the overarching theme for the entire starcraft universe and what has led to this series of events from the very start, Kerrigan, Raynor and even Zeratul are a part of a prophecy that was put into motion thousands of years prior by what is essentially the god(s) of the Starcraft world, without going into too many particulars, this is where the campaign really gets solid footing much like how Warcraft 3 cemented the Warcraft legacy.

Tomorrow we'll review the final chapter of the Starcraft universe(for now) and meet Artanis in his desperate attempt to save the universe against the forces of the void in Legacy Of The Void.

Thanks for reading my review, if you enjoyed it please feel free to up-vote, follow or resteem, if you have any comments or questions leave them below and i'll get back to you, thanks!