The Queen of Blades
The Zerg Queen doesn’t cover up. Every male unit in the StarCraft universe requires enough powered armor to survive a moon’s atmosphere, and Kerrigan—who could tear any of them in half with a thought—stomps through the same killing fields in what amounts to a latex bodysuit. Terrifying and fully aware she looks good. I respect it enormously.
I finally finished StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. It took longer than it should have, because I have a life outside of dissolving loyalist grunts in bio-acid, which is nonetheless an activity I would list as a professional skill if anyone asked. If you need me to explain what StarCraft is, stop reading. The franchise dismantled the childhoods of an entire generation of South Koreans and made a handful of them into celebrities who now appear in exactly the kind of music video where someone yells at extremely well-shaped people and everyone seems fine with this arrangement.
The uncomfortable truth about Heart of the Swarm is that the campaign is a tutorial. A spectacular, emotionally committed, well-crafted tutorial—but still a tutorial, designed to funnel you into multiplayer, where kids who’ve done nothing else since middle school will disassemble everything you’ve learned faster than seems physically possible. I have no plans to find out. The campaign felt complete. I felt complete. No guilt.
Somewhere online there’s a conversation about how games never offer anything except armored men bellowing through clenched teeth. That conversation has apparently never spent time with Kerrigan, which is a significant oversight. She’s Queen of Blades, former human, commander of the most repulsive and effective military force in the galaxy—all while wearing that suit. Ridiculous bio-matter crest on her head, sure, but the rest of her? Immaculate. The double standard is so flagrant it loops back around into something almost admirable.
The campaign missions are close to perfect. The writing hits harder than it has any right to in a real-time strategy game—genuine grief in the opening act, real menace in the late game—and I never hit a wall. Not once. Either the difficulty is exquisitely calibrated or I’m simply excellent at this; I’ve decided to believe both. The Mass Effect universe has richer worldbuilding and I’ll defend that indefinitely, but Heart of the Swarm has Kerrigan, and Kerrigan is worth a significant amount.
Mac version runs clean. Campaign is excellent. Kerrigan is hot. Get the expansion. Maybe one day you’ll end up in that music video too, if you’ve got what it takes.