Quick Recommendation #11: StarCraft 2 (Video Game)
When Blizzard Was the Best in the Business
Growing up, I played a lot of the original StarCraft. (Even more than Broodwar.) So I was obviously hyped when StarCraft 2 launched 12 years later, in 2010.
This was back when Blizzard Entertainment only made great games (even though I’ve never been into Word of Warcraft), and hadn’t discovered microtransactions and undercooked remasters. I both played through the campaign and was mediocre on the ranked ladder,1 and it was great!
Even though the game is 13 years old, there’s still an active pro scene and community. And recently, the YouTube algorithm decided to serve me a really charming channel: WinterStarcraft. His bread-and-butter is him casting pro matches, and I just love it. (To actually give the videos a chance to reach new viewers, the titles and thumbnails are really click-bait-y. But the content is good!)
For a place to start, I can recommend this video and match. (The third game is especially great.)
I highly recommend playing the Starcraft 2 campaign in 2025.
The game went free-to-play, via Battle.net, in 2017 – and this also includes the first part of the campaign: Wings of Liberty. That’s 20+ hours of gameplay right there – and if you’d like, you can then pay to unlock the rest of the single player content (Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void + Nova Covert Ops). This is also included in Xbox Game Pass.
Even though real-time strategy can be a bit daunting, the Starcraft 2 campaign is really accessible. It teaches you the game in a great way, feeds you mechanics bit-by-bit, and has a lot of challenge adjustability with difficulty levels and optional objectives. I just really like the world and story. (The Zerg, admittedly quite inspired by Xenomorphs, are some of the coolest things created.) And the game is just so polished.
This was also when Blizzard ported their games to Mac.
So even though it isn’t very optimised for Apple Silicon, it still works great on my M1 Pro. However, I did have an issue with the sound – but it’s fixable:
For some reason, the sound output would crackle if the microphone is active.2 However, barring StarCraft 2 access to the microphone, through Privacy and Security in System Settings, fixed it. (I also have to close SoundSource.)
GL HF!