StarCraft: Mass Recall is a fan mod for StarCraft II. The game recreates the original single-player campaign from the original StarCraft and its expansion Brood War, including the original tech trees and maps recreated, voices and sounds from the original game imported, and the classic mission briefings recreated. As part of this the mod has numerous new character portraits and unit models made. The mod also features news cutscenes throughout its length, primarily as intros and outros to missions, that serve to heighten the experience since the makers aren't confined by the limitations of the original engine.
There are numerous additional features which can be enabled upon installation to enhance the experience more by deviating a bit from the original Starcraft. These include additional abilities for hero units, some Brood War being made available in the vanilla campaignsnote , the option to play through the two cut Terran campaign missions in a normal playthrough, and giving each faction distinct skins for units and buildings to further differentiate them.
The mod has been used to launch other StarCraft remakes for StarCraft II, including the Enslavers campaigns (with optional additional, new missions), the prequel Loomings campaign, and the Stukov series (also with optional new missions), as well as the famous fan campaigns The Antioch Chronicles. Version 7 allows players to fight each other in melee games through the StarCraft II Custom Map options.
The mod can be downloaded from SC2Mapster
, with a project thread located on Team Liquid. Additionally, the Real Scale version of the mod, which averts Units Not to Scale as its name suggests, can be downloaded here.
Tropes found in this mod include:
- Adaptational Badass: The "Spawn Broodling" ability cannot affect heroic units, thus Fenix becomes this during "True Colors" when the player must defeat him more honorably.
- Adaptation Expansion:
- The "Enslavers Redux" campaign greatly expands upon the original "Enslavers", including adding two more episodes (one is basically a compressed adaptation of StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga from Kerrigan's perspective, and another is an epilogue that happens shortly before Wings of Liberty).
- The "Stukov Series" mini-campaign includes the three original maps related to Stukov (Deception, Mercenaries II and Resurrection IV), but also two more, completely new maps that, respectively, show how he was revived, and what he did right before Heart of the Swarm. This expansion is more fanfiction than actual canon, and should not be treated as such.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The Real Scale version of the mod goes back to the vanilla game's unit sizes in missions taking place inside buildings for improved visibility.
- Artificial Brilliance: Compared to the original game, the AI in StarCraft II is much smarter, and it shows replaying those original missions with that improved AI.
- The AI in general is smarter with their use of detectors to see cloaked and burrowed units.
- Relying on spider mines to blow up enemies as they approach? Not likely, they'll attack and destroy the mines as they emerge and reveal themselves.
- On higher difficulties, enemy forces will rebuild the parts of their base you blow up, each building back in its original spot (if possible) and defensive unis back in place. This makes a war of attrition where you slowly push through their base and back off to regroup is much more difficult.
- Walling your base off from the Torrasque won't save you this time; it will just smash those buildings down instead of running back and forth in front of them, and worse, it will find the other entrances to your base you didn't wall off.
- Bonus Feature Failure: The "Enslavers Redux" campaign integration was this in 7.0 and 7.1, as the campaign was riddled with bugs stemming from it being hastily ported to SCMRMod 7.0, that resulted in it being an unplayable mess. 7.2 largely fixes the bugs.
- The Cameo: During the end of "Emperor's Fall," General Warfield and Matt Horner cameo on the bridges of the Norad III and Hyperion.
- Fan Remake: On the StarCraft II editor.
- Game Mod: Is one, and has one: the "Retro Edition", adding custom models that are closer to the original, but not as polished. Starting with 6.0, the Retro Edition is integrated in the main mod, allowing players to mix-and-match regular and "retro" models.
- Gameplay and Story Integration
- Since official lore has since established the Confederacy had Medics long before the UED came to the sector, Medics can be enabled in the base game as an installation option. However, only the UED's Medics can use their researchable abilities, and also heal faster, with the justification the UED has more advanced technology.
- Kerrigan's psionic storm ability is replaced with razor swarm, her ability in StarCraft II, though for gameplay purposes the ability functions identical to psionic storm.
- As mentioned above, General Warfield and Matt Horner cameo in a cinematic.
- In "Emperor's Flight," Mengsk and the Norad III were said to be in low orbit, but appeared on the normal map. This mod makes that cutscene actually take place in space above Korhal.
- An installation option allows the player to have Mission 9 of the Terran campaign set on the surface of Tarsonis instead of an orbital platform; the latter was used in the original game but it was Retconned as taking place on the ground by novels and then Starcraft II.
- Episode I Mission 3 restores the option of winning it prematurely by clearing out enough Zerg.
- Harder Than Hard: Endgame difficulty.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The three difficulty levels selectable for each mission are named after characters in the campaign. For instance, in the base game's Terran campaign, Easy is named Adjutant, Normal is named Arcturus, and Hard is named Raynor.
- Male Gaze: Appropriately, Raynor's apparently perverted thoughts towards Kerrigan when they first meet is approximated with a pan up of her model.
- Mouth Flaps: An unfortunate limitation of the game engine is the inability to synchronize the mouth movements of unit portraits to dialogue. Portraits that appear simply move their mouths to give the illusion they're talking.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: The units have Brood War statistics and spells, but the pathfinding and UI are from StarCraft II. The scripted cutscenes are converted to 3D, some have been extended. The mod also has some new cutscenes. The story is unchanged, but some unused lines are restored and some small cutscenes are added that don't impact the story significantly.
- Rule of Cool: The admitted reason for giving heroes abilities they didn't have in the original game, or allowing Brood War units in the vanilla campaign. As with numerous other features, though, the player can disable these in the options.
- Shown Their Work: While not everything is perfect, the team went the extra mile to remake the original game as precisely as they could, particularly with the terrain and the layout of enemy bases.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Kerrigan gains a psi blast attack for air units as she had in StarCraft II, which does a lot to increase her effectiveness in combat from the original game.
- Shield batteries now auto-cast. Instead of the player having to move units near a shield battery and then click to restore their shields one at a time, now they're functionally stationary Medics.
- With "Extra Hero Abilities" option on, every hero has some new abilities to use, including Vulture Raynor being able to replenish his mines, Fenix being able to charge, Zeratul being able to blink, etc...
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: The installation missions in Episode I and Episode II allow the player to play them TPS-style, controlling Raynor and Kerrigan, respectively.
- Updated Re-release: The entire point of the mod. Not only is the original StarCraft recreated in full 3D, but many in-game conversations are converted to full cutscenes, and cutscenes in the original game are improved.
