Strat attack

Back before Blizzard took the world by storm with its monster MMO World of Warcraft, it was best known for its real-time strategy games. The original Warcraft trilogy is where it all began, but it was arguably 1998's StarCraft that made the biggest splash. Transporting Blizzard's high-speed, click-tastic micro-management strategy style from a fantasy to a sci-fi setting, StarCraft was a global smash and its multiplayer became almost a national sport in South Korea, where players capable of 300 actions per minute (that's five clicks a second!) enjoy sponsorship and big prize payouts from televised matches.

It's been seven years since Blizzard's last strategy release, though - indeed, seven years since it did anything that wasn't WOW. The world's moved on, but Blizzard hasn't. The hotly anticipated StarCraft II is the just the same Blizzard strategy game you know and love, with one important difference - it's had a decade's worth of effort and an enormous pile of WOW-won money thrown an it.

As a result, any thought that it might seem a bit old-fashioned flies out of the window - it's simply the slickest PC game you've ever seen, and it's been polished to a high sheen. It's also immense - despite being just the first of three planned StarCraft II releases.

"Missions are varied, incident-packed, and set on dynamic maps."

Click time event

Instead of releasing one campaign covering all three of the game's races - the human Terrans, high-tech Protoss aliens and faceless insectoid Zerg - and then following it up with an expansion pack, Blizzard has decided to create a separate campaign for each. Wings of Liberty covers the Terrans. With just under 30 missions, it might take you around 20 hours to complete, but the brilliant Achievements - with goals that force you to take completely different tactics and change the flow of every level - and well-judged difficulty settings will keep you deeply involved for several times that.

The missions are great, too - really varied and incident-packed, and set on dynamic maps that constantly shake up the standard gather-build-rush rhythm of real-time strategy. You might be robbing fast-moving trains with laser-spitting hover-cars while dodging patrols; guarding colonists' transport trucks from Zerg attacks; sending units out to mine while the lava tides are low on a volcano planet, then pulling them back when they rise. Combined with the different Achievement objectives, coming up with tactics almost becomes like a puzzle game at times.

The missions are tied together with point-and-click dialogue scenes on the Hyperion, the flagship of the Terran rebels led by hard-bitten space cowboy Jim Raynor. These are lavishly produced with amazingly detailed character models, and there's lots of stuff to play with - you can buy unit upgrades here, as well as flick through the bar-room rock on the jukebox and play a 2D shooter called Lost Viking. The dialogue is a bit hokey, but the overall story of epic space war is great fun, and the occasional CG cut-scenes are a real treat.

"StarCraft II is polished to absolute perfection."

A match made in heaven

Beyond this brilliant campaign lies the scary world of StarCraft II's multiplayer. It's a difficult, complicated and very fast game, although Blizzard has done everything it can to help you learn it: special Challenge mode missions that teach advanced techniques, loads of Achievements for AI skirmish and co-op modes, and a Practice League where you can play other newbies at a slow game speed with special rules.

If you're up for it, learning the intricacies of all three races with their brilliantly entertaining unit designs is an absorbing pursuit that might almost take you as long as the Terran campaign itself - and that's even before you take them onto Blizzard's slick new Battle.net service with its great ladder league system. This ranks your performance against 100 or so other players whose ability is close to yours, and top-ranked players in a league then compete in a tournament for promotion.

Battle.net completes this lavish package with features - including friends list, in-game messaging and chat that work across both StarCraft II and WoW - that match those of Xbox Live or Steam. Everything about StarCraft II is polished to absolute perfection, from the bold, beautiful and fantastically animated graphics (which look great on a wide range of systems) to the sweeping orchestral score. Blizzard probably spent millions of dollars on the menus alone.

Blizzard's brand of strategy gaming isn't for everyone - at least, not in the demanding confines of multiplayer. But it's been years since we had an RTS that was this well-made, this much of an event. And if you don't think you like strategy, you really should try the multi-layered delights of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty's campaign - it might change your mind for good.

Terran it up
+ A superb campaign where every mission is different and dramatic.
+ Huge longevity from the Achievements and plethora of different modes.
+ Lavish production values and class-leading online features.

A load of Protoss
- Multiplayer is pretty intimidating and hard to get into.
- Story and dialogue can be cheesy in places.
- Fundamentally hasn't changed much from the original StarCraft.