Starcraft 2 was first announced on May 2007 for release, in early 2010 Blizzard allowed anyone who owns a Blizzard game to register for a beta key to test Starcraft 2 from a random draw, those who were lucky enough to be selected were amazed by the game that took 12 years. Recently Blizzard released the game and it scored sales of over 1.5 million units in just 48 hours, fans were lining up near Future Shop, Best Buy, etc. where launch parties were held worldwide.
Not only has Blizzard wowed us with the amazing improvement in the game’s graphics as compared to the original 1998 “Starcraft” but it has maintained excellent storyline throughout it’s development, I personally enjoy the single player campaign more than the highly competitive multiplayer mode, with many more expansions set to release at a later date.
The game features the 3 distinct races from Starcraft, The Terran (A futuristic version of humans), Zerg (A terrifying race of aggressive arthropodal aliens), and the Protoss (Alien humanoids race). Although the races were kept the same, Blizzard implemented various new units and structures and also deleted/replaced many.
The controls and careful development of the game features and game play have significantly improved this game, the first thing you would notice when you start a game is that every skill, ability, unit have actual descriptions on what they do and how long it takes to preform in contrast to the original game which has none of that so it is clear that Blizzard wants to make the game more friendly to new players even providing a tutorial that runs at the first login. Although Blizzard kept most of the keys and bindings the same which are helpful to veteran players who adjusted to this style of RTS play.
The multiplayer ranking system was also a new implement to the game, where it allows new players to participate in 5 placement matches where it will then match the player up to an appropriate league, the leagues are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, where Bronze is the lowest tier and Diamond is the highest tier. From there players will need to stay competitive to either increase their rank in their league or try to get promoted to a higher tier league. And of course there are divisions in these league to lower competition, there are usually around 80 players per division (Although you rarely play players from your own division) so it is rather easy to rank up.
On top of playing multiplayer online, Blizzard also kept the initial AI (Artificial Intelligence) Computers which players are able to play against with selected difficulty of their choice, players may also team up with another player in the new “Cooperative” mode where players group up and face AI opponents.
The sound in the game is rather simple, although Blizzard always finds some way to fit humor into it’s games such as unit speeches, such as the Thor when it spawns it says “Thor is here” in a thick Norwegian accent, which I find rather hilarious.
I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes a great storyline, highly competitive, well development game. It is one of my favorites and I play it quite often, It is a game that will keep you hooked and give you a great experience to remember.
