*Note: During the reviewing process my battle.net account was hacked (again) so I couldn’t review the multiplayer. Despite that, the rest of the review should be accurate, enjoy.
I’ll admit something ladies and gentlemen, only until five years ago I never played many PC games.
Not because I didn’t like them but because, like most, I didn’t have thousands of dollars to drop for a better computer.
However those days are gone now and God has blessed me with a hotter than spit gaming machine that I can do my job with (watch out Crysis 2)
So I can’t think of any game better than StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, to test the full power of my monolith computer mwa ha ha – oh and review the game too.
Now for those who don’t know the original StarCraft was (and still is I’m guessing) a big deal. It was the perfect example for ‘big picture’ strategical gaming on the PC, outsold many other games for years, highly praised and critically acclaimed, and might as well be a religion in South Korea. Despite all this good stuff it didn’t have much in the way of a story (or so I’ve been told), fortunately they try and make it up by giving you pages and pages of back story in the manual. Since I don’t have the patience to retell all I read, I’m just going to summarize the important bits. Jim Raynor, your character, leader of Raynor Raiders wants to take down Arcturus Mengsk, once a freedom fighter, now big evil in charge (what a shock), all the while trying to protect Terrans (humans) from the Zerg (aliens from Alien – sort of) and the Protoss (aliens who are into crystals, far out man). All the other important details will be explained in cut scenes.
But enough about back story, time to meet your troops.
As this being a strategy game (more on that later) players don’t necessary control Raynor (although at times players can control ‘hero’ classes on stages) but his Raiders. Now they start off few in number and weak with only poorly trained Marines to use; but as they gain victories over Mengsk, Zerg, and Protoss the Raiders will have access to more varied classes likes medics, siege tanks, and nukes. In between missions however players control Raynor directly (point-and-click style) on his base of operation and battleship called Hyperion. From here you interact with your crew for possible plot points, upgrade your troops, and even reverse engineer Zerg and Protoss technologies to empower your armies (single player only unfortunately). It will take time but before you know it Raynor Raiders will be single defining force in the cosmos (well not really, but you know what I mean).
It’s a long road to hoe however because players will have to fight three different forces to accomplish their goals. First are Mengsk’s Dominion army which are bigger, stronger, better resourced, and has mass media over the raiders in the beginning and through the majority of the game. They’re a familiar threat because their troops are similar to your own; the case cannot be said about the alien forces. 
The Zerg are ugly insect-like creatures that squish just as easy, but they excel with producing overwhelming numbers. In fact ‘Zergging’ means, in many circles, to crush opponents quickly with an massive number of small, weak, units. The Protoss are an opposite tactic; each unit they create are twice as strong any terran or zerg because they come with energy shielding as well as they own health bar. Plus they too can overwhelm defenses such by sheer techno logic strength alone. These aren’t they only strengths and weaknesses the three armies have so the Raiders (and essentially you) must not be complacence, a wrong move or gamble will cost you the game.
As I mentioned before StarCraft II is a strategy game in its purest form; meaning that unlike head-shooting multikills in a FPS or exploring random dungeons looking for random battles in RPG players will be waging war by creating and then using many different units (marines, tanks, Starships). To make units players need two things: resources (in this game it’s minerals and vespene gas) and building/structures (Barracks, Starports, and Factories). 
Caution is advised because resources are not infinite, if you waste too much on unimportant or unusable things you won’t last long. All the while you try to accomplish many different objectives on the battlefield; some primary others optional but they can give a nice advantage on the next stage. The fun doesn’t stop at single player (a whole bunch of South Koreans would be disappointed if it did); in multiplayer players can choose from the three races and bring the pain in many different game types like deathmatch, team battle, capture the flag, and so on.*
StarCraft II is a very beautiful game in a sci-fi setting sort of way; the cut scenes are detailed enough to see the fine print of little things in the game here and there. Even on the battlefields you can zoom in to get closer look of something without it turning into a multi-colored blob of some kind (unless it is a multi colored-blob of some kind). Music, sound effects and voice acting are very crisp and clear; killing some Zerg sounds like diarrhea after eating questionable chill. Controls are also a non-issue because being a PC game you can make the controls any way you wish.
On the surface the game seems pretty perfect but a closer look reveals two… issues I can see. One is that the game suffers from some mechanical problems; for example I’ve completed a stage under the conditions that would earn me some achievements, but to my surprise no achievements. It’s a minor thing, I know, but I want what I earned darn it… Other problem is more – problematic: Battle.net account vulnerability. Before I bought this game my battle.net account was inactive, but a few days after I bought this game and added it to my account it was hacked and apparently I wasn’t the only one. I hate to think every time a blizzard game comes out and have to be added to the battle.net it will get hacked – sometimes being alpha male means you get the worst fleas.
Come on man, give a brotha a break
Still, my problem will be fixed eventually and I can’t really blame the game for the acts of an unscrupulous few. Dollars to cents StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a well ‘craft’ed piece of fun and drama wrapped in a met expectation. The only people who may not enjoy this game are twitch gamers and only because of the multi-tasking that is involved. And seriously that shouldn’t even stop them, at times we must step out of our comfort zone try something awesome and this is one of those times.
Ranking: Platinum
Video Game Armada 
