Set four years after the Brood War expansion of the original title, Jim Raynor now takes the lead role acting as the game’s protagonist, and many familiar faces such as Mengsk and Kerrigan make a welcome return. Naturally the games’ three main races – the Terran, Zerg and Protoss – are back, although the Campaign mode focuses solely on the Terran this time, with two more expansions planned each covering a single race. Although this obviously means that you’re restricted to one campaign mode rather than the original’s 3-in-1, it seems this choice will allow them to develop each race in more depth in the long run – going as far as including new gameplay elements in the later installments. Don’t worry – you can still play as all three races in the skirmish and multiplayer modes, so it’s not limited totally to Terran gameplay.

Before I go into the campaign details – I think it’s about time I talked about the gameplay itself. If you have played StarCraft before you will feel instantly at home, with the gameplay, menus and controls working in the exact same way. I’m pleased to say that after over a decade, the game still feels like StarCraft – something I was personally worried would be lost behind the new graphics and Blizzard’s experiences with it’s various WarCraft games they have since produced. As always, you’ll be commanding gun-toting marines, construction/collection focused SCV’s, plenty of vehicles, and buildings that are able to take flight.

For those of you that are new to StarCraft – and I’ll bet there are a few of you – one of the best aspects to the game are the different races. Each race has it’s own style of playing, it’s a lot more than just looks. The Terran are your humans, who play in the most traditional RTS style – using SCVs (your builders) to construct buildings and gather materials, which in turn you use to build barracks, factories and turrets to train troops and fight your enemies. The Zerg are a more biological, primitive enemy – lizard-like aliens that utilize organic structures, that hatch larval aliens which are then grown into various forms, able to spawn weaker units but at a much faster rate than the Terran. The Protoss are more advanced aliens, with access to shields, energy-based weaponry and stronger troops, who in turn are more expensive to produce. There’s a real beauty to the races, as they each need to be mastered individually, yet are kept in balance exceptionally well in terms of overall power.

Obviously, while the game follows the same general gameplay to the original, some new features have been added. While most units retain most of the same abilities – such as the marines’ Stimpack ability and the Seige-Tank’s ability to bolt down to the ground and act as a powerful mobile turret – there are also some new options, such as the Zerglings’ ability to turn into suicide bombers, and the Zealots’ new charge ability. Also, perhaps more importantly, there are of course some new units – such as Reapers (dual-wielding marines with jump-jets that allow them to leap between different levels of terrain), and the towering Protoss “Colossus” units (huge walking tanks, equipped with beam weapons). There’s plenty of familiar units to be comfortable, with some nice additions along the way.

As I’m more a solo gamer than multiplayer, the campaign mode is an important factor to me. While the original StarCraft’s (albeit decent) storyline was a simple matter of briefing, mission, repeat, StarCraft II features a much more in-depth hub between missions. Playing as Raynor, you are given access to the Hyperion which acts as a mobile base and interactive menu to utilise various mid-mission features. The cantina and bridge serve as areas where you can talk to other characters and access missions, while the armory provides you with options to spend earned credits to purchase unit and structure upgrades, as well as hiring special mercenary units that can be deployed in battle. It all adds to the quality of the campaign, and helps the storyline feel more padded out.

The missions in Campaign obviously follow a traditional RTS style, often revolving around constructing bases and taking down those of the enemies,but often mixes in other objectives and scenarios such as survival, completing missions with only a small group of troops, retrieving an artifact or keeping on the move as lava rises destroying everything it touches.  It’s all quite standard, similar to StarCraft, but of course – if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

The new 3D graphics style is done fairly well, and the game has been optimised so that it can work on most systems, even laptops, without struggling too much. Obviously you’re better off with a high-end PC if you want to set the graphics all the way up to “Ultra”, but the minimum requirements aren’t too high. Although the game looks fine in 3D, I personally preferred the 2D style of the original and thought it was a shame they couldn’t update simply to a higher resolution version of what they had originally – the old 2D sprites have aged well over the years and still look clean even now. Generally, the game looks fine, although I personally thought the graphics were fairly average compared to some of the impressive titles consoles we’ve been treated with more lately. It probably doesn’t help that one of my soft spots for the original was it’s particular graphical style!

Overall, the new instalment to the StarCraft series does what it sets out to do – it gives us a fresh look at Blizzard’s old sci-fi RTS, with some new features included and a completely rehauled campaign mode. Personally, I didn’t find the game to be rehauled enough to go as far as saying it tops the original, but once Blizzard have expanded it with the Zerg and Protoss expansions it could potentially become something much bigger. If you loved StarCraft, you should enjoy the sequel – but if you’ve never experienced it before I’d personally suggest picking up a copy of the original, which I personally found to equally enjoyable – and costs less than a quarter of the price. That’s not to say StarCraft II isn’t a great game – because it is – only I think the original is still just as good.

-Leon