STARCRAFT 2 - Wings of Liberty

Matthew's Rating: 10/10

This game is so good, tournaments are being regularly set up for players to win cash, glory, honour, immortality etc etc.

Currently, I’m not that good. My first online match had me eating the dirt before I even had chance to get a small squad of marines out of my base. That was probably because I didn’t play the single player campaign first, so I did that. It gently introduces you into the RTS genre, especially in the way that Starcraft works – and with an epic storyline including lots of explosions, and one liners. Nice!

To the uninitiated, you build fighting units – either Terrans (cowboys in space), Zerg (think Alien) or Protoss (aliens who don’t hate you, but wouldn’t say no to frying you). Gathering units bring minerals to your base, which allows for upgrades, more powerful attacks and (assuming you don’t get thrashed, like I did) the forces make an assault on the enemy base. The single-player campaign mixes a top quality soundtrack, cutscenes and voice acting to the mix, and you can choose some of the missions you do (which may or may not affect your crew as you progress). One of my favourites had me protecting myself during night-time against hordes of infested Terrans, and at daytime scraping what army I had left to try and take out some buildings before dusk.

As for the multiplayer? It matches people according to their skill level after some trial matches, then placing you in a league. You’ll learn that some units or abilities are better than others. You’ll come across ‘build orders’ and ‘micromanagement’. Even watching matches as a spectator is fun. Perhaps the biggest complaint that abounds is the lack of LAN capability, but it’s less of a problem with Blizzard’s battle.net grouping system.