StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a game of military science fiction real-time video strategy developed by Blizzard Entertainment as a sequel to the award-winning 1998 video game StarCraft. Released July 27, 2010, the game was developed for simultaneous release on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Starcraft II will be divided into three parts: the base of the game subtitled Wings of Liberty, and two expansion packs, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void.
Set in the 26th century in a distant part of the Milky Way, the game is based on three species: the Terrans, humans exiled from Earth, the Zerg, a race of insectoid assimilatory gene, and the Protoss, a species with great psionic power. Wings of Liberty focuses on the Terrans, while the expansions of the Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void will focus on the Zerg and Protoss, respectively. The game takes place four years after the events of StarCraft: Brood War, and follows the adventures of Jim Raynor as he leads a group of insurgents against the autocratic Terran Dominion. The game includes old and new characters and locations from the original game.
Reviews
After its release, StarCraft II was met with a positive reception, with an average score of 96/100 on Metacritic critical, and 95.5% on Game Rankings.
The game was particularly praised keeping the popular RTS gameplay, introducing new features and better story telling. GamesRadar found that "In many ways, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty StarCraft 2.0 feels like - and that's a good thing," saying it "delivers on all fronts." NZGamer.com said the game was "the best RTS game released in the year and one of the best PC games." Regarding its history, Game Trailers said: "If anything immediately apparent wing of the history of freedom, is that the structure of the series' narrative has evolved far beyond the original sparse intervals-sortie", calling it "a story epic and entertainingly told yarns', while X-Play praised what he considered to be "perfectly in fact - is to integrate the story with the gameplay." Giant Bomb echoed that view while watching the part Hyperion between missions, thinking that he has "more depth of character, pathos, more credible, more twists surprise - I sincerely hoped out of history." Joystiq has been very positive towards improving the multiplayer matchmaking service, calling it "similar to Xbox Live and PSN, which is a welcome change to the Archaic matchmaking Battle.net Blizzard's previous games. John Meyer of Wired praised improved graphics engine, saying that "shows decades of polish" and a "slick new presentation."
Matt Peckham PC World however, that some buyers expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of LAN-based gameplay, the lack of cross-domain game and the campaign being limited to race Terran.
Ars Technica gave the game an overall verdict of "Buy" and especially praised the single player campaign as "Fun as hell." They were also very impressed with the game modding tools that allow users to create their own content and distribute it to other fans. The two "Ugly" problems they identified with the game were the lack of LAN play and the decision to divide the regions. They suggest that these decisions were influenced by Activision, not the game designers at Blizzard and feel this will turn many people off the game and make things difficult for people who have international friends. In a separate article Ars Technica StarCraft II vigorously supported a reaction against the large customer designed to give the game a rating of 1 star on Amazon.com. They argue in favor of Blizzard against accusations that he was "not a complete game, because only the Terran campaign was launched, but they suggest that customer complaints about lack of LAN play and cross-region were legitimate.
