Random brain farts on tech, games and gunpla: Starcraft 2:Wings of liberty Review

Overall-9/10

YAHOO! Finally get to kill some worms after 12 years!

Gameplay-9/10
Win
-well balanced and familiar gameplay
-all 3 race distinctive in gameplay and strategy
-varied campaign objectives
-epic story
-highly customisable editor
Fail
-no lan connection
-constant b-net connection a hassle
-zerg and protoss campaign not included

Visuals-9/10
Win
-distinctive art style
-great looking particle effects
-no performance problems even in large battles
-large variety of environments
-well made cut scenes
Fail
-no anti aliasing support
-texture and polygon count is mediocre

After a decade, the wait is finally over. Hell, ITS ABOUT TIME...
For those that spend the last 12 years memorizing hotkeys and stats of every starcraft unit, you will feel at home here. Sweeping change have happened in the RTS genre over the past decade, but starcraft 2 is still the traditional RTS where you need to collect resources and built an army to conqeur the enemy.
Following the footstep of the first starcraft, 3 race is offered for galatic annihilation, each having its own unique abilitiess and tatics to suit different player's play style. Unlike other RTS, no units feels like a copy of another, therefore the learning curve to master the game is steep. Further to complicate things is the various upgrades offering some units to have dual role. The upgrades is applied immediately to all units in the battlefield, therefore able to change the tide of battle in some instances. With the right economy and infrastructure, units can be churned out in huge amount, therefore scouting out enemy armies and customise your own to exploit their weakness can be done in a matter of minutes. This creates a very fluid and versatile combat where during late game, one minor mistake can remove all the advatage you accumulataed throughout the game, in a matter of seconds.
You get to learn the basics from tutorial, get more advance tips in challenge mode or try out the skirmish mode to practice before sinking your head into the online massacre. In fact its an easy game to pick up, unless you never play RTS before. However, its extremely difficul to master, and zerg may prove overwhelming to control if you never played the first starcraft.
With all the hype about the competitive online gameplay, dont forget to check out the campaign. Its back to the warcraft 3 days where you yearn for the next cinematic cutscenes. Even then, the in game cutscene is so well directed and rendered, you may even think you are playing FPS. Not going to spoil the story here, but its epic and probably better than some sci fi movies out there. The campaign mission is varied to keep things fresh since its pretty lengthy. In between mission, you get to explore around your capital ship, interacting with your crew, upgrade your troops or play retro arcade game at the bar. The amount of effort put into minor details is staggering, adding more to the sense of involvment which most other RTS lacks. This campaign focus on terran but you do get to play protoss alittle, although rather disappointed of having forced to pay for another 2 expansion, but the campaign itself long enough that put other games to shame.
Blizzard is never a dev that breaks technological barrier in terms of visuals and starcraft 2 is no different. The units itself have a slight cartoonish style to it and the world is extremely colorful, especially when cannons start firing. They did an especially good job creating distinctive style between the 3 race visually, thus not only do they play out differently but visually supporting it too. However, the lack of anti aliasing support is unforgiveable, even the game isnt extremely aliased in the first place.
So this the game most of us been waiting for. But it also have an asking price, every publisher is dreaming for, 100SGD. It broke the bar set by COD modern warfare 2 and become the most expensive PC game ever released, thanks to them, get ready to see more in months to come. Every aspect of the game oozes with the developers ingenius effort and high production budget so its understandable of its high asking price. But the seperating the game into 3 parts while being so expensive really feels like they are milking us too much. But theres nothing much we can do, since nobody wants to miss the best RTS of 2010...

Help plox?