StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

I didn't expect Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty to live up to the hype and it's spectacular predecessor. Fortunately for me, I was completely wrong. The game's campaign has an interesting storyline, good character development with introduction of some new characters I'd just LOVE to see more of in the franchise, and added many new features that blow other RTS games out of the water. The graphics look beautiful, and don't require a super high-end machine to run reasonably well. As far as the single-player campaign goes, say goodbye to the boring old briefing rooms of the old Starcraft and of many other RTS games out there, and say hello to the headquarters of a new Terran revolution: on board the battlecruiser Hyperion! On board the Hyperion, which can be accessed and utilized during times when not in combat, you can do everything from spending earned credits on new technologies, upgrades, and hero (mercenary) units, to following storyline developments by talking to other characters in the game on the ship. Yes, rather than just boring old briefing rooms and new units randomly being added to your arsenal at various points during the campaign, Blizzard has, almost without flaw, integrated this game development aspect into the single-player campaigns of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. In the new Starcraft, developing new technology and new units has taken an interesting turn. You are frequently provided with the option of securing artifacts, vehicles, or other pieces of technological hardware on the battlefield that can be studied by Terran scientists in the Hyperion's lab to provide you with upgrades and new units for your campaign arsenal. In my view, this is a solid mark of improvement over the original Starcraft. Instead of just doling out and assigning new units, players in Starcraft 2 will be able to spend credits earned on missions to purchase hardware upgrades of their choosing. This allows for much more variation of gameplay from campaign to campaign, and engages players while enabling them to try different tactics and strategically customize their arsenal of weaponry and technology while in the campaign in ways they could never do in many other RTS games, including the original Starcraft itself. Following suit, the single player campaign also allows you to make some of your own decisions about who to side with at some times. Rather than having the game's story play out like a movie with players being more like passive viewers, Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty engages players and allows them free choice. Do you want to ally with this character, or with an opposing faction? What will the consequences of that decision be? This new feature engages players and provides far better replayability. The multiplayer aspect of the game is even better than the original. Blizzard scrapped the old 12 unit and single building selection limits, allowing for more opportunities to micromanage units and make strategical decisions to alter the course of the game and battle opponents - rather than allowing the game to devolve into a clickfest to see who can mash hotkeys faster for the win. That said, there are a couple significant downsides to Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty that you should be aware of. The new bnet system has included a game censorship feature that censors all manner of completely innocuous comments and words by gamers. Furthermore, the amount of words that have been censored is so large that it occasionally will censor even completely ordinary sentences that trigger the new bnet censorship system. While incredibly irritating, and clearly a waste of programming resources that should have been spent on improving the game's features, at least Blizzard provides gamers with the option to deactivate it in the game's options menu. The new bnet system also doesn't have a system of private channels like the original did, though Blizzard claims they will add a channel feature in the future that sounds more restrictive than the one we had in the original Starcraft. Why Blizzard left out some of these fundamental features of the old bnet multiplayer system and instead devoted costly programming resources to idiotic language filters that more often than not merely inhibit ordinary communication between players is beyond me. Possibly the most irritating downside to Starcraft 2 has been the game's awful resolution support. While it is worth noting that SC2 technically supports resolutions like 1920x1200, it is also important to know that Blizzard's implementation of that resolution support was done in a bad way. Basically, if you use any resolution that is not 16:9 on your monitor, you will be at a significant disadvantage in multiplayer matches of SC2 because the game will crop off your vertical field of view. Of course, you are free to go ahead and set your game to a 16:9 resolution, but changing the resolution to a resolution lower than and different from what is native to your monitor reduces the visual quality of the game significantly. It's pretty disappointing that in 2010 there are still PC games out there that don't support 16:10 resolutions correctly. As far as resolution goes, Blizzard should take a lesson from Valve and do the job right. Hopefully better resolution support will be patched in... but I say don't count on it. For anyone with a 4:3 or 16:10 monitor, you must put up with either a significant reduction in image quality OR have to put up with being able to see less of the battlefield than your opponents online can see. Blizzard is basically punishing you for having a monitor with the wrong aspect ratio. That said, there are also a few improvements in the new bnet system that should not be overlooked. Blizzard has included a new game achievement system quite similar to the game achievement system gamers have enjoyed on Valve's Steam service for years now. Blizzard has also included optional microphone chat for players to enjoy during games. Blizzard also deserves credit for the new DRM system that has been implemented on Starcraft 2. Blizzard has followed the trend of many other gaming companies and ditched obnoxious, intrusive, and difficult to delete and remove DRM methods such as SecuROM in favor of their new bnet system that is designed to be largely pretty similar to Valve's Steam service. Of course, being produced by Blizzard instead of Valve, and being entirely new, the new bnet DRM is somewhat different. Nonetheless, if, like most gamers, you're cool with Steam - you should look on the new bnet DRM system with favor, since it's quite similar. Like Steam, you can apparently download digital copies of purchased games in the event you lose or damage your CD. Likewise, once you've created an account and registered your game, you need not worry about losing the CD key since the game and its key is tied to your bnet account. Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty has crafted a superb single-player campaign experience with wonderful player-driven story development options, an appropriately enjoyable though in some ways lacking multiplayer experience, and wrapped it all up in some beautiful new graphics - all while breathing new life into that superb story that begun roughly a decade ago with the first Starcraft games. While it has its flaws, Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty is nonetheless not a game to miss!

Simply put, this game is phenomenal. The day I finished Brood War I have eagerly awaited a sequel and Blizzard has not disappointed (though they took their sweet time getting here =D) I have followed this game since they first announced it and I've participated in Beta for a few months. As a fan of both the story and multiplayer, I tell you all this game is fantastic. The presentation is incredible, voice acting is decent (not award winning but decent) and the gameplay is the tightest I've ever encountered in a RTS. If you're a fan of the original, not much has changed which is actually a good thing. If it isn't broke, why fix it? Once you get an idea of how each unit works and what counters what, you will have an incredible playing experience that I can barely put into words. (The first time I countered a Siege tank line with a couple of immortals backed up by stalkers back in beta I jumped out of my chair and cheered haha) Now, as far as people's complaints go, I have a few points I'd like to make. 1. You're only getting a THIRD of the game!!!!! This is disingenuous at best. First off, the campaign is predominantly Terran, which is one of 3 races in the game. So from a story point of view, yes we are getting only one side of a 3 sided story. However, this is NOT the original Starcraft. This is a new, gigantic story being presented to us. We are not getting 3 small sides to one story, but instead we are treated to 3 large sides to 1 massive story. As someone who loves the storyline of the Starcraft universe, the story we get from the Terran perspective is more than enough story to keep you thinking until the next expansion comes out. I'm about midway through the campaign and I've already experienced a story that rivals the entirety of the first game. Another reason why it is disingenuous to say we are somehow getting shafted out of 2/3 of a game is that, we get the complete multiplayer. I repeat, THIS GAME COMES WITH A COMPLETE MULTIPLAYER EXPERIENCE WITH ALL THREE RACES. What boggles my mind the most is that a lot of the people making this complaint about the game freely admit they don't care about the story and only care about multiplayer. So why the drama? 2. No LAN Now, as someone who never played LAN with SC1 (I know, didn't have a lot of friends who were into this back then lol) I can't say much about this other than it does seem like a valid complaint. Not necessarily a deal breaker but you, faithful reader, have to make that decision yourself. Some people want to boycott the game because of it, others say who cares? And most people see it as a legit complaint and a definite drawback, but doesn't stop them from enjoying this experience. 3. Battle.net Ok now this is actually an issue. The Battle.net situation is not pretty and some things absolutely need to change. As a casual multiplayer person, Battle.net doesn't hamper me that much but there are plenty of other serious players and clans that are hurt by the new design and it sucks, in addition to a slew of other issues that don't necessarily ruin the experience, but unnecessarily hinder it. However, this is a representation of Battle.net, NOT Starcraft 2. Hence why I disagree that people would misrepresent this game with a 1 star rating over something that stands apart from the game itself. Bottom Line/TL;DR This game is simply incredible. From a story perspective, we are getting so much that its hard to even comprehend at times and I look forward to playing through the campaign again on higher difficulties. The presentation and visuals are beautiful and engaging. The multiplayer experience, (while at times hindered by Battle.net) is phenomenal and an insane amount of fun and as we saw with the first Starcraft, it will keep you coming back for another decade at least. The detractors like to cloud the game with smaller issues and misrepresentation but I encourage you to read my post after theirs, then go research for yourself whats out there. All I can say is that this game was well worth the 11 years I've waited and I must say Bravo to Blizzard for a job well done. Just fix Battle.net and we will be A-OK.

RTSで人気のゲームと言えばこれ！

Muy entretenido

I am happy to say I received my order of starcraft 2 Wings of liberty and a day early then originally quoted I got It In about 6 days It was a brand new one and everything was complete and unharmed I just want to put this out there i am not familiar with ordering from a third party through amazon but If you get It right from amazon then u should be fine It was also in canada so i didnt have to wait for it to cross the border which takes forever and no duty, love the game If you want a futuristic RTS game this game Is for you , also on a side not you need internet all the time for this game you can configure it to play single player campaign but you need good internet just to get the updates

RTSを知らない人にもおススメ 買って損のない超コストパフォーマンスゲーム 日本で対戦型のゲームといえば、格闘ゲームやオンライン麻雀などがメジャーですが、 世界にはFPSとRTSという人気カテゴリがあります。 SC2はRTSで最もプレイ人口の多いメジャータイトル RTSて何だ？と思った人は、百聞は一見にしかず、 是非YoutubeでSC2を検索してください！ 世界中のプレイヤーが対戦動画をUPしています。 動画を見て面白そうだなと感じた人は買って損することはまずありません。 ゲームとしての面白さはもちろん、コスパが凄過ぎるんです。 以下コスパがどう良いのかに絞ってレビューします。 １、パッケージだけで何年も遊べる（初期費用のみ） SC2はパッケージを購入すると無料で何度でも遊べます。 数年に一度メジャーバージョンアップで追加パッケージがでますが、 パッケージ一つで３年は優に遊べます。 ソーシャルゲームと違って、従量アイテムなんてありません。 ２、プレイ人口がとにかく多い（過疎が無い） 対戦相手に困ることが本当にありません。 どんな時間でもすぐにマッチングされます。 しかも自分の実力とぴったりの相手とマッチングしてくる ラダーシステムは本当に優れものです。 ３、最高のサポート（丁寧なバランス調整） ランニング無料といってもロビーサーバーを用意して、 後はほったらかしというわけではありません。 SC2はプロプレイヤーもいる世界のメジャータイトルですから、 常にゲームバランスの調整がされ、アップデートの精度も高いです。 ４、さらに嬉しいカスタムゲーム（ゲーム１０本分の価値） SC2にはユーザーがカスタマイズしたゲームを公開する機能があり、 数千以上のタイトルが無料でUPされています。 これが、カスタマイズなんていう生半可なものではないんです。 RTSはもちろん、FPS、RPG、パズル、STGなど様々なジャンルの ほぼオリジナルのゲームが遊べます。 中には、人気がでてメジャータイトルになったゲームもあるんです。 ちょっと始めるのに敷居が高く感じるかもしれませんが、 世界中の初心者が日々参戦していて、ちゃんと初心者同士マッチングしてくれますから、 是非トライしてみてください！

商品も綺麗で包装もしっかりしていたのでとても満足です！