Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Highly addictive"

I was about 10 yo when starcraft 1 was rocking online gaming (back in the day). At such age, you can love games but will never fully appreciate them. Years have passed and Warcraft 3 came to the scene. It had an amazing competitive multiplayer and an unique feature to create your own custom maps. The level of flexibility of the editor was far beyond any other game ever created. I am not exaggerating here. Creating triggers, writing Jass scripts and editing textures introduced me to basic programming and epic programs as photoshop and 3d Max.

When Blizzard announced Starcraft 2, it was an instant must buy for me, as the editor could only improve from Warcraft universe. But is it still a must buy for people who are not interested in programming?

Ofcourse not, there is not a single game out there that will be enjoyable by everyone. Is it a must buy for someone who has a modern PC, likes competitive gaming and can afford buying a game without sleeping on the floor for the next moth? Hell Yeah! Let me explain.

You don't buy this game to play the singleplayer offline. Most of the sc2 "hype" haters downloaded this game from a torrent, and beat the game in 2 days on easy-normal difficulty and medium to low graphic settings. And you know what, you can't blame them, thats how the gaming industry has set up the system. Push the product, create only whats necessary, start on a new project, make a buck. But guess what, this time, u've missed 80% of the game! It's all about multiplayer, just like Call of Duty.

If social and competitive type of gaming is not for you, stay away from this game. Cause boy, if you take time to learn the game, you will have the most competitive and exciting matchups u'll ever play in computergames. The balance is so amazing, that one hour+ battle can be decided on a well placed forcefield, timing of a steampack, scouting of a baneling bust or an ability to attack and execute a marine drop behind the mineral line. Every time you loose, its because YOU messed up, not because the game has issues.

Even if you don't like matchups and 10 to 80 minutes battles, there are still thousands of exciting custom games that can keep you busy for moth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBbVqR3Euf4

Battleships,BattleCraft , Storm of the Imperial Sanctum, Income Wars
Nexus Word Wars, Bounty Hunters, Pictionary, Arena Masters, Stay Alive Reborn!, ChessCraft. That is just a tip of an iceberg. You have tower defences, RPG's, race games, DotA remakes, zombie survivals, cinematic cutscenes and the list grows every day.

Overall:
Great sound, great visuals, great controls, runs perfectly on all computers, growing game selection, amazing balance, developers who actually care about the game, non stopping improvements and ongoing perfection of the balance.

So is this game perfect? Not by a long shot, I have my own list of issues with the game. But so as every other game, and none of them come even close to the level of quality u'll find here.

If you are openminded about RTS genre, this game is worth every penny. Many people cry about lack of innovation, but that is just because they are too stubborn to see what true innovation and inspiration is. Don't believe the hate hype. Because it seems being bitter is whats popular these days

Cheers, Pepper.