I fell for the "hype" trap with this game and was letdown. Don't fall into that trap.

User Rating: 8.5 | Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty PC
Starcraft 2 is one of those games where it was so over-hyped you'd think it would be a revolutionary title in the genre. It wasn't though thus I and many other people were letdown. Taking the hype out of the picture, Starcraft 2 is a amazing game. The campaign contains a lot of immersion that will keep you captured for at least eight hours of gameplay. Style and Design - 8/10
One thing about the campaign I wasn't really fond of, was the World of Warcraft style they added to characters such as Jim Raynor, the main character of the story. I'm not talking about their personalities, but anyone who has played World of Warcraft before just has to glimpse at their over-sized boots to think "World of Warcraft...." The structures of the characters even felt like they contained a World of Warcraft design to them, but if you can get past that, the art style and character design is great. I really like unique games that don't blend in with other games, but this small issue wasn't hard to ignore.

Story - 9/10
As a huge role-playing game nerd, I really, really liked the story and how well written it was(I love you Chris Metzen). My only real complain is how short it felt. Playing on normal difficulty it was a fairly short campaign(around 8hrs) that offers very little replay value aside from achievements. I found it really cool how the story branched off into the different lives of the characters though. I was especially impressed with a lot of Matt Horner's missions. I really hope they go this route again in Heart of the Swarm.

Gameplay - 7/10 The gameplay is very good, but if you've played the previous games in the Starcraft series you shouldn't be surprised if it plays almost exactly the same. Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere where one of the developers was talking about wanting the gameplay to be very similar for e-sport purposes. Starcraft was a huge e-sport so you can't really blame them for that. It would of been nice if they added some twists to it though, which they seem to be looking at for the upcoming expansion, "Heart of the Swarm." Overall the gameplay is very fun, but is nothing unique and you should not expect something groundbreaking.

Multiplayer - 6/10
Playing in league matches was really fun, I really did enjoy it. It was very well balanced and all around fun. to those of us who cared about the custom game scene though, were to an extent, letdown. Blizzard made a few empty promises for Wings of Liberty such as Clan Support, a solid Custom Game finder, the marketplace and other things. While they promise we'll see it in Heart of the Swarm it was originally supposed to be in a update for Wings of Liberty, which never happened. I'm sure with a quick google search you can find a whole list of things they promised for Multiplayer that never happened.

Overall the game is great and I would highly suggest giving it a a try even if your not a real-time strategy fan. The campaign is engaging and fun and maybe you'll even like trying out the multiplayer!