Being Milked Never Felt So Good
I was very much a skeptic when I heard about Blizzard's "financial scheme" for StarCraft 2, which involved splitting it up into 3 separate campaigns for each race, which would be sold separately. That sounded very much like buying the same game 3 times to me, and I planned not to get any, but then got Wings of Liberty as a birthday present from family.
It turns out that the campaign mode feels pretty solid, and the upgrades to the Battle.net over its distant predecessor are tremendous (and pretty good compared to Warcraft 3 too). The number of game modes and convenience of playing make this game a pretty good experience.
First, there's the campaign, which is front and center in all the advertising. It actually does feel like a complete experience, even though you're only Terran almost the whole time. The missions have a number of interesting gimmicks in them, so that you're not always just hunting down and destroying the enemy the same way on each map. The whole campaign has its own experience to it, too, and is significantly revamped from the previous games. There's a number of interesting upgrades available from a new between-missions interface, which lets you customize your force as you please. These added a lot to the fun of the campaign and distinguished it from competitive multiplayer significantly, without feeling too different. There's also a number of custom units in the campaign, which is how some of the old favorites make their appearance in spite of being cut from competitive play (e.g. Firebats).
When playing competitively with other players, you spend your first 5 matches playing qualifiers. Based on your performance in these matches, you are placed into a league that should be suited to your skills. If you end up in the wrong league (maybe you were extra lucky or unlucky in your qualifiers), then you can get bumped up or down from gold to platinum or silver leagues. Ultimately, you're playing people whose abilities are roughly on par with your own, and not getting stomped really hard unless you've already been trouncing people yourself.
Where StarCraft 2 stood out to me was in the Cooperative mode, where you're matched randomly with other players for a "Comp-Stomp" if you're alone; if you form a "party" before entering, you'll have your party members in the game with you. I found this mode to be comfortable, and on medium difficulty the computers aren't too aggressive. This is also where you can get a good feel for the Zerg and Protoss races, and for the structure of the races in general. My biggest complaint is that the computers tend to play the same way each time, which means that the same strategy also works each time you play.
There's also a number of custom maps made in the editor. The editor seems to be powerful, but has a bit of a learning curve to using, even for really basic maps. The available mods can be fun, and can't really be reviewed in full here as more are constantly released. As of this writing, there's three official maps from Blizzard with their own achievements, and they're a fun diversion when you want a break from the basic game but don't want to stop playing just yet.
I would recommend StarCraft 2 to other strategy fans. The core of the original game is still there, but the changes give it a bit of different flavor that takes some getting used to. I've not decided yet if I'll get the next campaign when it comes out (I still feel like I'm being milked for money with the economics of it), but I'll probably pick it up eventually.
