For over a decade, Starcraft has been the bestselling online real-time strategy game of all time – and now comes Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty to give a fresh lick of war-paint to the original multiplayer experience and add an entirely new single-player campaign. In many major releases these days, a single-player campaign can offer, at best, a half-baked experience for the gamer, at worst an almost contemptuous cursory nod from a purely online event masquerading briefly as old-school, hard-drive home-gaming entertainment. Starcraft II bucks that trend and zooms into your home as one of the best RTS games in years, with acres of scope for extended gameplay.

Troubled freedom fighter Jim Raynor returns, not only leading an insurgent group against the autocratic Terran Dominion, lead by the Machiavellian, self-proclaimed Emperor Arcturus Mengsk, but skirmishing with the Queen of Blades herself, Kerrigan. In the original Starcraft, you may recall, she was Sarah Louise, Raynor’s former ally, abandoned to her death by Mengsk. Fortun­ately, any unfamiliarity with the mythos of the first game is deftly overcome by the filling in of the backstory as the campaign progresses. The cut-away story mode in between the innum­erable missions, set predominantly on Raynor’s battlecruiser, Hyperion, does it all for you. The excellent voice acting and crisp and vivid cinematics are a key part in the immersive gameplay Starcraft II offers. The adventure game-style clicks on characters or items will reward you with a brief cut scene advancing your knowledge of the world, as do news reports often as fair and balanced as those put out by the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four. You will earn yourself research points for your curiosity, which will aid you in your enhancements, help recruit mercenaries and unlock permanent upgrades associated with the game’s differ­ent fact­ions. While chilling out in the bar, you can even play a vertical shooter arcade game, a Blizzard blast from the past called Lost Viking. The enhancements associated with Zergs and Protoss factions are one element that really gives the game replay value. Choices you make in the midst of a campaign can have consequences and might well affect what units are available to you and which missions you must complete.

When it comes to hands-on RTS gameplay itself, Blizzard has very wisely stuck to what the original does best. Over 10 mill­ion copies have been shifted since 1998, (probably half of them in South Korea, where the game is a phenomenon), with profess­ional teams competing against each other, earning sponsorships and enjoying the status of media celebrit­ies. Online, the game offers three distinct races to choose from: the human Terrans, the insectoid Zergs and the humanoid Prot­oss, a species marked by advanced technology and psionic abilities. As a single-player experience Starcraft II only offers you the option of playing as the Terr­ans, and there have been grumbles in some quarters about this. But I can’t see why. The game offers an honest-to-goodness complete single-player experience before online play is even touched upon. The campaign isn’t simply about building up resources and units, romping off over birds-eye-view, battle-scarred terrain and repeating ad infinitum. Each mission has an individual take. You’ll find yourself not going six-pack to thorax against swarms of Zergs, for example, but fighting the terrain itself, dealing with unruly lava flows and exploding suns which threaten to destroy your hard-won resources. The plot isn’t particularly challenging, but it does what any plot should do: moves forward with some interesting turns along the way. One mission involves a Pitch Black-style scenario in which you have to gather resources during the day and retreat at night behind fortifications while bombarded by ravenous nocturnal enemy forces. In-game, you can choose not to embark upon the many missions (you are usually offered up to three at a time) and simply follow the main campaign. But doing so could leave you severely under-resourced when it comes to the build-up of apoca­lyptic final missions. Graphically, the game is by no means groundbreaking, but there is enough detail in the models when you zoom in and enough variety between organic verdure and rust-stained rockeries throughout. On high settings, the real-time shadows register well, there is an almost palpable liquid pulse to the Zergs, and the colours of individual units are comic-book vivid. A modest dual-core rig only a few years old will have no trouble running it. The interface is excellent, remaining close to the original while streamlining some commands so that they no longer require 20 digits on two hands to achieve god-like strategist status.

When it comes to the multiplayer, the absence of LAN play, a traditional feature of Starcraft, has irked more than a few – as has the necessity of being online via your Battle.net account to cull the game’s various achievements. Online this game is a life and time abyss, be you Terran, Zerg or Prot­oss. In single-player mode, Wings of Liberty is only the first game in a tri­logy. Zerg: Heart of the Swarm and Prot­oss: Legacy of the Void will follow. The first of the trilogy alone offers up to 20 hours of gameplay in a first run-though, probably more if you decide to investigate all the highways and byways of the missions it offers, and includes a game editor with which to create new maps, mods and games (plus the custom­ised ones you can download). Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is one of the most immersive, substantive and rewarding games of this year, RTS or otherwise.