Preview: StarCraft II

To a great deal of people, StarCraft II must seem a great shame. Blizzard is one of very few developers successful enough to have earned overwhelming creative freedom, and its IPs sit regally among the most loved in the world. Yet 12 years after StarCraft's original release (two centuries in videogame years) tens of thousands of beta testers are currently playing something very familiar indeed.

The same three races, a lot of the same units. The same economy-focused play, the same tactics, the same story. The same Zerg rush disaster.

What cannot be forgotten is that StarCraft is still one of the most successful e-sports of all time, and the RTS e-sport. Its success in South Korea is as legendary as the nation's StarCraft champions themselves. Such a position throttles creative potential, especially so when you remember that StarCraft's success was the happiest of accidents. All Blizzard can do in this situation is polish and update its game with the utmost delicacy, and at this it has succeeded.

Potentially the biggest changes are the new map features, as anyone who's basked in the contagious excitement of Blizzard's Battle Reports will know. As well as map design with an emphasis on chokepoints and ramps, maps are now loaded with special details that affect the contest. Destructible rocks that, once torn down, open new paths through the map. Watchtowers that lift the fog of war around them once a ground unit's positioned at their base. Line-of-sight-blocking grass and smoke. And most unnervingly of all, special high-yield crystal fields which offer bonus resources with the condition that they're often difficult to defend.

The Terrans, Protoss and Zerg themselves duck the RTS tradition of a sequel meaning slightly more units. Instead, each side has been fine-tuned, and few favourites survive unscathed. Terran players might have fond memories of the Firebat, Goliath, Reaver, Medic and Vulture, and with all five of them having been replaced, they're going to have to stay as memories. Even the heroic Siege Tank and Protoss Psi-Storm have been weakened. In StarCraft II, nostalgia comes second to making this game all it can be.

So, what is this StarCraftiness that Blizzard is agonising over? What's the appeal here?  For those expecting something more revolutionary, perhaps an explanation of the original game's competitive core is in order.

Multiplayer StarCraft is fencing. It's such an abusively fast RTS that you need every one of your actions planned in your head before you do it, just so you don't waste a split-second thinking. And more distinctively, it's about watching your opponent like a hawk and parrying both the small moves they make and their overall strategy.

Just as every unit in the game has a host of different units or special abilities that'll render it mincemeat, so every strategy has a counter. If your opponent is expanding into new resource fields, you hit him hard while his economy is tied up. If he's "teching" (clambering up the tech tree) towards ground or air, you expand while teching air or anti-air. If he's rushing you hard and fast the game turns to ambushing and defeating his attacks using recon and static defences, bending his aggression into a waste of resources.

In the background of all this is an unprecedented quantity of micromanagement. This isn't just about having combat units selected so you can use their special abilities. This is about intermediate-level play where people alternately issue walk and attack commands to speedy long-range attackers fighting short-range attackers so their units fire from the hip. It's about high-level play where you hover dropships over tanks fighting enemies with a faster rate of fire and repeatedly drop and pick up your tanks to keep them out of the fight during the two seconds they're reloading.

What makes StarCraft II addictive is that everything benefits from your personal supervision. Even the breakneck pace of Company Of Heroes allowed players to start units fighting and then leave them to it for a spell. Not so here. Teching, fighting, scouting and the beating heart of your economy all benefit from you being right there to help, but you can't be everywhere at once. Or can you? The foundation of StarCraft is an exciting core of choking down panic, prioritising and wishing you were faster, all while plotting terrible bastardly moves to throw your opponent off his own game. This is where the revised unit roster comes in, which gently pushes micromanagement and weakens obvious plays.

Which might all sound nightmarish, but it's not. Every other player is in the same (turbo-charged) boat as you, and while matches of StarCraft II are always a thrill from start to finish, there's a second, deeper pleasure which comes from being shown so clearly the skillset that you're striving for.

Until StarCraft II's singleplayer campaign arrives, this is where the series' evolution can be found. The Battle.net online lobby is a thing of beauty. Beyond slick aesthetics lie robust social functionality, including support for friend lists, parties, instant messaging and mods. Maps you don't have are downloaded on the fly, and your achievements are stored next to a comprehensive list of your stats.

But the real achievement here is the replays. The upgraded Battle.net might boast the most comprehensive matchmaking of any game ever made, involving not just leagues but mandatory ranking matches and divisions of only 100 players each, but it's the replays which stand out. Every match you have produces a little 50-250kb data file on your PC which stores everyone's actions for the entire match.

With the click of a button you can watch anything from your very first victory to your latest defeat with everything laid bare, from fog of war to mineral counts, and see exactly how your opponent beat you. It's almost exciting to get taken to the cleaners by a superior player, just because you get to watch every move they make afterwards. Fast-forward, fast-forward, freeze-frame! How the hell did they do that?

It's probably inaccurate to say anyone lusting after StarCraft II's multiplayer can rest assured. The cruel reliance on micromanagement and the way the game nurtures desperate struggle will get the better of many. But then, this is why Blizzard is taking huge care with its epic trilogy of a singleplayer campaign. StarCraft II's multiplayer is every bit the game Blizzard set out to create, and it's going to make a lot of people very happy indeed.