It’s StarCraft II. You already bought it. If you didn’t, you’re dead to me.

Oh, you wanted more? Keep clicking…

If you’ve done any gaming in the past ten years, there’s little doubt you’ve at least heard of StarCraft. Being ubiquitous with the PC RTS genre, Blizzard’s hit sequel has been in development for longer than most of us would have liked, but its release finally came and with it ushered in a new bottomed out level of productivity in offices around the world, including ours.

The single player campaign is the first of three campaigns that will be released in the StarCraft II universe. You take the reins as the Terran this time around, with Jim Raynor running the show. If you had grand dreams of playing the Zerg through the campaign, you’re just going to have to wait for an expansion. The same can be said, mostly, for Protoss, although you do get to use them once or twice in the Wings of Liberty campaign. Through 29 missions (although not all are required and I happened to skip a couple), you’ll run through a pretty damn good story of the Terran’s struggle to make it in this crazy ass galaxy. If you’ve played any of the first StarCraft, you’ll immediately feel right at home. Beneath the insanely crisp graphics, terrific score, and damn good voice work, the core RTS gameplay mechanic remains largely unchanged. And that’s a good thing. Polish and refinements all around mean the amazing gameplay experiences you had before are even better now.

One of my favorite new additions to the single player is the between mission area on Raynor’s ship (and other locales, depending on where you are in the story) where you can interact with other crew members, upgrade units and structures with credits you’ve earned in missions, watch news broadcasts, and just in general find out about the world around you. It’s an almost RPG-like addition that will immediately remind you of tooling around the Normandy in Mass Effect 2, although with much less freedom. Some of the larger units available only in single player add a nice change of pace, such as the Firebats and Vultures. And with Zerg/Protoss upgrade trees locking into chosen branches, among other factors, you’re going to want to hit up the single player campaign more than one. Or maybe ten times, who knows.

Once you finish up with the campaign, head over to the Challenge Missions where the game completely teaches you what you need to succeed in multiplayer. One of the major criticisms of all RTS games is that single player never teaches you how to survive in the online multiplayer realm. With the Challenge Missions, that all changes. If you’re rocking 200 actions per minute already, feel free to pass on by, but for everyone else, these are a must play. If you never figured out how to defend a Zerg rush, you better get up to speed quick. With the Challenge Missions teaching you the ins and outs of every unit and how to counter-attack almost all maneuvers, this mode really tries to level the playing field once you hit the intarwebs.

Now that you’ve spent hours playing the single player and Challenge Missions, you’re ready to hop online where the new Battle.Net holds plenty of new and improved features to make StarCraft II even better than the original. You’ll start off with placement matches where the system determines your abilities and play style and drops you into a certain league and ranking. The new matchmaking system does a pretty good job based on this to match you up with opponents of similar skills. Now, this isn’t to say you aren’t going to get stomped to oblivion every now and then, but it’s a lot more balanced and you know what you’re getting into more so than the original StarCraft. As you play on, Battle.Net tracks your stats and moves your league ranking up or down to continuously make sure you’re playing people who are around your same skill level. With these stats, you can view replays after every match to completely analyze both your game and your opponent’s moves to learn what you did right or wrong. It’s a great way to get better, but I know I’ll never be at the level of many of you out there.

After a decade, StarCraft II is exactly what we’ve all been waiting for. While some may criticize the single player for only being one of three announced campaigns, there is still way more content here than any other $50 game on the market. Trust me, you will be playing StarCraft II for the next decade just like you were playing the first StarCraft for the past ten years. Even if you’re new to StarCraft, it’s a blast to hop in and get around. If you’ve never played an RTS, make this your first. If you’re an RTS or StarCraft fan, odds are this is already installed on your machine.

[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]