It's been over a decade now since the original StarCraft made its debut. Thanks to Blizzard's penchant for taking its sweet time and the game's continued success in the West and cultural phenomenon status in the East, it has certainly been a long wait for fans eager for the next chapter in the StarCraft saga. That wait is nearly over, but gamers expecting a massive RTS revolution are going to be somewhat disappointed: Blizzard has purposely focused on delivering a very solid, very familiar experience. The phrase 'why fix what's not broken?' comes to mind, but in the interim between StarCraft titles the real-time strategy genre has evolved and expanded considerably. No doubt many developers have simply copied and tweaked the StarCraft/Warcraft formula, but others have paved their own way over the years.

Where games like Warhammer: Dawn Of War continuously add new races, StarCraft II will once again feature only the classic three: Terran, Zerg, and Protoss. Furthermore, as has already been discussed endlessly since its reveal last October, the StarCraft II storyline will be fractured between a trilogy of retail releases. The reason for both of these decisions is actually one in the same: Quality control. Blizzard defends the controversial choice by claiming that this allows it to polish each race and campaign, rather than spreading itself too thin. It also pads Activision's already obese coffers threefold, but that's not something you'll find in any press release.

However, don't get too excited about each entry being filled to the brim with new upgrades and units as Blizzard has decided that "balance" requires roughly the same amount of characters as the first game. For every new "marauder" added, a "firebat" has been removed. Blizzard has had years to come up with interesting new RTS objectives and while it all eventually boils down to escort missions and/or overwhelming the AI with brute force, what is playable in the latest demo is still well done and inherently enjoyable. Sadly, the visuals do nothing to stand out from the perpetually crowded genre that StarCraft itself helped define, and while undeniably an improvement over its now-ancient predecessor, the game's aesthetics have been intentionally and frustratingly watered down.

"We purposefully did that when making StarCraft II," says lead designer Chris Sigaty. "When you take it down to gameplay – and one of our core values is gameplay first at the company – we're actually sitting there going, 'That looks awesome but we need to take it down a notch.' The one that recently came up was with the marauders; they fire two concussion grenades each time they fire right now, and it's got a pretty big effect, as well as a distortion effect. But when you've got a stack of six to eight marauders and they start pounding on one another it just gets crazy and you can't see. So we're sitting there doing the exact opposite of, 'Make it more spectacular'."

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