Best Games 2011: StarCraft 2 - Storyline And Gameplay Videos

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (SCII: WoL) is the sequel to the 1998 uber successful and ultra popular computer game StarCraft which we all loved. StarCraft was in turn, based on WarCraft 2 (first released in 1995 for MS-DOS in diskettes), which was a very popular Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game back in its heyday. How long has it been since WarCraft 2? 16 years! Now count that on your fingers and let that sink in. ;)

StarCraft II is developed for simultaneous release on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It is split into three episodes, one for each race. What is referred to as StarCraft 2 in this article is the main game itself, officially known as StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and is scheduled to be released on July 27, 2010 midnight. Later, there will be 2 addons, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm where you play the Zergs and StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void where you play the Protoss. In each of these games, you follow the adventures of Jim Raynor as a Terran captain, Sarah Kerrigan as the Zerg Queen and Zeratul as a Protoss warrior-assassin.

It's the 26th century, and somewhere far far away from Earth, and a hundred plus years after they were forcibly shifted there, a group of rejects from Earth known as The Terrans are caught in a conflict between the Zergs, a swarm-minded insect race and the Protoss, a warrior clan with psionic abilities. The Zergs are mostly made up of races of subdued insectoids from different worlds that has been carefully blended into the swarm by the Overmind, a big ugly blob somewhere in the Zerg home planet of Char, that is the overlord of the Zerg. The Protoss are a high-and-mighty race of priests who thinks they own the galaxy; deluded, at least until they learned of the enroaching all-conquering Zergs and the never-before-heard-of resourceful vermins known as the Terrans. The Terrans are, of course, the lovable but xenophobic descendants of ours, long after you and I gave up playing this game and recycled back into atoms by worms and what nots.

This game is set 4 years after the end of StarCraft: Brood Wars (StarCraft's only official addon) and follows the story of a now hard drinking pest exterminator Jim Raynor, who has been bitter that human-turned-insect Sarah Kerrigan has repeatedly rejected his advances towards her. Either that or his conscience was troubled by the fact that he has to kill some of his fellow men and the odd Protoss clan who unluckily took the wrong side in his bid to survive the conflict between the 3 races. ;)

Is he still secretly in love with the Zerg Queen Sarah Kerrigan? Or does he long for the day when he can empty a can of bug spray on her? Hopefully, we can find out more as we follow the exploits of Jim Raynor, Sarah Kerrigan and Zeratul in this continuing saga in the StarCraft 2 franchise.

Now that you have read the single player storyline, if you don't have anything better to do and there is no game on TV - turn off the lights, get ready the popcorn and sit back and enjoy the latest updated multiplayer beta tournaments gameplay videos, and find out for yourself how the masters play the game. ;)

As you can see, the beta graphics looked a little different from what we saw in the StarCraft 2 Demo and gameplay videos from 2 years earlier.

A Final Word

You have already seen the StarCraft 2 demo (from 2 years ago), also seen some of the best beta gameplay videos here. All we are eagerly anticipating now is for a brilliantly animated new StarCraft II game trailer (done in the style of classic Blizzard cinematic trailers) to show up before SCII's final release on Jul 27, 2010.

Happy gaming! ;)