The year was 1998 and... oh you all know StarCraft. The Protoss, Terrans and Zergs struggle for domination and now... they’re back and bigger than ever. But does a visual upgrade change the game? Not at all. It’s still about building as many units as fast as you can to crush your opponents.

What that means is that, it’s nothing new. Sure the game has gone 3D and you can swing the camera right down into the fray and watch as forces clash. But other than that, it just feels like a standard RTS, it feels like StarCraft. In fact, I daresay that it’s almost the exact same thing that it was a decade ago.

Now that’s not to say there are some new things. Battle.net returns with huge improvements to the system and network for multiplayer. It certainly is quick and there were very few game pauses while someone synced up and each only lasted a few seconds.

They’ve included a Ladder system that is set to rank players and then be used in matchmaking so that players of similar ability will be matched up for more entertaining games. Often in this type of game, without proper matchmaking, one player or team simply gets crushed by a far more advanced opponent. It’s a fact of life that we have all dealt with from the days of LAN-based Warcraft when some of us constantly crushed our friends. Now, hopefully, Battle.net will be better able to create more lively matches with people of comparable skills.

There are some new units that give you some new types of strategy but still, a massive and powerful force will eventually undo whatever those new units can do. At time of writing the ladder system wasn’t functional so there was no way to tell if the matchmaking will actually work properly.

The current offerings for game modes include 1-on-1, 2-on-2 and Co-op vs AI (not available for play in the beta).

However, when you get right down to the heart of the matter, it’s still the exact same gameplay. Gather resources, build buildings, amass forces and slaughter the enemy. It looks like they barely even looked at making the gameplay more interesting. How many times can you possibly find doing the same thing enjoyable? MANY! Even though it’s still the same gameplay it’s exactly what we want from StarCraft. The singleplayer campaigns promise to give you more goal-oriented action so if that’s what you want then you’re in luck as well.