Hands-on: StarCraft II multiplayer

It's been nearly two years since we were first emabarrassed in a StarCraft II multiplayer preview, but we recently got our long-awaited shot at redemption. During the interim, we've logged countless hours with the original StarCraft and its Brood War expansion (having picked up new, digial copies for a mere $15) in order to prepare for this opportunity. The bad news? We still managed to get owned. Although, in our defense, we were playing against some hardcore fansites, and the setup of Blizzard's recent hands-on event was not unlike being dropped into a televised StarCraft tournament match in Korea with an announcer saying, "Okay, and ... GO!"

That's the bad news. The good news is that StarCraft II looks simply amazing, and it plays even better. After you've pounded your brain with several hundred hours (for some of you, it's probably thousands of hours) of StarCraft, and you fire up StarCraft II, it's like being jolted by 1.21 jigawatts of mouse-clicking rapture -- which, thankfully, also numbed the pain of our ongoing losing streak

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/29/ha...2-multiplayer/