After nearly 13 years, the wait for Starcraft fans is finally over; Starcraft II: The Wings Of Liberty has been released and it has been well worth the wait.
The game's campaign is bursting with enhancements and additions which both deepen the gameplay and significantly boost the game's overall replay value.
The multiplayer is enjoyable and incredibly well balanced thanks to its fantastic matchmaking system – players will never find themselves completely outmatched in terms of skill against an opponent.
As with all of Blizzard's games, Starcraft II looks impressive, boasts staggering depth and the attention to detail in the game borders on the obsessive.
Best of all, the learning curve caters to gamers of all skill levels – newcomers are even brought up to speed on the game's backstory – and as such this is not only a great entry into the series, it's a great first step into the real-time strategy genre. At this week's GamesCom trade show in Cologne, publisher THQ, best known for its Warhammer and WWE titles, revealed a new drawing tablet for Nintendo's Wii.
The 'UDraw' tablet is a pleasingly chunky piece of kit, powered entirely by your standard Wii remote, which slots into the side of the tablet. That prvides an array of buttons to go with the device's own pen-stylus.
Launch titles include UDraw Studio, which will be bundled with the device, Pictionary and platformer Dood's Big Adventure. While drawing will be the tablet's primary use, THQ hope to create some more leftfield experiences with the device. Dood's Big Adventure is a platform game that uses the pen to guide your character, drawing trampolines for him to spring from, for instance.
The Udraw tablet encapsulates the Wii ethos for fun, family-friendly pursuits – let's hope the software can match it. With all of the console-related gaming products flooding the market, you'd be forgiven for thinking that consoles are the only option gamers have. However, PC gaming is enjoying something of a mini renaissance at present.
Not only does the PC enjoy a large and varied library of games to rival those of the consoles, it's more affordable than ever and is keeping pace with a lot of trends staking a claim to gaming's future.
The PC's greatest strength as a gaming utility is that it's a completely open platform. What this means is that the more investment you're prepared to put into your PC, the more you'll get out of it.
In the past, the financial outlay for a decent gaming PC may have been off-putting. Now, however, companies such as Scan make perfectly good, entry-level machines for around £600; meanwhile, companies such as AlienWare make powerful gaming rigs which are beautiful to look at.
It's also worth noting that while the initial expense of a gaming PC is higher than that of a console, PC video games are considerably cheaper. Most new PC titles retail for around £10 to £15 less than their console counterparts.
The PC is also the natural home for genres such as strategy games and sports management sims; navigating your way through Starcraft II or Football Manager 2011 without the benefit of a keyboard and mouse would be cumbersome at best.
PCs also have their share of fancy peripherals; the Logitech G-Series family is a good place to start. The G700 Mouse is sleekly designed to better fit your hand, boasts full speed wireless connection and has 13 programmable controls, for instance.
A lot of the bigger titles also allow players to make mods, home-made creative nips and tucks which enrich the gaming experience beyond anything available on a console. These can range from map editors to engine tweaks to tool kits that can be used to create new environments, new skill sets and, in some cases, entirely new games.
Perhaps the final point in the PC's favour is the sheer processing power a good gaming PC has. An up-to-date gaming PC plays video games with unbeatable graphical detail and sound. Gamers who crave the 3D gaming experience touted by Sony for the PS3 can find that PCs are more than up to the job.
There are more than 400 titles 3D-ready; all you need is the NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision Kit. And nearly every new PC game released is 3D-ready. Once again, the quality rendered on screen by a top-level gaming PC can't be matched by consoles.
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