Can Blizzard continue its impressive real-time strategy series?

Jan 19, 2013 04:45 GMT  ·  By

What we know:

StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm promises to continue the story from the first chapter in the StarCraft II trilogy – Wings of Liberty – and put players in the combat boots of Sarah Kerrigan, as opposed just to Jim Raynor.

Blizzard's StarCraft series impressed many years ago not just through its top notch real-time strategy gameplay but also through its pretty complex story that featured three distinct races: the Terrans (aka humans), the Protoss (highly evolved aliens), and the Zerg (bug-like creatures).

After playing as the humans in 2010's Wings of Liberty, fans will soon get to control the Zerg in Heart of the Swarm.

After the events of the previous installment, Sarah Kerrigan, the former Queen of Blades, is once again human and must unite the Zerg forces under her rule if she is to defeat the evil Terran Dominion and the increasing number of Protoss-Zerg hybrids.

New units and gameplay mechanics are expected in this expansion, although Blizzard has had quite a few problems with balancing them as opposed to existing units that already appeared in Wings of Liberty.

Why it matters:

StarCraft 1 and its Brood Wars expansion played a crucial role in the popularity of the real-time strategy genre and the recent Wings of Liberty once again attracted millions of people to it.

With Heart of the Swarm, Blizzard needs to prove that old-school RTS titles can still work, even if competitors, like the upcoming Command & Conquer, are going free-to-play and trying out different mechanics.

The story of the game is also quite important and no doubt plenty of fans are looking forward to see what happens with Kerrigan and Raynor in this new chapter of the planned StarCraft 2 trilogy.

StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm is out on March 12 for the PC and Mac platforms.

The full list of Incoming 2013 articles can be read on Softpedia right here.