Wouldn’t you know, Blizzard’s still got it.

What is “it” you ask? The focus, patience, creative vision and technical chops to create interactive entertainment that surpasses your expectations and delivers fun in ways you never even knew you wanted.

So reveals StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the engrossing, accessible new strategy game released by Blizzard Entertainment for Windows PCs and Macs. At a moment when consoles like the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 often appear to be the leading game systems, the computer remains the world’s most popular electronic entertainment platform. StarCraft II shows yet again that no one takes better advantage of that than Blizzard.

It is almost incredible that StarCraft II is the company’s first new game in six years. Of course its last major release, in 2004, was a little thing called World of Warcraft. (Blizzard did release expansions for that game in 2007 and 2008.) Now that World of Warcraft has become a worldwide phenomenon, attracting millions of subscribers and generating billions in revenue, it can be difficult to remember that until its debut, the original StarCraft was Blizzard’s most important hit.

With its space-opera story line and elegantly balanced three warring factions  the resourceful Terrans (humans); the voracious, insectile Zerg; and the mystical technologically advanced Protoss  it was the original StarCraft that essentially took over the real-time strategy game market when it was released in 1998. Since then the original game has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide. Through its integration with Blizzard’s pioneering Battle.net online service, it was StarCraft that took Blizzard global, becoming the national electronic sport of South Korea along the way.