Okay, so I was able to play Starcraft 2 just yesterday at a friends house. I stayed there pretty much until I beat the game. So I have a few comments.
Let me mention that I played the original StarCraft a lot! I replayed the campaign missions regularly and loved playing via LAN with my friends. I rarely played via Battle.net
First off, I believe most of the reviews you see on websites now are going to be highly biased for a higher score. In my opinion none of them are correct when they gave it a 10 (like 40% of all reviews). I do like the direction that it went with some of the missions and things, but I just can't justify the look of the game (only 3 CGI movies, less than what I thought everyone was going on about). The game just doesn't look like a year 2010 game, it just doesn't. No doubt that isn't the reason that the game will be bought, but it is (and should be) on the list of things the reviewers look at. And if that was it, I might be inclined to give it even a 9.5. But it isn't all. I found myself just wanting to get to the next cut scene or something, even though some of the new missions types were nice.
The story line was... ok. I thought I had seen it all before in either Halo or Mass Effect.
***SPOILER***
I mean... another alien race that comes back from the dead to annihilate the other races of the galaxy? Seriously? It is probably just major coincidence that this game mirrors Mass Effect in that regard. But, I can't seem to really accept that I had seen that before. Now granted there are some twists to this, but that is the gist of it. Just think Mass Effect RTS.
***END***
Gameplay was, in essence, Brood War with a few new additions. I was impressed by the Upgrades and Research options, but those aren't new in any new game nowadays and are thought to be standard. However, what I did like were some of the interesting missions, and I'm sure some of you will like them. The other missions, some of them anyway, became forgettable and tedious and I found myself wanting the cheat code "there is no cow level" (BTW, this code no longer exists).
Battle.net 2.0 is where the real split between most of us would be. I don't really play like that, and like most, will be waiting to play on some private server goodness (when I buy the game of course). I got blasted on some websites for mentioning no LAN supports was a minus for me, but I have friends with Laptops who would love to come play it with me, either on my own server or via LAN. And I am aware of certain countries where using battle.net would be slower with a higher ping than by just adding LAN support (and is it really that hard? really? it doesn't take much to add).
With just those things I can't give it a 10. It was just OK. Not perfect by a long shot. And I am quite dismayed that there are so many biased reviews who overlook the obvious flaws in the game to give it a 10, when it should get an 8.5-9.0... maybe.
I don't think it deserve a 10 either but a 9-9.5 is fair. According to Blizzard, there is over an hour of high quality cutscene and movies. That's not bad at all. As far as the visual goes, Have you zoom in to see the detail? There are tons of detail on every unit not to mention the maps. I found it compares well to the latest RTS like Dawn of War 2 and such.
The only bad point to me is the slow unit introductions. You get only one new unit each mission for a good while and that unit will play a key role in that mission. It makes it seems kinda like a giant tutorial for the first 10-12 missions. There is also the fact that some of the units you learned to use in the single player game can not be use in MP, not even vs AI. That seems a waste. I know it's all about balance in MP but it would be nice to have access to those unit when you play against the AI. It's like you get into a certain play style and then have it yank from you in MP and you have to learn to use the new units.
Other than that, I like the game. I wish they would have adopt some of the newer innovation of resource gathering and supply management just to reduce the amount of micro-management but then it may not feel like StarCraft. I'm taking it slow on this game (one mission a day at most) since I know it will be a long wait for part 2. Although I was told to expect part 2 before we see Diablo 3. I think the release schedule will be something like this: SC2.1 1st half of 2010, D3 2nd half of 2010, SC2.2 1st half of 2011 and D3 expansion 2nd half of 2011.