For a video companion to our new hands-on preview of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty’s single-player campaign, this seven minute long video of hot SCV on mineral action and giant laser drill management is just what the doctor ordered.

Don’t expect drama, spoilers or sexy editing here. Instead enjoy the raw gameplay of StarCraft II in action, with the missions “The Dig” and “Welcome to the Jungle” highlighted here, along with some of the Terran cast.

This is the latest GameTrailers video on the subject; five other gameplay videos were posted back on Wednesday. You can catch them all through the link.

StarCraft II [GameTrailers]

I’ve tried to get a nice balance of races and terrain here, to give you an idea of how the game looks running normally, on a normal person’s computer, as it will when you get playing (whenever that may be).

While they show the kind of detil that’s gone into the units and terrain, it doesn’t do a lot of it justice; the space levels, for instance, show asteroids and planets constantly in motion, while there’s nice water and plant effects on the planetary stages.

It looks as if Blizzard is slowly rolling out the opposite sex choices for Diablo III, beginning with last week’s reveal of the female Monk. Now we get our first look at the female Barbarian, an imposing figure of a female if I’ve ever seen one. It’s refreshing to see a well-muscled barbarian female, as opposed to the Playboy model in a loincloth version we’re used to getting in our fantasy fiction.

Here is her in-game model, seen in motion on the Barbarian class page:

And here’s a full-body picture of the concept art:

Now that we’ve seen the Monk and the Barbarian, we anxiously await the reveal of the female Witch Doctor and the male Wizard. So far the male Witch Doctor is the most scantily clad character in the roster. I bet the male Wizard is only wearing a star-speckled Speedo.

Game developer Blizzard has already shown the male version of the Diablo III monk. It hasn’t shown the female version. Until now.

Diablo III has four character classes announced so: Witch Doctor, Wizard, Barbarian, and Monk. This concept art is for the female version of the existing monk.

In previous games, players were locked to a class/sex combo.

The character’s official page has the female in-game character model as well.

Check it out. And that pixie hair!

[via Big Download]

While we weren’t expecting to take control of the Protoss in anything but multiplayer until StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void shipped, looks like we’re getting a small taste of the faction’s single-player action this year.

A Blizzard employee writes on the official Battle.net forums “there will be a Protoss mini-campaign that lets you control Protoss units” in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the Terran third of the campaign.

“This part of the campaign mode is of course way shorter than the Terran part, but it is very fun to have a very different playstyle to add even more variety to the game,” wrote the Blizzard Europe RTS Community Team member.

Just don’t expect it to go too far beyond “mini.”

“That being said, the Protoss mini-campaign will not prepare you for the multiplayer as Protoss, you won’t be using all units or getting to know buildings and upgrades,” indicated the Blizzard staffer. There go my dreams of moving to Korea and going pro, mini-campaign! Thanks for nothing.

Protoss short campaign in Wings of Liberty [Battle.net via Joystiq]

StarCraft 2 Evacuation/Lava Mining Gameplay HD [GameVideos]

These shots come courtesy of the gentlemen at Giant Bomb. And before you get too slavish over them, remember, Starcraft II is in beta. Stuff changes in beta.