In 1998, Blizzard released one of the most revolutionary RTS games of
all time: StarCraft. The highly anticipated game was a spin-off of
Blizzard’s successful WarCraft franchise, and it meets all the
standards set by its noble lineage with flying colors. StarCraft
changed the way developers made their games forever, setting an example
for quality that even today’s games have trouble aspiring to. With its
innovative gameplay, fantastic graphics, and compelling storyline,
StarCraft is an instant classic that will not be forgotten for years to
come.
The gameplay of StarCraft is one its most commendable
achievements. Blizzard came up with 3 diverse races: the Terran, the
Zerg, and the Protoss. Not only do these races have different units and
buildings, they have completely different playing styles and
strategies. The Zerg are built for expansion and massive armies, the
Protoss have small, powerful armies and a variety of spell-casters, and
the Terran have advanced cloaking technology and a nearly impenetrable
defense. Also, every single unit is unique to its race, and few have
comparable equivalents in the other races. Each race has a few
spell-casters, which can have a wide range of effects. They can lower
the health of opposing armies, plant spying parasites in enemy troops,
or even deflect nuclear strikes. Once again, none of these spells are
available in a different race. With so many differences, one would
assume that the races are horribly unbalanced. On the contrary, they
were remarkably even, and with the addition of a few patches are almost
perfect.
StarCraft ships with a single player campaign, a campaign editor,
and multiplayer capabilities via LAN or their free online service,
Battle.net. The campaign spans 30 scenarios, split into 3 episodes, one
for each race. Each episode starts off with relatively easy missions
that slowly get more and more difficult, giving you just enough time to
get used to a race before plunging you into insanely difficult missions
that will require quick-thinking and a comprehensive understanding of
the different races’ strengths and weaknesses. And with high-quality
mission briefings for each scenario, a handful of short movies thrown
in where appropriate, and even a full-length cinematic to reward the
completion of each episode, there is plenty of incentive to fight
through everything the computer throws at you, a feat far easier said
than done. The campaign editor allows you to create your own campaign,
with the tools to replicate most of the stuff you find in the campaign
provided with the game, with the exceptions of the movies and
cinematics. It has brushes for different environments, all of the units
in the game, and even a tool that lets you create your own mission
briefings. The one drawback is that using the editor is extremely
complicated, and though it is a far more powerful editor than those
found in other games of its time it is one of the hardest to use. The
multiplayer for StarCraft is excellent. Battle.net allows players to
create and join matches of up to 8 players, including computers. There
are dozens of Blizzard-made maps to play on, and plenty of potential
opponents to challenge. Most games run fairly smoothly on Battle.net,
though games can be laggy when players’ locations are too spread-out.
The graphics in StarCraft are astounding. The aforementioned
mission briefings, movies, and cinematics are well designed and look
great. All of the units and buildings in the game have a distinctive
look that instantly lets you identify the race they hail from, and the
environments are varied and detailed. Each unit even has its own moving
icon, that has animation to make it look like it’s talking or
performing some action when you select it or give it a command. They
also have several recordings of affirmatives, phrases in their native
tongues, or even threats and insults, which brings me to the audio of
the game. As I said, the units do plenty of talking, and all of the
briefings, movies, and cinematics have superb voice acting. It’s all
very professionally done, especially in the more heated and dramatic
moments of the plot. The sound effects are also great, with attacks and
spells sounding authentic and natural.
The bottom line is that StarCraft comes off as polished in
tried-and-tested aspects of RTS games and innovative and fresh in the
numerous things it has brought to the genre. It’s campaign raises the
bar for not only all strategy games, or even all PC games, but all
games as a whole, showing developers and gamers alike the level of
depth that we should expect in and incorporate into our games. It is
highly recommended for all PC gamers, and is a definite must for
strategy fans.
