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Started playing StarCraft again. Did some multiplayer after like 4 or 5 years of not touching it, and got my butt handed to me. So therefore I dedicate this article to Jennifer Huston, who handed it to me. Twice.
StarCraft is an older game by Blizzard, that came out around 1998 or 1999. (It has a new game coming out soon, called Ghost, or something like that, so this is kinda appropriate after all) StarCraft (SC) is a real-time strategic game. You know, the type where you gather resources, kill off a few random attackers, then build up an excessively large force to overwhelm the under-defended enemy base. StarCraft was the first, to my knowledge, to expand the genre. In previous RTS games, there were generally 2 forces, or perhaps 3, that although they may look different, the units were essentially the same thing. StarCraft broke that rule. In SC there are 3 unique and different races: The Terrans, the Zerg, and the Protoss. The Terrans are pretty much what you'd expect. Futuristic marines in powered armor, tanks, battlemechs, and space fighters. The Zerg are an engineered race. They essentially fit the profile of a bunch of raptors from Jurrassic Park. They are entirely biological, and they horde up really quickly and overwhelm you with ground fighters and flyers. The Protoss are and advance interstellar race. (Well, the Terrans are interstellar too, but the Protoss are MORE interstellar). They have weird Psi and advanced mechanical powers, and everything they have comes with a self-replenishing energy shield. As I recall, the Protoss don't have any limit to he number of people they can have, limited only by what they can afford. (Terran and Zerg require resource structures to feed and supply units). Like I said, all three are structurally different. The game has 3 single player campaigns, that make an interconnected story, and then has single player skirmish missions, and support for up to 8 player multiplayer over Battle.net or a LAN. The game also has an expansion that has new campaigns, and a new unit or two for each race.
Graphics. This game requires something along the lines of a 90 MHz computer, and 16MB of RAM. You can pick it up for about $5 at places like Half Price Books. Anyway, the game is basically a layered 2-D map, but the camera is angled to where it looks 3-D. The actual battlefield has about 3 heights: plateau, normal, and sunken. The units are little animated sprites, with a cheesy CG blowup of them on your control panel when you click them. While not anywhere in the ballpark of the video intensive games of today, the sprites are clear and well animated (Cant say the same for the CG blow-ups), more than enough for the game's purposes. (As a parallel, just because the animation in, for example, the Simpsons isn't the same as what's done in Monster's Inc, doesn't mean the Simpsons are 8 bit blocky looking Marios from the original Donkey Kong).
Plot. The campaign has a plot, where it kinda connects all the races together. As a whole, the missions are fun, the plot kinda sometimes connects them, but really isn't necessary, other than just being there as a game unifying factor.
Sound. Blizzard puts a lot of work into the sound of their RTS games. You click on a particular unit, and it acknowledges you by saying one of about 3 or 4 phrases. (That part sometimes gets a little annoying, but you learn to ignore it). Units have noises when they attack, and die and stuff too. The best part is when you keep clicking on the same unit. It says the usual assortment of 3 few phrases, then starts going off on little spiels about "Bloody well give me orders or bugger off!" for about 4 more new messages. It is fun to go click on each type of unit and listen to them whine. As an additional feature, if you open the CD in a music player, you can listen to the music tracks of the game, and there is always a hidden track made of the sound effects, and some additional stuff from the game. The best one was in WarCraft II, where you get to hear the "I'm a Mediaeval Man" song done by the voice of the infantryman. It's cheesy, but funny. StarCraft has the Zerg Rap. It kinda sucks, but it's worth finding and listening to once. I forgot to check what was in WarCraft III, but I do know there is one. Aside from that though, the sound, like the graphics, are done tastefully.
Gameplay. The game works mostly off a standard mouse interface. Click a unit to select it, right click somewhere to send them there. You can also click and drag a box to select a group, or double click a unit to select all units of that type nearby. Right clicking on ground sends the units there. Right clicking on enemies sends them to attack that unit. Right clicking on resources makes your harvesters gather it. The game also has hot keys for things ranging from using special abilities to more general commands, like attacking anything in a general area as opposed to one single unit. Hot keys are by no means necessary, but they help if you bother to learn them. You can also assign groups to a number, and hitting that number on the keyboard selects them all. As for actual playing, its like I said at the top. Gather resources. Build up army. Kill. Repeat. The computer campaigns aren't that hard, but the skirmish missions and multiplayer can get nasty. At really, really, really competitive levels, micromanagement will determine who wins, but since that *probably* wont be an issue for anyone reading this for a good long while. You do have to build buildings, and from them you can build more advanced units, and research better weapons and special abilities. In short, this game rocks for a LAN game. (yes, I know that was a rather random statement).
Difficulty. Like I said, the single player campaign is pretty easy, the expansion is a good difficulty, and multiplayer or skirmishes are pretty hard. A little something for everyone.
Replay Value. Not a whole lot of point in playing the campaign again after beating it (which is why I quit), but multiplayer can yield hours of fun (Battle.net is free) until you advance to the level where micromanagement becomes the deciding factor. But I've already determined for you that you can get a copy for $5, and you will definitely get your money's worth for that. Even at $20 you will.
Way Cool . . . Stuff. An additional cool thing about the game, is it comes with a mission/campaign editor, where you can make your own maps, or even your own campaign. Likewise you can download maps and such from online. I recall a cool map (actually, I think it was for WarCraft II) entitled Alamo, where one person sits in the middle to defend against people attacking from all sides. In multiplayer, Star Craft also supports team play, as 2 people working together against others, or even as 2 people controlling the same units (which means you can multitask!).
Overall. StarCraft is one of the best RTS games ever, and was very innovative at the time. If you like RTS games, but never played this one, GO OUT AND BUY IT FOR $5. That is all. Thank you, come again.
Final Ratings:
| Plot | 7.1 |
| Graphics | 8.5 |
| Sound | 8.5 |
| Gameplay | 8.5 |
| Difficulty | 8.0 |
| Replay | 7.5 |
| Spiffiness | 8.0 |
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| Overall | 8.0143 |
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