StarCraft... Masterpiece
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.
