StarCraft

Game: StarCraft
Developer: Blizzard
Platform: PC/Mac
Release Year: 1998
Stephen's Rating: 9/10

One of the most important video games of all time. It was still popular 12 years after release, until the sequel came to replace it.

Basic Plot

There are three campaigns, one for each playable race. The setting is a fictional future inhabited by three races; human beings referred to as the Terran, the advanced technology based aliens called the Protoss, and the biological assimilators called the Zerg.

The Terran campaign follows Jim Raynor as he joins the rebel group the Sons of Korhol led by Arcturus Mensgk who seek to overthrow the governing Confederacy. Mengsk's true nature is revealed over the campaign as he begins to use Zerg against Confederate targets, leaving the psychic Sarah Kerrigan to die in one such attack. Raynor is outraged by this and leaves the Sons of Korhol. Mengsk reorganises the remnants of the Terran civilization into the Terran Dominion, with himself as Emperor.

The Zerg campaign follows the plans of the Overmind (leader of the Zerg), and the player controls one of his cerebrates (sub-commanders of the swarm). We learn that Kerrigan is not dead, in fact she has been infested and altered by the Zerg into a powerful psychic with control over the swarm. The Protoss High Templar Tassadar learns that the cerebrates cannot be harmed by conventional means, and makes contact with the Dark Templar (outcasts from the Protoss civilization). Tassadar and the Dark Templar Zeratul kill one of the cerebrates, but in doing so the Overmind is able to read Zeratuls mind and finds the location of the Protoss homeworld Auir. The Zerg quickly overwhelm and destroy Auir, the Overmind planting himself in the centre of the planet.

In the Protoss campaign the player originally is sent to arrest Tassadar for allying with the Dark Templar but instead joins him. A civil war emerges between the established Protoss and Tassadar with his Dark Templar allies. Peace is reached when Zeratul is able to destroy another two cerebrates. Aided by the help of Jim Raynor, Tassadar and Zeratul are able to destroy the Overmind's outer defences. Tassadar then combines his high and dark templar energies and crashes his ship into the Overmind, destroying himself and the Overmind in the process.

Protoss attacking a Terran base.

Gameplay

StarCraft is a real time strategy (RTS) game which defined the genre in a lot of ways.

The player is able to choose from three playable races; the Terran, the Protoss, and the Zerg. Each race has completely unique units and strategy. This is in contrast to Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness where the Orc and Human units were in essence identical with only cosmetic differences. This meant a lot of things. It meant that the game was carefully balanced considering a lot of different factors. The whole unit composition of a race had to be considered as a whole when balancing the units. It also meant certain people favoured paricular races. The Terran race has a lot of utility units and is adaptable to a range of situations. The Protoss have powerful but expensive units. The Zerg have weak units but are able to spread and build quickly to dominate a map.

The game involves a careful balance between economy and military. The player builds economic infrastructure to harvest minerals and vespene gas, and spends these carefully on further expansion or military. Players try to stop each other from obtaining additional resources or alternatively simply attack the enemy base to wipe them out. Some units were extra effective against others, so the composition of a player's army could often determine the outcome of a battle. Additionally a player could "micro manage" their units to make them more effective in combat. An example of this is individually retreating units who are low on health to preserve them in the midst of a battle.

The single player campaign was where most players started. It had a rich story with interesting characters. The story was told through cut scenes, briefings between missions, and additional briefings during missions.

Multiplayer supposed both local LAN but also playing ladder games against other players on battle.net. StarCraft was up until recently the most successful competitive video game of all time (only surpassed by the sequel) and I've heard in South Korea they have multiple television channels dedicated to casting matches of the game. The complexity and potential strategies that can be employed in the game make it an attractive game for professional players to get involved in.

Terran attacking a Zerg player. Note the purple slime around the Zerg base. This "creep" is what the Zerg build on, and the whole base is effectively like one organism.

Positives

As with all Blizzard games, this game is polished. The story is fantastic, the detail put in to every unit, map, the balance between units, all of these things are presented with precision.

Making the units for each race unique was huge in terms of moving on from Warcraft II and some of the other RTS games of the time.

Negatives

I honestly can't think of many, unless you don't like real time strategy. I accept that for someone new to video games this is probably not the ideal starting point.

Memorable Moments

A friend of mine and I had a lot of games against each other. Only, we did things our own way. Rather than playing the game it was meant to be played, we edited the maps so that we had unlimited minerals. On top of that we would give each other a 30 minute safe window to build up defence before we started attacking each other. In retrospect I don't know why that appealed to us so much, but I distinctly remember one game we played took 8 hours and we finished with a stalemate. I think we got a lot of joy just out of building huge armies and throwing them against each other's impervious defences.