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Review by: Jake Delfeir
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Reviewers Score:
10 / 10
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Posted: January 14, 2006
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Starcraft
System: PC
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Difficulty: Medium/Hard
Score: 10/10
Starcraft is my favourite RTS game in existence, hands down. Many people
share that opinion with me the world over. With a good storyline, fun
gameplay, three unique races to play as and practically perfect balance
between them, it is perhaps the only RTS that is still being updated and
played consistently online nearly a decade after its release. And it's
also the only video game in history to save the economy of an entire
country, and I'm not even kidding. Here are my thoughts on the game.
Graphics (9/10)
The graphics are nice in this game. Dated after a good decade of
existence, but still nice looking. The game takes place over a number of
different planets, and as such there are a number of different tile
sets. At the start you might be playing on backwater planets, but then
the next map you could be taken to a space platform, or an indoor
military installation, or a sprawling jungle filled with ruins. It's a
nice variety, but my only problem with it is that the vast majority of
the scenery is static. Just a little bit of movement would have given it
that final point. The units are all fairly detailed, the character
portraits suit the kind of personality you're dealing with, and the Zerg
are just plain ugly. It's also fun to watch the units tear into each
other... this game brings out the sadist in me, at times. Nonetheless,
these are nice and varied, but not perfect.
Sounds (10/10)
There is something very, very satisfying with the sounds in this game.
Each of the three races has only a couple of different background songs,
albeit long ones, but they're all very nice and very apt. The Protoss
have calm, eerily beautiful songs playing, while the Terrans have very
backwater-style country melodies that still put a grin on my face. And
the sounds are good, too. The voices are excellent, the units have a
personality from their sounds alone, and it is extremely satisfying to
hear Marines die. This section could also get an 11 if possible for the
simple fact that every unit has hidden speech. If you continually click
on them, they start saying some very amusing lines which leave even the
experienced laughing. Good stuff.
Storyline (10/10)
True to Blizzard form, this isn't actually a bad story. You wouldn't
except something brilliant, but it really is quite good. There's a lot
of backstory, plenty of which isn't covered in the game, but it's there
for you to peruse online or in the manual. While playing the game, the
storyline spends a bit of time seeing things from one race's perspective
as you play their campaign, before jumping ship and seeing a little
more. It's nice that you can first play to save a dying band of
humans... and then turn the tide in the next mission when you play as
the aliens who are mercilessly tearing them apart.
Anyway, moving on to the actual meat. The game starts with the Terran,
or human, campaign. You're playing the overseer of a group of colonists
on a backwater planet. Not just any humans, though - you're all exiles,
and you're part of the Confederacy that rules over the planets in this,
the Koprulu, sector. Things start off routine on the colony, but then
there's a sudden infestation... a weird alien race called the Zerg have
popped up and are rapidly consuming the planet. Rather than do anything,
the Confederacy just quarantines the planet and leaves you all to die.
So your character then joins up with a rogue organisation led by a man
called Arcturus Mengsk, in a desperate race to escape the planet and the
Zerg. You succeed, but not before finding evidence to suggest that the
Zerg had been bred in Confederate labs...
Immediately after your escape, another alien race shows up - a
technologically advanced one called the Protoss. Their star fleet then
blasts the planet and wipes out all the life on it. That's the start of
a series of interesting events... Arcturus Mengsk and the rogue group of
humans begin waging a full-scale war against the Confederacy in order to
take the order into their own hands. While this in-fighting goes on,
however, the Zerg continue to spread rapidly throughout the sector. And
the Protoss are never too far away, either. That's just the beginning of
it all, but it goes much, much deeper. Internal power struggles between
Protoss groups, the various plans and desires of the
Zerg swarm, the efforts on both factions of humans to maintain their
powerhold... it's quite epic, and quite deep. Suffice to say, this game
would have made a pretty good science fiction novel, and I applaud
Blizzard for making it so.
Gameplay (10/10)
The gameplay here is what all other strategy games look up to when
they're in development. Or if they're not, then the developers are
making some serious mistakes. Anyway. True to Real-Time Strategy form,
the idea is to collect resources, build up a base, assemble an army and
then raise hell. In this game, you'll take a worker unit and build a
central collecting point, and collect two different resources - minerals
and gas. Then you expand from there. The battles are usually big, epic,
and frantic, but not to the point of completely overdoing it... like in
Warcraft 3, there is a unit limit that prevents you from going too
crazy. This doesn't stop people amassing a couple of hundred Zerglings
and rushing them at you, though... Anyway, the game is simple enough in
theory, but Starcraft is famous for one thing in this - balance. Put
simply, Blizzard perfected every nuance of the game's balance. No side
is better than the other, or has a completely unfair advantage in some
respect. Every side is capable of beating anything, and as such the game
is interesting - and challenging at times - regardless of which race you
play as. Speaking of which, there are three different playable races to
choose from, each with their own sort of play style. I'll cover each of
these separately in the following to give an idea of what you're dealing
with.
The Terrans, or the humans, are a bunch of redneck exiles who were
originally convicts from Earth. The whole damn sector is theirs now, or
so they believe, and they have every intention of killing everything -
including each other - to get to the top. The Terrans are perhaps the
simplest to play for beginners, but are still capable of some lethal
tactics and deadly play (the best player I know plays Terran). They have
a big variety of units, starting from a couple of forms of infantry, to
air units big and small, to motorbikes, to freaking huge long-range
tanks. Another big factor of their strategy - they can build nuclear
weapons. These babies are obviously very powerful, but not unfairly so,
and they can be stopped. Still, there's nothing quite like hearing
'Nuclear Launch Detected' in your ears while making a mad dash to find
the launcher and take it out in the few seconds you have... That's one
possible approach, but there's plenty of variety with the Terrans. You
can also field a decent-sized force with not too many resources, either.
The Zerg are very much akin to the Aliens from the movies of the same
name. Little more than animals, they are mindless drones enslaved to the
will of the Overmind, who leads the Swarm across the galaxy. Their only
real aim is to take over everything, though it seems that the Overmind
has a specific goal in mind, regarding the Protoss... The Zerg buildings
are all alive, and their presence alone pollutes the ground with a vile
purple substance called Creep. As such, your first encounter with them
is likely to make you a little... squeamish. Maybe not literally, but
that's the feeling you get from them. They create bases by having their
worker units mutate into the various buildings, and use specific
buildings to spread the Creep, and therefore their influence. Their
structures can only be built upon the Creep, after all. Their units are
cheap, and usually disposable... but they can be amassed quite easily.
There are few things as devastating as sending swarms of Zerglings
rushing at an enemy, and it's one of the more fun moments I've had in
all my video games. While they can be fragile and difficult to control
for the average player, the Zergling are arguably the most lethal race
to play in the hands of a pro.
Whereas the Zerg are like Aliens, the Protoss are very much like the
Predators. They're technologically advanced creatures who build big and
powerful mechanical structures... but really, they're quite frail
creatures. Without the help of their battle suits, they'd be easy prey,
but since they have them... they're the strongest race in the game
through plain physical power. When building their base, their worker
units can create multiple structures all at once, which means they can
have a good position up and running in a short time. But they're
resource hogs - while powerful, their units are more expensive than the
other two races, and they eat into your army limit much faster. And
unfortunately, all your base buildings require power from a certain
structure to keep working. But as always, they are capable of some
seriously lethal power when used properly. Be it
infantry, plasma tanks, or hulking starships, the Protoss are always
ready to hand your rear to you on a silver platter.
With the variety offered by the three races, the perfect balance between
the three, the multitude of different tactics, and the simply epic
battles that can take place... best strategy game ever. Nothing more can
be said about it.
Replayability (10/10)
I've found myself drawn back to this game a whole lot. Playing through
the single player campaigns is fun enough, and can prove to be a bit of
a challenge, but it's fun. So very fun. The interesting story and the
fun gameplay has led me to playing through the campaign repeatedly. Even
playing random maps against computer players is a blast, and is also
decidedly tough if you're not prepared for it. Accompanying all this,
however, is the famous in-built Scenario Editor. This handy-dandy tool
gives you the freedom to carve maps to your liking, but it also has the
ability to make full-scale maps, campaigns, adventures, and even RPGs of
sorts to have fun. And even if all this doesn't interest you, there is
Battle Net, the online community. Even after nearly a decade, the game
is still online and supported by a Blizzard team. It's still active by
new and old players alike, so you can find a beginner like you or you
can challenge the upper echelons of pros. Plenty to do, and the utter
brilliance of the game makes it all very interesting for a very long
time.
Overall (10/10)
In case you haven't noticed by now, I'm simply a Starcraft fanboy. But
hey, everything I said in this review holds true. You may not like the
game the way I do, but you cannot deny that it is truly a great game.
Everything about it is top notch, and it is easily one of the best, if
not THE best, Real-Time Strategy game ever made. It also ranks in as my
4th favourite game of all time, and I've played a lot of games.
Interpret this as you will. Oh... and don't play the Nintendo 64
version, make sure you get the real thing. That is all. |
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