| My CD shelf is currently filled with old games, 15 years old at max. Most of those games are not played currently (because my computer is “too great” to make them work or they all have been sucked out of essence of fun), but one game is still played frequently by me and my brother. Not only by us, that game is still popular around the world, especially in South Korea. Since I mentioned South Korea, I’m sure many of you who are game maniacs already guessed it correctly. It’s the game that stood strong since 10 years ago and it’s a game that will last even longer until the next series come out, it’s Starcraft on PC! Starcraft is a real-time strategy (RTS) game with science fiction concept made by Blizzard Entertainment, the company which introduced 3 great game series that grabbed fame all over the world: Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft. 3 years ago before Starcraft came out, Blizzard published Warcraft II (which is also a RTS game) so they have some experience on creating strategy games. Because Warcraft II was a hit back then, it was obvious that people expected much on Starcraft. Basically, they knew, and they had it coming…Starcraft became an idol of strategy games. Although Starcraft stood out from all other games of its genre at the time, it had some similarities with other strategy games from the past. Starcraft offered 3 different races to play: Terran, Zerg, and Protoss. They are completely diverse races with completely different units and structures. Most of the strategy games back then traditionally had only 2 race to choose from (such as Command& Conquer, first two series of Warcraft, etc.), but this game just had to have 3 races; that’s being awesome for adding more fun to the game. Having more races gave players to have more dynamic game play with different strategies to fight off specific race. Strategy game with more than two races was relatively new at the time in frequency, but Starcraft was not the first. Dune 2, which came out 6 years before Starcraft came out, had three races with each of them having their own specialty and mission. Same goes to Starcraft, each race had their special everything and missions in single players. When there are more than 2 races, every veteran gamer who has played a RTS knows that it becomes extremely hard to balance for the gameplay while keeping race diversity. As a usual balance error in many games, one side overpowers the other when players find the right combination to victory. By this, many games suffer for being unplayable…no wonder why there is a patch to fix them. Some games such as RF Online (Not an RTS, but had 3 races) failed miserably even through patches. There were numbers of patches to balance RF online, but eventually they always left one race behind at the corner, causing the loss of popularity. Fortunately, the developers working on Starcraft managed to keep it balanced by patching the game when needed. They never left any race behind to create a balance between all, which is a great accomplishment in RTS with more than two races. Thus the balance caused gamers to still latch onto Starcraft even longer than average. This game had two modes to play: single-player and multiplayer. Single-player had a campaign with 10 missions on each race, totaling 30 missions to play. Unlike other games, Starcraft had a flow of storyline that continued through different race campaigns by numbering each of them as episodes (For example, Terran is episode 1, Zerg is episode 2…etc.). Usually RTS games had races go through separate plot with having the race the player used end up as victor, no flow of storyline when played with different race afterward. Because Starcraft had the flow of storyline throughout the whole game, players who favors storylines enjoyed the game like a novel; that’s for ones who like storylines though. What is really interesting about Starcraft was the multiplayer mode with servers run by Battle.net. Having battle.net run servers for Starcraft was an excellent way for players to join each other and compete because other ways to connect to play was less convenient at the time (I still remember how annoying they were). Other services such as Gamespy required subscription and log in from outside of the game application to play. Battle.net on the other hand, did not require subscription and was able to log in directly in the game. Anyway, Battle.net offered ranking system according to player’s win/loss, bringing up the concept of competition. If not interested in rank, players were also able to play maps together that other players made with unique map settings in map editor, which twisted the style of game by great amount; it was possible to make role-playing game using map settings. It was basically a way to have fun infinitely. One of the main attractions of Starcraft is the fast-paced gameplay. Not the speed that makes a turtle fast as a rocket, but the time it takes to finish a single match. Ability to have speedy strategy and quick control of troops, Starcraft was able to achieve the game speed which many other games could not follow. By being fast, the game gives thrill to players with stress for fast reflexes, just like how some people like to drive cars fast. Many RTS games at the time were not as fast as Starcraft, Age of Empires for example. Age of Empires was a Great game though, but the match usually took more than 2 hours (If you type “27” on chat, you can also hear a voice saying, “You play 2 hours to die like this?”). It’s true, I have it and played it, and finished a single match in about 5 hours; I did feel that it was a waste of time. This kind of speed made Starcraft seem to have very significant game speed. Thus, Starcraft was favorable to RTS games player who desired a quick paced gameplay. These days, the graphics for Starcraft during gameplay is no match for any new games out there, but it was back then. Compared to Warcraft II for graphics, Blizzard made a great improvement; units and structures were very detailed with 3-D-ish background while Warcraft II characters were quite flat and more of 2-D. Though there were clear changes, it just had to look bit similar when compared (maybe it is because those games were from same developers). The reason for good graphic compared to others was possibly due to on-going development of graphics from all over the world. But still with that in fact, the cinematic in Starcraft stood out extremely significant with absolute mastery which overwhelmed many games that came out after Starcraft. The cinematic was very realistic even with lacking technology of the past, which every other game couldn’t jump beyond. That was one of my favorite things about Blizzard, developers with advanced graphic. To understand, it is better to see for yourself than told. This is the reason why me and my brother (and my brother’s friend who randomly hangs out) usually play Starcraft when they are bored. At the end of this year, Starcraft II will be released, and my brother is expecting much on it. I too, am expecting so much on it…maybe too much. To those who are Starcraft maniac, look forward to it and go buy yourself a better computer for better enjoyment! |
