Time Machine
By Will Bartos
Monday. Sep 24, 12:25 PM
Installment 3: Starcraft.

Recently, Blizzard announced Starcraft 2 to the masses at their Worldwide Invitational in Korea. Real-time strategy fans have been waiting for this one for about 10 years. This particular writer has had many a frag in the original, and after looking at all the trailers and gameplay videos, the sequel’s final product can’t come soon enough.

With all this ruckus about Starcraft 2, I decided it’s time to hop into the time machine again, this time to 1998 when all the Zerg fragging began.

Before Starcraft, most RTS games had two armies, and the “true” ending to the game was unknown until the next game or expansion pack. Starcraft rewrote the RTS genre by being the first major game of its kind to include three armies, each one having its own place in a story-driven timeline. Players controlled the backwater-minded Terrans, the voracious alien menace known as the Zerg, and a futuristic psionic race called the Protoss. Each race had their own strengths and weaknesses, and the story played to these characteristics, forming a very lengthy “tutorial” for the multiplayer aspect of the game.

This does not mean the story was weak by any means. Blizzard weaved together an entire mythos for this universe. There’s plenty of action, drama, and betrayal for everyone to latch onto. The Terran Confederacy attempts to figure out why the Zerg are invading, and why the Protoss are destroying planets. During this time, a rebellion rises, giving birth to the Terran Dominion. The Zerg, ruled by the Overmind, consume everything it its path, and convert a Terran into an ally in its mission to gain perfection. The Protoss go through a complete change of thought, as the Zerg completely take out their home planet of Aiur. Blizzard spared no expense in creating a massive story to go with tight real-time-strategy mechanics.

Starcraft’s expansion, Brood War, continued the story where the original left off. The Overmind had been destroyed, and the leftover chaos has been dealt off to the leftover Protoss and the remnants of the recently formed Terran Dominion. Another set of Terrans, part of the United Earth Directorate, were sent over from Earth to figure out what was going on with the Dominion, as well as the ongoing Zerg threat. The Protoss tried to figure out what to do with themselves after Aiur’s infestation, eventually relocating to the Dark Templar homeworld. Kerrigan, the self-proclaimed “Queen of Blades” (not to mention the self-proclaimed “Queen Bitch of the Universe”), attempts to reform the Zerg under her iron fist, using the other armies to destroy a newly formed Overmind. Additional units came into play as well, as Terran medics and valkyries, Protoss dark templar and corsairs, and Zerg lurkers and devourers added new ways of fragging.

Of course, the single player campaigns had nothing on the multiplay. With map creation and customization, all sorts of battlefields were created for millions of players, bringing something new into the mix. Also, unlike most of the C&C series, Blizzard still supports Starcraft, continuing to put out patches to further tweak and balance the gameplay. Starcraft is also used in many multiplayer tournaments. Surrounded by newer RTS games like Warcraft III, the Dawn of War series, Supreme Commander, and Command & Conquer 3, as well as FPS games like Half-Life 2, Counterstrike Source, and Quake 4, Starcraft is still considered one of the best games to pit player against player. Not bad for a 10 year old game.

Starcraft is definitely considered one of the greatest RTS games of all time, if not one of the greatest games of all time, period. With very balanced game mechanics, a fully fleshed out single-player campaign, and custom multiplayer maps and missions, Starcraft was the total package. The sequel has a big set of shoes to fill, and from the gameplay and cinema trailers, it certainly looks like it will. In the meantime, we’ll be content with our low-res, somewhat two-dimensional game with fantastic replay value. Starcraft is truly one of the best.

Will Bartos

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