Released back in 1998, Starcraft quickly became one of the most popular real time strategy games that took over the world by storm and a year later the highly anticipated expansion, Brood War, was released. Selling well over 10 million copies since its release, Starcraft has developed into a highly competitive sport that continues into its sequel Starcraft II Wings of Liberty.
It takes place in the 25th century in a part of the milky way galaxy called the Koprulu Sector where three races fight for dominance. The Terran, humans that have been exiled from Earth, are quick to adapt to any situation with a force of marines, tanks, battle mechs, and star fighters. The Zerg, a race of incest like creatures, who wants to consume and assimilate every living thing they come across. The Protoss, a race of technologically advanced aliens with psionic powers that wants to prevent the Zerg from destroying all life.
Each race has a different play style. The Terran can use a variety of tactics to defend and attack. Assuming you have the correct buildings built, you can switch from flying in a dropship full of marines to reak havok on your enemy's miners to a frontal assault of tanks and robots. They can even fly their buildings anywhere on the map if they need to relocate for any reason. The Zerg uses their workers to mutate into their buildings. Everything the Zerg can build is generally cheaper to produce compared to the Terran and some of them comes in pairs, however they're a tad weaker in both health and attack, so attack in high numbers. The Protoss are the exact opposite of the Zerg, just about everything cost more than the Terran but, they have the advantage of a tough shield to protect them as well as a high amount of health and can hit hard.
Over the course of the game, you start out commanding the Terran forces, lead by Jim Raynor, who wants to free themselves from the Confederacy, a tyrannical group of Terran. Over the course of the Terran campaign, you're taught about the basic controls of Starcraft. You're tasked with missions from destroying enemy Zerg, Protoss, and Confederacy forces to raiding bases for secret codes to surviving a seemingly endless onslaught of Zerg forces.
After the Terran's campaign, you play as the Zerg. Even though you've been playing the Terran campaign, you still have a few more tutorial levels to learn how to play as the Zerg. Unlike the Terran, Zerg buildings can only be built on creep, a purple substance that spreads on the ground that spawns from their main building and their defense buildings. You also can only spawn your army and builders from your main building, however you can spawn three of anything at once assuming the larval to spawn them. Your objective as the Zerg mostly task you with protecting a special egg that spawns a powerful Zerg general, then using your powerful character, wipe out anything that stands in your way so the invasion of the Protoss home world can begin.
The final campaign has you playing as the Protoss. Again there are more tutorials to learn about their play style. Their buildings can only be built near a Pylon except for their main building and the Vespene gas building. Unlike with the Terran and Zerg, you can use just one worker to build as many buildings as you can, you don't lose it like with the Zerg or have it sit there and work on it like the Terran workers have to. As the Protoss, you have to find a traitor who tells you the secret in killing the Zerg cerebrates or generals, find the race of Protoss that can kill them, then return to Aiur repeal the invasion of their home world by the Zerg.
Asides from the campaign, you can play on different maps against the AI or go online to test your skills against other people or play fun custom games like a turret defense game, a battle arena type map, unit mass maps, and many more. Even today the game is still receiving new patches to fix the online bugs and exploits. The online community is alive and thriving as new content is always popping up from custom maps to new vs maps.
The expansion adds new units and a new campaign to continue the story. You start as the remaining Protoss that has to flee from their homeworld to find a new home. Then you play as the Terran UED in order to take control of the infant Zerg overmind. Finally you play as the Zerg under Kerrigan's control. Since most of the Zerg are under the control of the UED, Kerrigan has to trick the Protoss and non UED Terran forces to help her kill the remaining cerebrates and the Overmind so she can gain control of all of the zerg.
On a final note, there's a map editor where you can create your own maps. It's simple enough for small things such as designing a new map to play against your friends and complex enough to make a complex and fun custom map.
Summary:
Good:
-Gameplay
-Sound
-Story
-Online
-Map Editor
Moderate:
-Campaign can be difficult at times
-Graphics
Bad:
-Some levels are very short
Graphics: 4/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Story: 5/5
Sound: 5/5
Overall: 4.75/5
(I apologize for the lack of screen shots, there was a coloring issue in most of them and the few that did turn out ok wasn't that good. I'll get screen shots up soon.)
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