StarCraft
(Review as featured in APC July 1998.)

Yes, it's Warcraft in space, but it's so well executed that you'll probably forget that there is not a great deal of originality in Blizzard's latest title. A real-time combat strategy game, StarCraft takes the precepts of earlier games in the genre and applies some real polish.

The plot is brilliant, even if the player has no input as to its direction (you simply stagger from one battle to the next; either you lose and retry a battle, or you win and go on to the next battle). It's nearly impossible to sum up the intricacies of the plot in a few sentences, but to put it simply, three races are vying for their own chunk of space — and trying to stop the advances of the other two.

You can play as a Terran (human), Zerg or Protoss. As a Terran, you play a revolutionary trying to upset a corrupt government, while simultaneously trying to fend off Zerg and Protoss advances. The Zerg are a race of highly evolved beasts — clearly based on HR Geiger's aliens — bent on assimilating all other sentient races into their genetic mix to create the ultimate race. If you are familiar with the Vorlons of 'Babylon 5', then you're probably familiar with the Protoss archetype — an advanced race of psychic beings, few in number but great in power and working towards mysterious ends.

Each race has distinct playing styles, and distinct winning strategies. Blizzard has done away with the Warcraft model where each side has more or less matching units, and has developed races with sometimes wildly different capabilities. Zerg players can develop a lot of relatively weak units very quickly, while Protoss units develop slowly, but are more powerful. The most thought seems to have gone into the Terran race, whose units vary considerably in type and power. They have a mind-boggling array of building types and power-ups.

The races are fairly evenly balanced (although we found that the Terrans had a slight edge over the other two), but require very different playing strategies. One of the game's few let-downs was the AI in single-player — the computer was always quite easy to defeat, even when given overwhelming odds.

Technically the game really does stand out. The sound and graphics during battles are very good, and the cut scenes between battles are well worth experiencing. Throw in a very powerful level editor with full scripting and you have a package that's a must-have for any serious RTS gameplayer.

By Nathan Taylor