Starcraft: Brood War

"The Greatest RTS (maybe even game) of all time."

Ahh Startcraft Brood war.... I remember when I first purchased this game in 2001 at the mall with my friend. On that day I saw The Animal, I ended up coming back home at 11pm and having my parents flip out at me for not calling home... what a joke... my mom wanted to return the game as punishment but never did. So I got to keep the game that would rock my world for so many years.

Gameplay 10/10
This is where the game shines due to its balance. The game offers three races to play from. Terran, Protoss, and Zerg. Each is unique and has its own advantages.

Terran is the humans in a more advanced age; their most powerful unit is the Battlecruiser. The Battlecruiser is a juggernaut of a plane that shoots lasers and has the ability to fire one big fireball. This race has the ability to heal units, protect units, and strip units and buildings of their shields.

Protoss are more of a machine/human race that uses swords, energy cannons, and lasers. The most powerful race is the Carrier, which is a huge aircraft carrier that can store up to small planes that fly out and attack. This race also has other cool units such as the Dark Archon which can mind control units, Dark Templers which are cloaked ninjas, and the Arbiter which can teleport any unit anywhere and cloaks all units.

Now, Zerg... my favorite race. They are aliens that are all around; they have no best unit that can combat both ground and air. Their best ground attack unit is the Ultralisk, a big elephant thing; the Scourge can handle any air unit, they are just suicide monsters. They have the ability to easily mass units and burrow to hide.

In this game you do not have to micromanage units the way you might in other RTS games. In this game it's more of who can spam the most units that are better than the others. This is due to the fact that any unit that can do damage is able to destroy buildings. There are only 2 resources to collect also, minerals and gas. So it really is not a problem for most player-made maps. The game also focuses heavily on defense, having an ill-defended base will be your death. I will usually block the entrance by a line of bunkers then surround by base by maybe 3-4 rows of AA guns.

The main point of this game is to build a base and destroy the enemies' base... yes, yes, been there, done that... But what I see that separates this RTS from any other is the ability to play a map in "Use Map Settings" (UMS). With this ability people were able to use either Blizzards simple map creating tools or other tools to make a map but also put triggers in it. By triggers I mean commands, as in if you go into a specific area, you will teleport to another area, units constantly spawning in one area, starting out with a base... In this setting you can do just about anything. I have seen Mario Party like games, sniper games, defense games, RPG's, Fighting games, DBZ games, and much more. This is definitely the greatest thing of all time.

Sound 10/10
The voicing is spectacular and classic. I still remember every time a Battlecruiser was built hearing "Battlecruiser Operational" or when a ghost was built hearing "Somebody called for an exterminator?" Hearing that never gets old. All units have many things to say. When they are first built, when you click, to when you are constantly clicking them. The things said are sometimes comical and funny or they just sound cool.

When you play as Zerg you will hear the units bite and spit the acid, the Terran's guns going off, or the Protoss' energy blasts firing. Everything sounds different and you will never get tired of hearing the things said.

Graphics 10/10
Till this day I still believe the graphics are wonderful. Back when the game first came out though, this game had some of the best graphics out. You could see every unit clearly. All the gunshots and such would be seen fired at the unit or building, when a nuke exploded you would see the mushroom cloud; everything was just a show for the eyes.

Story 5/10 (I will not count this toward final score due to belief with RTS games...)
It has been long since I played this game and I know I only played the campaign once which was long, boring, and difficult. I used cheats just to fly through the game's campaign...

If I remember right it is just a war between the three races and you play through all three races. (You beat one and you unlock the other campaign.) Well... there is nothing new here and it did not interest me, but then again there are no RTS games that have a story line which interested me.

I only give it this score because it is not something that happened in history and the campaign did include a lot of constructing and managing your base.

Buy?
This is a MUST buy game. It still has a large online community and is definitely worth playing by RTS gamers and non-RTS gamers alike.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/10/07