This week on Genre Defining Games, we're going to take a look at one of the most influential games of all time, not just inside the RTS Genre, but a game that managed to refine the RTS genre into the powerhouse it would become and spawn new and exciting genres around it, this review is going to broken into two parts, the actual game review and the legacy of the game and how it helped to create the E-Sports world we know today.
This will be probably be longer than most of my reviews, so go grab a drink and lets dive right into the world of Starcraft.
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#### Setting and Story
The initial setting of Starcraft takes us back thousands of years, to a time where the gods still roamed the universe, the Xel'Naga, as highly evolved beings they gave life to two races, the psionic Protoss who were made in their image and the first born of the universe, and secondly, the zerg, a failed attempt to create pure beings that worked perfectly in sync with each other and achieved peak physical apex, while the Protoss were successful, the Naga revolted on the Xel'Naga and killed most of them after the Hivemind takes direct control over the Zerg Swarm.
Thousands of years later, we are met with the Terrans, a race that evolved on Earth naturally over millions of years who are headed by ruthless dictatorship, the United Earth Directorate, as Earth is reaching critical mass with the population, they order colonists to spread out into the galaxy to establish new life through the Koprulu sector, but a mishap sends most colony ships off course and lands them at the edge of Protoss space, the Protoss monitor the Terrans, a new life force and remain in the shadows to observe them, but the Zerg senses the psionic aptitude from the terrans began to swarm the colonies and kill or infest any they find.
As the Protoss have spent centuries fighting the zerg, they see the infested terran as their enemy and realize that humans are susceptible to infestation by the zerg, decide that the terrans must be wiped out of Protoss space, for fears that the increased number of Zerg would finally overwhelm them, as the Protoss attack the Terrans the first war between the three factions breaks out and it isn't long until the other colonized worlds are ordered to fight back.
This is where Starcraft begins, The confederacy of man is startled by the revelations that two alien species have been encountered and both are hostile, on Tarsonis, the confederate capital, outlaws and rebels seeking to overthrow the confederacy ramp up their attacks under the watchful eye of Arcturus Mengsk, it's that time we're introduced to Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, who will play a massive role moving forward and into the next game, once mengsk gets wind that the Zerg are attracted to Psionic energy, he lures the zerg to Tarsonis and utterly decimates the planet.
However Arcturus left Sarah Kerrigan to die on the planet with the zerg, unbeknownst to him however the Zerg hivemind has other plans for Kerrigan, after the betrayal by Mengsk, Raynor takes a small army and defects from Mengsk, however with no government left to fight back, Mengsk is crowned the emperor of the newly founded, Dominion of Man.
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On the other side of the galaxy, The protoss begin their assault on the Zerg overmind, needing all the help they can muster, the dark templar come to the aid of their cousins in staging the assault with Tassadar as the leader of the Protoss and Zeratul the leader of the Dark templar, though during the assault Zeratul in his zeal assassinates a zerg cerebrate, a sort of general of the zerg armies and one of the only zerg with full sentience, upon it's death the Overmind learns of the home planet of the Protoss, Auir, and launches a full scale invasion on the planet now being in sole control of all zerg.
As the zerg attack Auir they realize they're losing the fight, even with the small army headed by Jim Raynor helping them defend Auir, the Overmind is close to taking complete control of Auir, Tassadar makes the ultimate sacrifice, using the methods taught to him by Zeratul and the dark templar, Tassadar focuses his energy, crashing the flagship of the protoss fleet directly into the overmind, killing both, however with the overmind dead, the zerg turn feral and quickly overwhelm and destroy Auir forcing the Protoss to flee their homeworld.
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I'm going to leave the story here, this is only a brief overview of the story line and i wasn't going to review much of Brood Wars, but it paints a picture of the single player campaign, that back when Blizzard had Metzen and the original team writing for them, they could really paint an amazing story that's even better to experience than to just read, below i'll be talking a little bit more about the campaign and the individual races.
#### Gameplay,Mechanics and Factions.
Starcraft comes from the golden age of RTS, base building, resource management, unit management, expansion it's all there and then some, below we're going to look at some of the factions of starcraft first and how they differ from each other and then jump right into game play.
##### Protoss
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The Protoss, also known as the First Born, are the oldest race in the starcraft universe, excluding the Xel'Naga, gifted with amazing psionic abilities and the communal neural network known as the Khala which links every Protoss together in both emotion and ability, early in Protoss history there was a civil war know as the Discord, where the Protoss now now as the nerazim, severed their connection to the Khala, fearing that the Aeon of Strife could resume(A galactic civil war between the young protoss factions) the conclave ordered the Nerazim be wiped from the galaxy, resulting in a long and brutal civil war, before finally a stale mate was achieved.
Both Protoss factions became embroiled in an eternal war with the Zerg in their sector of space and kept a very volatile peace by not encroaching on each others territory, that is until the Terrans first showed in Protoss space and started what was known as The Great War that eventually lead to the fall of Auir.
#### The Zerg
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Vicious and single minded, the Zerg were created after the Protoss to try and achieve the pinnacle of physical evolution, given no chance to grow naturally, the strongest of the zerg began to dominate the weak, before the overmind, a massive intelligent zerg took control of nearly all Zerg and killed the Xel'Naga who gave birth to them, the zerg and it's overmind know only one thing, they must continue to evolve, the only part of the programming done by the xel'naga that remained in their bestial minds.
Lying in wait, and evolving for thousands of years, the zerg began to become an unstoppable force and claimed massive sectors of space, they had always wanted to harvest the genetic material of the protoss, but couldn't due to their massive psionic power overwhelming most zerg's brains, it wasn't until the Terrans arrived that they continued their evolution and sparked the Great War.
#### Terrans
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Basically humans, the Terrans started life on earth gaining evolution through technological advancement, as time went on however the Psionics of the world began to grown in numbers and show mankinds future, it was until hundreds of years later that they would realize they weren't alone in the galaxy, colonizing their own solar system as the earth and it's surroundings reached critical mass in terms of population, the terran government sent out colony ships deep into space, due to a series of mistakes however, they would wind up on the edge of Protoss space, surrounded by the zerg who were drawn to the psionic power.
Terrans are the only know species that evolved naturally as opposed to being created by the Xel'Naga, they are not as evolved as the zerg or as technologically advanced as the protoss, but they make up for it in sheer determination and overwhelming numbers.
#### Gameplay
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Starcraft is a real time strategy game, players will have to gather resources, build bases and units all the while defending and attacking from threats, each race has a very unique way of going about this, the Protoss will instead warp in structures and units from orbit, the Zerg will evolve simple zerg strains into buildings and also into simple clawed monsters known as Zerglings that are about as big as a dog right up to the terrifying Ultralisk that is essentially a 3 story building with claws the size of buses.
Terrans however will construct most buildings on site and train and request units to fill their ranks, while not as physically evolved as the zerg or as technologically advanced as the Protoss, they more than make up for it with extreme firepower and overwhelming numbers that rival the zerg.
The gameplay is relatively straight forward for an RTS, however there is a very very steep learning curve between a rookie and pro player, while playing through the campaign will see it go a lot easier than a multiplayer game, giving you time to figure out your build order, placement of buildings and unit make up, in multiplayer it becomes a nightmare if you don't have knowledge of everything in the game, with some users getting their APM scores(actions per minute) in the 300's-500's.
Every game starts largely the same, you will be given a handful of workers and a central base points(Command Center, Nexus, Hatchery) and then you're on your own, you have to collect precious resources on the map known as Minerals and build refiners to harvest Vespene gas, all races use the same minerals so there's even that to fight over, your tech tree's will unlock as you build new buildings and research them, at the start of a game you will only have simple units like Zealots, Marines or Zerglings, but all races can "tech up" to create their most powerful units that cost a lot of resources but are worth every drop of it.
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Campaigns differ a lot from standard games, it's not always the case in singleplayer that you'll even get a base to begin with, maybe just a handful of warriors you need to push forward and secure an objective or kill enemies off the map, Starcraft comes with three unique campaigns for each race, all of them dealing with different problems at the beginning but eventually all three will come into contact with other on numerous occasions often leading to mass scale battles.
It's impossible to list the different strategies and game play for each species, so i'll leave you with a video or two to explain it far better than I ever could that you check out below.
***(Please note these are from Starcraft 2, but nothing has really changed)***
##### Terran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmu8PsUDDtQ
#### Zerg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq74R7wWAnQ
#### Protoss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0g0MpllFCs
#### Known as the "Most balanced Game Ever"
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Starcraft has the distinction of having the title "Most balanced game ever" and with good reason, during Blizzard's glory years that set about making this RTS to have no loopholes or imbalances in game play, what matters is your skill and strategy, it's not very often you get a game where you literally can't argue about 2 sides being balanced, let alone three, however Starcraft managed to pull off this amazing feat, everything is perfectly balanced and counter balanced against everything else, every species has a strength and every species has a weakness, it was this amazing balance of content that led to the massive competitive scene that is still around even 20 years after the game was first released.
Even though the game is so old, it's amazing to go back and play it even in this year as the game is still alive and depending on who you ask, feels and plays better than Starcraft 2, i don't know if I agree with that opinion, but it's one that is held by a lot of people, it's very very rare that a game gets everything perfect, and it's that perfection that led to the massive competitions that served as the linchpin for the competitive gaming world we now know as E-sports.
#### The Road to Mainstream Competition and the birth of E-Sports.
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Releasing in 1997, the internet was still in it's infant stage, it would be a few years before online games became a staple in the gamers life, so Starcraft relied on LAN parties and hosted competition, the first of which was held in South Korea at the OnGameNet Starleagues way back in 1999, it's important to note this is were the initial phrase "play like a korean" came from, as the Koreans were and still are the eternal kings of Starcraft for some god damn reason, everyone who was in the gaming world in the early 2000's was aware that Starcraft could be taken as a high school subject.
While it would be a few years before Starcraft became big in America, Starcraft was gigantic in Korea, by the early 2000's the tournaments would sell out massive stadiums of up to 25,000 people to watch this, unheard of before in the world of gaming, and some of the statistics that came out of TV viewership put it in the millions, it was the first legitimate televised E-Sports tournament in the world that would grow into the E-Sports we know and love today.
Starcraft 1 would continue to be played in Korea right up until this day, eventually Starcraft's amazing popularity would reach the same fever pitch in the United states and in Europe with it being introduced into CPL and WCG that was nearly always won by a korean team, as a relatively young gamer back in the mid 2000's it was incredible to see these sights as I couldn't fathom just how many people there were in the world that loved this game(let alone the money that was changing hands) it's estimated that over 4 million dollars in prize money was given away over the course of the first tournaments of Starcraft, keeping in mind that this had never happened before, it was inspiring to a generation of gamers.
I write an article a few weeks ago about Counter-Strike having a massive impact on E-sports, so it's important to make the distinction between the two, while Counter-Strike was popular worldwide and eventually shaped competitive E-Sports, Starcraft was responsible for shaping the aesthetics of E-Sports as well as how tournaments were hosted and executed, seeing a stadium with 15,000 people in it now is impressive, seeing it in 2001 was fucking insane for what most of the world considered a child's activity, it really opened the world of gaming and competitive gaming to the mainstream and showed the world what competitive gaming could be.
### Critical Review and Reception.
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Starcraft 1 has a long and storied history, from it's humble beginning of orcs in space(you know what I mean) to the massive tournaments and the eventual emergence of E-Sports, it stands as an amazing game with an amazing legacy, not only for it's competitive game play and gripping story, but as a reminder of what gaming can be like when developers really go the extra mile to create a truly unique experience.
Recently Blizzard released Starcraft Remastered to increase the graphical quality for the modern generation, lets be real here graphics from 1997 just don't look all that great, regardless of how good the game is, so it's getting a new generation into Starcraft, while also reigniting the passion people had for Starcraft when it was first released, i'm getting to an age where reliving these memories seem like a life time ago, but the effects of Starcraft are still here to this day, in multiple genres, most notably of course the RTS genre which has taken so many cues from Starcraft.
As a fan of the single player however, it's still a great experience to play through, the story line is tight and enjoyable and continues to expand upon itself culminating in Starcraft 2 which continued the already amazing story and grew on it, and continues to make new fans daily.
Whatever the case may be for the legacy of Starcraft, it will always stand as an amazing game that spawned a revolution in the gaming world and will always stand as one of the best video games, of any generation, to ever be released.
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#### Thanks for taking the time to read my review, if you enjoyed this feel free to up-vote, resteem or follow me for more, how do you guys feel about the rise of Starcraft or do you have some fond memories of the game yourself? leave me a comment below and i'll be sure to get back to you, thanks guys!