Starcraft
Published by Blizzard Entertainment
$54.95
One of the most hotly anticipated computer games of the last two years, Blizzard Entertainment's Starcraft has had a tremendous amount of hype to live up to. The fact that it does live up to the high expectations set for it may be the only recommendation it needs.Starcraft is a real-time strategy game for the PC, a sub-genre now packed with clones and knock-offs. For those of you who have been in a coma the last couple of years, real-time strategy games involve gathering resources, building bases and amassing enough military force to go stomp the other guy. The trick to an RTS game (as they're often called) is that instead of being a standard turn-based game, it is constantly running -- so if you don't stay on the ball with gathering, building and fighting, you get to be the stomped guy. Starcraft's pedigree is more impressive than most: Blizzard's Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and Warcraft II are credited with starting the current real-time strategy craze several years ago, and the company itself is able to boast of a string of hit games with no major bombs to tarnish its reputation.
Starcraft's setting is a far-flung future where outcasts from Earth, the Terrans, encounter two alien races, the Zerg and the Protoss, each with very different agendas for humanity. Although several other RTS games have chosen sci-fi settings, Starcraft's is unique for establishing a three-sided conflict, something none of the others have going for . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: June 12, 1998
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