StarCraft: Brood War

I heeded the call of nostalgia today, and played some StarCraft: Brood War.

The Protoss are here!

I've played so much of this over the years, but still not at all good at it. One slip up in your build order and you've just lost to a Korean. I've found that I'm not that good at Protoss as compared to the Terran or Zerg, but I can still do some nasty damage with any one.

The thing about StarCraft that shines above all other RTSes, is the completely asymmetrical factions. Each side and unit type is unique. Most other RTSes have mostly one faction that is reskinned and the only differentiation is a few unique units.

StarCraft 2 is far more organic feeling than Brood War. The Terrans pulled off that fresh-from-the-trailer-park, everything's-going-to-break-soon feeling in the first. I appreciate the Zerg looking more alive in 2, but hate the comical proportions of the Protoss. However, I will save that for later.

My friends and I made dozens of maps. For a while, there was a new map every week between us. Of course, one friend always wanted to play on his favorite (ironically not made by him), and was kind of annoying about it. Everyone else was always interested in the resource rich maps (but not Big Game Hunter rich), whereas I was focused on creating more interesting, varied, and balanced maps with plenty of expansion spots, but not crazy rich. I have attempted to port that one annoying map to 2, but due to the different sizes of buildings (always larger, rarely smaller), and the affinity of narrow passages everywhere, it does not feel right at all.

Then there's the tragic space opera of the single player campaign. There's everyone's favorite space cowboy Raynor, the rebel Mengsk, the powerful and beautiful (well, initially) Kerrigan, and the strangers Tassadar and Zeratul. Whenever I've played through, I always HATE playing the New Gettysburg mission. That's why Mengsk needs to die. Fortunately Kerrigan's head can be screwed on just right to make her realize that.

Maybe Blizzard can wrap it off in a sensible way (they've already did that once), unlike some other people have done with their stories.

You can't complain about this anymore. It's perfect!

Since you've made it this far, you might be interested in reading:

StarCraft: Remastered
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StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void
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StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm
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StarCraft 2: Wings Of Liberty
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StarCraft: Insurrection and Retribution
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WarCraft III
Some time ago, I asked a friend if I could borrow a few games to play on Twentieth Century. Even though he was born in the latter 90s, he's a big fan of 90s games from id and Blizzard. He presented a few Quakes and WarCrafts. I tried playing WarCraft 1, but a few missions in, I got annoyed by the lack of build queues and a 4 unit select limit. I got a bit further in WarCraft 2, but sometimes ran out of resources before getting an army off the ground. Back in the bad old days, I had downloaded and played the WarCraft III demo quite a bit, and I remember liking it a lot better. While the base Reign of Chaos game installed and ran fine on Twentieth Century, the Frozen Throne expansion refused to install, complaining about hardware requirements, even though it ostensibly met them. So I installed these on my main rig, and this article is about the originals; not about the new Reforged remaster.