StarCraft (PC, 1998)

The greatest RTS of all time?

Nostalgia: Very High. I spent many many hours playing this game in the early 00’s.
Difficulty: Medium. Some challenges late in the single-player campaign. Online play against RTS nerds is just brutal.

What needs to be said about one of the greatest PC games ever made? SC was the best-selling PC game in 1998. It was wildly popular in South Korea, which launched an impressive nationally televised eSports league. In 2005, there were more live spectators at the StarCraft SKY Pro League finals than there were at the American Superbowl. The Korean Air Force even created a professional StarCraft team so that Korean SC pros could fulfill their country’s military requirement without disrupting their SC eSports careers. Even outside of South Korea, the impact of StarCraft can’t be understated.

It’s considered by many RTS fans to be the gold standard by which other RTS games are measured. If any RTS game can claim to be “near perfect,” it’s StarCraft. The three playable races are incredibly balanced – Terran (human), Zerg, and Protoss. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses. The single player campaign is incredible. I find myself replaying StarCraft and the Brood War campaigns at least once or twice each decade.

By the end of Brood War, the missions may begin to feel a bit repetitive (there are nearly 60 missions in total), but there’s enough variety and unique variables in each mission to pull you along. It’s hard to describe the incredible feeling of maximizing your resource gathering, creating 200 fully upgraded units, and then sending a huge wave towards your enemy’s base. While Total Annihilation was the game that helped me fall in love with RTS games, StarCraft made me an RTS fan for life.

The in-game isometric visuals serve their purpose. They aren’t particularly awe-inspiring, but they are suitable for the time. StarCraft Remastered brings a lot more graphical clarity. In 1998, early 3D games were continuing to develop and dominate (Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Spyro, etc), but StarCraft, Baldur’s Gate, and Fallout 2 still delivered great gaming experiences through the classic isometric style. The cinematics aren’t quite as stunning as what we’d see a few years later in Diablo 2 or WarCraft 3, but they are still effective in showing off some of SC’s excellent unit designs and providing more visual context.

The compelling sci-fi narrative is one of my favorite aspects of the game. From the start, I became fully absorbed into this dystopian power struggle with its cast of intriguing characters. The excellent voice acting really gives StarCraft an edge over other games from that time.

The soundtrack is also very good. I don’t have the StarCraft OST in my Spotify rotation, but these tracks fulfill their intended function perfectly. The Terran tracks are the most memorable, in addition to the iconic main title screen music. The Zerg tracks are suitable for the nature of the Zerg race of course, but not very listenable outside of the game. Zerg tracks utilize a lot of dark horror stingers, creepy sounds, and dissonant synths. The Protoss tracks are still dark and brooding, but more akin to traditional fantasy game music. These tracks make great use of softer synth pads and eerie vocal layers to create an otherworldly sound.

StarCraft is a must play for any fans of the RTS genre. This is probably my favorite RTS game (so hard to choose sometimes), and it’s considered by many to be one of the greatest (if not the greatest) RTS games of all time. Give it a try.