CIS 587 Assignment 1 Computer Game Evaluation Starcraft and Brood War Pran Mukherjee 9 24 01 Basic Information Starcraft is a real time strategy RTS game designed by Rob Pardo and Chris Metzen and produced by Blizzard Entertainment in 1997 with the Brood War expansion in 1998 It s available for Windows 9x and Macintosh machines It originally sold for about 50 expansion for 30 but at its current five years of age both components can be bought for 25 total The minimum system requires a Pentium 90 16MB RAM 80MB drive space and 2X CD drive slightly higher Mac requirements While most games have minimum requirements that ll just barely allow the game to run the requirements listed above actually do work just fine Almost any video card is acceptable since the game is fully 2D and a sound card though nice is optional Controls are via mouse and keyboard Game Summary Starcraft follows the usual 4X style gameplay Explore Expand Exploit Exterminate but with a twist There are three races to play and the gameplay is completely different for each one Other RTS games have different looking units with generally the same gameplay but each race in Starcraft offers a unique style of play The Zerg are a horde like biological race that overwhelms the enemy with numbers the Terrans are technologically savvy mobile and have very strong defenses and the Protoss are psionic very high tech and have small numbers Sometimes a single Protoss unit can wipe out dozens of Zerg and this is reflected in their build cost and time as well as the amount of control slots they take up More on all this later The installation was very simple put the CD in wait until autorun pops up the install dialog box click Install Installing Brood War on top of Starcraft follows the same procedure For the Starcraft installation a CD key is required which is found on the CD case but Brood War doesn t require a new one Note that with Brood War installed it s still possible to play in Starcraft mode without the extra units tilesets and so on No one I know has ever bothered though since Brood War truly makes the game come alive The controls are very intuitive For any unit or unit producing building the commands available are listed in a box in the bottom right Each command has a little icon and the keyword with the equivalent keyboard command highlighted in yellow It s best to learn all of the keyboard hotkeys since this will increase player reaction time by at least a factor of two However for new players the learning curve is very friendly Left clicking anything will select it with doubleclick or box selection allowed to select groups and right clicking activates the most used commands such as move attack gather resources It would be nice to have a popup window listing all the possible keyboard commands but this feature was not included and would be rather lengthy since each unit has separate abilities and ALL abilities are hotkeyed Since the requisite hotkey is highlighted it isn t essential to have a list As is common in RTS games Starcraft has a long single player campaign mode with 10 missions for each race for a total of 30 Brood War comes with 30 MORE missions The missions are basically a training mode with each one allowing the use of new units and concentrating on teaching the player how to effectively utilize those units The story arc starts with the Zerg invading Terran space with a Borg like desire to assimilate new life The Protoss quickly ally with the Terrans but with betrayals backstabbing and assimilations on all sides each race gets a chance to go up against the other two The campaigns are fairly well scripted both in a story sense and in a level design sense and sometimes when you think you ve succeeded at a mission new objectives come up by surprise The game truly shines in multiplayer mode where up to 8 players and computers can fight in modes like melee free for all no alliances team games with multiple people controlling the same units capture the flag and the catch all use map settings mode where pre scripted events occur The included map editor allows creation and scripting of new maps which download automatically when one joins a game Blizzard has provided a free online meeting place called Battle net complete with chat channels open game listings and automatic patch updates LAN modem and direct cable connection are other multiplayer options The scoring engine is somewhat difficult to fathom At the end of the game you either win or lose in most modes it means killing off the enemies buildings but the scoring may not reflect that The scores are displayed in clean easy to read bar graphs with numerical scores on the bars but where those scores come from is the foggy part The primary categories for scores are Units Buildings and Resources Subcategories include units built and killed buildings created and razed resources gathered and used Obviously kills and razings are good but it s hard to tell whether making less buildings or units is better than making more or what weighting is placed on tech tree placement of the units The art and sound in this game are outstanding Given the lack of 3D one might immediately suspect bad graphics but the 2D unit animations weapon effects and spells are excellent and the third dimension for flying units or area spells is taken into account by obscuration With the fixed isometric view a third dimension wouldn t have added anything The only real problem is the fixed 640x480 resolution The music is a great backdrop and adds an appropriate ambience without distracting the player The sound effects are simply awesome from the authoritative boom of a siege tank cannon to the sarcastic shuttle pilot responses Each unit has at least three responses and the buildings also have sound effects associated with them when selected There s also a nice warning feature that states We are under attack when a building is hit and a quick tap of the space bar will take you to the site of danger The game can be saved at any time even multiplayer games and with the latest Brood War expansion a game replay can be saved at endgame This allows players to view the game from any or all points of view including that of their enemies and fast forward through the boring parts It s a great tool for learning what one did wrong and the strategies the enemy used based on what they saw The manuals for Starcraft and Brood War are both too detailed and not detailed enough They expound at great length on the storyline
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