StarCraft

"Your base is under attack," you hear the voice coming out of your speakers. Your heart starts to beat faster as you move your mouse over your base. The mighty Protoss are attacking your Zerg base. You try to defend it, but no luck. The "Mission Failed," box appears, and you know you've lost.

Yes, Blizzard has done it again, they've produced yet another great game. StarCraft has three absolutely different races, which although have nothing similar between each other, are astonishingly balanced. When playing the game you have a choice between Terran, Zerg, or Protoss. And there is a separate campaign with ten missions for each of the three races.

Every one of the three races has 10-12 different units. Not a single unit from one race is similar to a unit in another. Each race has ground units, air units, workers, and spell casters. Some units even have the cloak ability! So you get a nice mix of unit types.

As well as different units, each of the three races has different buildings, with different purposes. Some buildings have different uses. For example a Terran turret can both be used for detection of cloaked units, and for attacking air units.

Although the races are dramatically different, the concept of the game is the same, whether you are Protoss, Terran or Zerg. To kill your opponent you will need a combination of units, to get those units you will need vast amounts of resources. The resources (minerals, and vespane gas) are collected by workers (drones, probes and SCVs). The minerals are then delivered to the main building (command center, nexus or hatchery), and after that the commander (you) can decide how to distribute the money, to achieve victory.

Even though there is no tutorial for StarCraft, it is easy to learn, because the first few missions of the first campaign are very easy, and they inform you on what different things are used for. But don't think this game is easy. It will get as hard as you want it to be, as you advance through the missions, the difficulty will dramatically increase.

Once you've mastered the single player campaigns, you can start playing multiplayer. There are many options for multiplayer; the most popular one is Battle.Net. Battle.Net is a popular on-line gaming server hosted by Blizzard. Over 700,000 users worldwide use Battle.Net. Not Only can you play StarCraft on it, but you can also enjoy the multiplayer experience with other Blizzard titles such as Diablo and WarCraft II.

Although playing versus computers is fun already, nothing compares to playing versus other people on Battle.Net. You can play various modes of the game. You can play traditional one versus one, two versus two, heck you can even play an eight people free for all, the list goes on.

The first version of StarCraft did have some minor bugs, but Blizzard does a great job by updating the game with patches, to fix the bugs, and make it even more balanced. Blizzard is currently about to release patch 1.08, StarCraft's eighth patch.

Whether you're an RTS veteran, or a complete newcomer, this game is a must have, no mater how often you play, I can guarantee that you will never get tired of this game! StarCraft, is an unquestionable classic.