[Review] StarCraft: Brood War

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StarCraft: Brood War is the expansion pack for the military science fiction real-time strategy video game StarCraft. Released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows and 1999 for macOS, it was co-developed by Saffire Corporation and Blizzard Entertainment. The expansion pack introduces new campaigns, map tilesets, music, extra units for each race, and upgrade advancements. The campaigns continue the story from where the original StarCraft ended,with the sequel StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty continuing from the conclusion of Brood War. The expansion was released in the United States on 30 November 1998.

Brood War was critically well received, with reviewers praising it for being developed with the care of a full game rather than as an uninspired extra.As of 31 May 2007, StarCraft and Brood War have sold almost ten million copies combined.The game is especially po[CENSORED]r in South Korea, where professional players and teams participated in matches, earned sponsorships, and competed in televised matches.

As of April 19, 2017, StarCraft and its Brood War expansion are free to download and play from Blizzard's website.A remastered edition of StarCraft and Brood War was released on August 14, 2017.

StarCraft focuses around three distinct interstellar species: the psionic Protoss, the adaptable Terrans, and the insectoid Zerg. The game revolves around players collecting resources to construct a base, upgrade their militaries, and ultimately conquer opponents. Brood War's gameplay remains fundamentally unchanged from that of StarCraft, although it made small alterations to unit costs and some abilities, and added some new units. These changes make rushing tactics—a factor that gained some criticism in the original StarCraft—less practical.The single-player campaign has an increased difficulty; missions are no longer entirely linear, and a greater focus on strategy is needed to complete missions.In addition, the game's artificial intelligence (AI) has been augmented so that AI-controlled players are more intelligent and tend to use tactics more effectively.

Brood War introduces seven new units. Each race is given access to a unique ground unit: the Zerg can create a defensive unit that can attack from the concealment of its burrow,while the Terrans can train combat medics.The Protoss are able to produce dark templar units, a powerful cloaked melee unit only given to the player in special missions of StarCraft. Protoss players can merge two of these units to create a special spellcaster unit.Each race is also given access to a dedicated air-to-air attack unit.

Brood War takes place in the StarCraft universe, set around the early 26th century. Terran exiles from Earth have colonized a distant area of the Milky Way galaxy called the Koprulu Sector, having established several governments. Eventually, a civil war breaks out and ends with the formation of the Terran Dominion. However, humanity soon becomes caught in a war between the Protoss and the Zerg, which culminates at the end of StarCraft with the death of the Zerg leader, the Overmind, on the Protoss homeworld of Aiur. Without the Overmind to command, the Zerg rampage mindlessly across Aiur, while the cerebrates—the secondary commanders of the Swarm—attempt to regain control. After the discovery of alien life in the Koprulu Sector, the United Earth Directorate (UED)—the international body governing Earth—decides to send an expeditionary force to secure the sector and prevent the aliens from finding Earth. Brood War begins two days after the conclusion of StarCraft.

The player assumes the roles of three anonymous characters over the course of the game. In the first campaign, the player assumes the role of a Protoss fleet commander. The player's character is commanded by Zeratul and Aldaris, two adversaries from StarCraft who have since reconciled their differences to lead their people in the face of the rampaging Zerg. They are joined by Jim Raynor, a Terran rebel on the run from the Dominion, Artanis, the previous Executor of the third campaign of StarCraft who has recently been promoted, and Raszagal, the matriarch of the dissident dark templar faction in Protoss society. The second campaign sees the player as a captain in the UED expeditionary force, reporting to the fleet's admiral Gerard DuGalle and his vice-admiral Alexei Stukov. To secure the sector, the UED plans to overthrow the Terran Dominion and its emperor Arcturus Mengsk, and are assisted in this by Samir Duran, a mysterious psionic ghost espionage agent, and his group of anti-Dominion rebels. The final campaign has the player assume the position of a Zerg cerebrate, a commander within the Zerg Swarm. The player is put under the control of Sarah Kerrigan, a Terran who was infested by the Zerg in StarCraft.

The story of Brood War is presented through its instruction manual, the briefings to each mission, and conversations within the missions themselves, along with the use of cinematic cut scenes at the end of each campaign.The game itself is split into three new episodes, one centering on each race.

In the first episode, Aldaris, Zeratul, and the newly promoted Artanis work to evacuate the surviving Protoss from their devastated homeworld through a warp gate to the dark templar homeworld, Shakuras, where they meet the matriarch of the dark templar, Raszagal. Although the Zerg are able to follow the Protoss to Shakuras, Raszagal informs the survivors of a Xel'Naga temple on the surface of the planet with the power to scour the Zerg from the surface if activated. With Zeratul and Artanis reluctantly partnering with Sarah Kerrigan, who informs them of a new Overmind growing on Char, the player joins them in an operation to recover two key crystals (Khalis and Uraj) necessary to operate the temple. Upon their return, it is revealed that Aldaris has begun an uprising against the dark templar over their alliance with Kerrigan. The uprising is crushed, and Aldaris is killed by Kerrigan, who reveals that her motives are to ensure the destruction of the Zerg cerebrates on Shakuras so she can gain control of the Zerg herself before departing the planet. Despite knowing that activating the temple will accomplish Kerrigan's objectives, Zeratul and Artanis proceed with little other choice, wiping the Zerg off Shakuras' surface.

In the second episode, the player leads the United Earth Directorate's initial incursions against the Terran Dominion. Upon meeting Samir Duran, the fleet's vice-admiral Alexei Stukov conscripts Duran as a special advisor. The UED soon discovers a "psi disrupter"—a device capable of disrupting Zerg communications—on the former Confederate capital Tarsonis. Although Duran persuades admiral Gerard DuGalle to have the anti-Zerg device destroyed, Stukov's forces relieve Duran at the last moment. The UED proceeds to the Dominion throne world Korhal IV where the player defeats Arcturus Mengsk's armies, although Mengsk is rescued when a Protoss fleet commanded by Jim Raynor arrives. The UED tracks Raynor and Mengsk to the Protoss homeworld of Aiur, but the two escape the massive UED assault when Duran inexplicably moves his forces out of position and allows the Zerg to interfere with the operation. Having understood that the UED invasion had caused Mengsk, Raynor, and the Protoss to band together against a common foe, Stukov realizes that Duran's actions and the Zerg attack were too much to be a coincidence—the Zerg were also allied with the Terran Dominion and the Protoss, and Duran had been working to undermine the UED. While Stukov takes a contingent of troops and reconstructs the psi disrupter on Braxis, DuGalle is unaware of his intentions and becomes convinced that he is a traitor. The player helps Duran hunt down Stukov inside the psi disrupter, but before he dies, Stukov reveals to DuGalle that Duran is the real enemy. Duran flees after the player foils his attempt to sabotage the psi disrupter. Using the psi disrupter's capabilities, DuGalle and the UED are able to assault the Zerg world Char and take control of the new Overmind growing there.

The final section of Brood War sees the player helping Sarah Kerrigan defeat the UED. With the Overmind falling under the United Earth Directorate's command, all operations amongst native factions in the sector are damaged, including Kerrigan's forces. To begin the campaign against the Directorate forces, Kerrigan and Samir Duran form a reluctant alliance with Jim Raynor, Protoss praetor Fenix, and Arcturus Mengsk to destroy the psi disrupter. After destroying the psi disrupter, the player leads Kerrigan's forces in a full-scale assault on Korhal, quickly breaking the UED's hold over the planet. In the aftermath, Kerrigan betrays her allies, destroying a large number of Dominion forces and killing both Fenix as well as Edmund Duke, Mengsk's right-hand man. Angry at Kerrigan's betrayal, Raynor promises that he will kill her one-day and then retreats. Kerrigan travels with Duran to Shakuras and abducts Raszagal, who she uses to blackmail Zeratul into killing the Overmind on Char, thus bringing all Zerg forces under Kerrigan's control. Zeratul attempts to rescue Raszagal, but the player prevents their escape, and Zeratul eventually kills Raszagal when it becomes clear she has been irreversibly brainwashed by Kerrigan. At that moment it becomes clear that Aldaris's uprising in the first episode was an attempt to stop the brainwashed Raszagal from betraying her people any further. Upon leaving Char in search of Artanis, Zeratul stumbles upon a genetics facility run by Duran without Kerrigan's knowledge where a Protoss/Zerg hybrid is being developed. At the same time, Kerrigan is attacked on Char by the Dominion, the UED, and a vengeful fleet commanded by Artanis. Despite being outnumbered, Kerrigan defeats all three fleets and eradicates the surviving UED fleet, leaving her the dominant power in the sector. Before the UED fleet is wiped out, Admiral DuGalle sends a final message back to his family before committing suicide with his pistol.

Expectations tend not to run high for add-ons and expansion packs; they're poor-man's sequels, usually thrown together in the wake of the original game's success. But you figure that so long as the expansion offers up more of what you liked about the original, it's good enough. Besides, at half the cost, you can't really ask for much more, can you? According to Blizzard, you can indeed: Brood War, the official expansion to the year's best real-time strategy game, contains all the care, detail, and ingenuity of a true sequel, in spite of its unlikely guise as your typical supplement. While that's not to suggest Brood War is a complete overhaul of the original, by continuing and enriching Starcraft's story, and adding excellent new units and terrain, Brood War completely revitalizes Blizzard's everlasting real-time strategy game.

Brood War doesn't look all that much different than the original Starcraft, although there's plenty of new visual content. Fortunately, Starcraft's graphics have aged nicely, and the game still looks great. Brood War's new units fit right in with the returning cast, and although the new snow terrain is too bright, the twilight and desert tile sets are beautifully drawn. Meanwhile, the stylish new intro movie and ending cinematics for each of the three campaigns are emotionally moving and tie in much more closely with the larger story than the original Starcraft's cutscenes.

Brood War boldly improves upon Starcraft's unforgettable audio, with new music and sound effects and a lot of new speech. Each of the three races gets a new music track, and all of it is outstanding, particularly the orchestral Terran theme that eclipses the New Agey stuff from the original. With the exception of the Dark Archon who sounds like he has laryngitis, all the new units in Brood War sound every bit as good as the originals, and many of them have very amusing things to say if you keep on clicking. Every surviving character from the original Starcraft returns with many more speaking lines in most cases, and as in the first game, the voice acting in Brood War is first-rate. With rare exceptions, the dialogue during mission briefings and during frequent in-game scripted events is completely convincing and adds up to what's one of the year's best stories in any gaming genre. It picks up right where the first game left off, and much like the original, the three plots are brilliantly written to be both self-contained and deeply connected.

As you'd expect, the Brood War campaign is much more difficult than the original Starcraft campaign. Nevertheless, the missions are far superior by design. They're heavily plot driven, with scripted story events frequently punctuating the action. Occasionally your mission objectives will change after you complete what you thought was the extent of your duty. At other times you'll be given a choice of objectives, and your decision will directly affect the course of the following mission. New units are introduced in context, and the scenario will teach you to use them by demanding you take advantage of their particular specialties. It is worth noting, though, that the designers start to run out of steam by the end, as the innovative scenarios that permeate the Protoss and Terran campaigns finally give way to more straightforward against-all-odds Zerg-centric massacres, although the story remains captivating to the end.

With Brood War, Blizzard took the opportunity to reevaluate the play balance of an already well-designed real-time strategy game. The results are outstanding; seemingly minor but terribly significant modifications to unit costs, damage rates, hit points, and build times suddenly make the game play very differently, as units that were once ineffective (such as the Protoss Dragoon and the Terran Goliath) are powerless no longer. In the end, almost every single unit in the game has been changed in one way or another. Likewise Blizzard addressed the common complaint that Starcraft catered itself toward rush tactics, where an early attack by basic units would often prove decisive, by augmenting defensive structures to better handle small numbers of weak units. These changes to the original units are included not only in Brood War, but in the Starcraft 1.04 patch.

At the same time, the six new units in Brood War demand serious consideration, as each race now has the means to deal with enemy swarm tactics. Now more than ever, the player who just piles up one type of unit will surely lose to he who combines his forces. The end result of all the changes and additions is a game that feels much more strategic than before. The only consequence is that Starcraft's interface, which demands that you carefully micromanage your forces, is ill-equipped to handle the game's newfound complexity, and without some serious practice you'll have trouble putting the specialized new units to good use. Moreover, if you're weary of the real-time strategy formula that culminated in Starcraft, you may be put off that Brood War, when you get right down to it, is fundamentally similar.

Nevertheless, if you liked Starcraft in the least, it doesn't take a great deal of thought to understand that Brood War is essential. What with the superb campaign, the new units, the overhauled gameplay, and dozens of new multiplayer maps, you have both a more-than-worthy successor to Starcraft and one of the finest computer game expansion sets of all time.

System Requirements 

Minimum system requirements:

• CPU: Pentium 90 MHz or higher
• RAM: 16 MB RAM
• GPU: DirectX-Compatible SVGA Video Card (DirectX-compatible)
• OS: Windows 95/98/NThttps://gamesystemrequirements.com/
• Store: 80 MB
• Sound: DirectX-compatible sound card for audio
• ODD: Double-Speed CD-ROM (Quad Speed for Cinematics)
• Network: 

Multiplayer System Requirements:

1.                   14.4Kbps Modem or Null Modem Cable
2.                    2-8 PLAYERS
3.                   IPX network or Battle.net (requires low-latency connection with support for 32-bit applications)