Starcraft is one of the few things that has followed me throughout this awkward life. The first time I had a chance to play this relic was probably in 2000, at the age of 5 or so. And, with all the unreliability of my memory, I can still remember these moments – remember myself playing Starcraft, what I did, and with what thoughts. I remember how over and over again I went through the 1st mission of the Terrans in the Brood War add-on, surrounding myself with turrets and siege tanks until they were completely inaccessible, lamenting why the enemy had aviation, but I didn’t have it.
That mission involves a detour, bypassing a well-guarded Dominion cordon, allowing you to strike in the rear, but the dialogues, alas, were not translated, and I did not understand this, instead gnawing into the front line meter by meter, systematically pulling artillery, clearing the territory with the help of tracking stations and, of course, constantly bringing in reinforcements – how many hours did it take me? It doesn’t matter, because I was captivated by the process, and, despite the rather modest mind of a child, I must say, I did a good job – on the 1st mission, of course. I still believe that the development of my cognitive abilities is largely due to my adolescent gatherings in Starcraft.
In those days, I didn’t think in https://mobilemillionscasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ terms of graphics, technical time limits, etc. And few people thought like that, I suppose – games were perceived as they are, and it seemed that virtual entertainment simply could not be any other way. I had a simple choice – bright, funny and more accessible Warcraft 2, and grey, serious, photorealistic Starcraft – oh, yes, on 640×480 analog monitors you simply don’t notice all these pixels, artifacts and other flaws, which makes the game look incredibly beautiful. And although I loved the 2nd Warcraft, and spent more time in it, Starcraft, which was more difficult and treated me more cruelly, appealed to me much more. It’s funny that I never tired of comparing these games with each other – the answer turned out to be so obvious. In fact, “Starcraft” became my first work in the genre of space science fiction, although I did not understand the plot at all. But I had creative space to interpret what I saw in the game and come up with my own. Well, what could I draw on paper at that age – of course, my favorite computer games.
And finally, Starcraft, along with Warcraft 2, these are the games that I first played with real people – at my father’s work, I was probably 8 years old then. I remember, without realizing it, when playing Protoss, I tried to stick to the tactics of a fleet of aircraft carriers, although, like everything I do in my life, this choice had more of an aesthetic reason than a practical one – I really liked how these little interceptors fly out of the mother ship and shoot everything they see. The Protoss then seemed to me a deeply mysterious and therefore charming race, because I could not form a complete impression about them. However, in the future I gave my priority when choosing a side exclusively to the Terrans – probably because I’m boring.
I had the opportunity to thoroughly play Starcraft, complete the game, and roughly understand its plot much later, at about 16 years old – the game had a high-quality fan dub from 7x-team, if I’m not mistaken. He is still quite liquid, except that they forgot to voice Artanis. At the same time, through the Iccup service, I played Starcraft for the first time in battle.net – just like the first time I saw the gates of the online game Warcraft 3 opening before me, the first entry into Starcraft multiplayer is just as firmly ingrained in my memory. After all, I, who came online too late, always dreamed about this. But the multiplayer of Starcraft, as one might assume, did not shelter me for long – even in 10 lifetimes I will not learn to play the way an average player does.
And, in general, at the same time, at the age of 16, I rediscovered Starcraft – it was no longer a nostalgic memory from childhood of how I moved soldiers around the perimeter of the monitor, but already a full-fledged video game experience, where the visual style, pace of the game, gameplay, plot and narrative had their meaning. Oh, this obscurity plot of the first Starcraft – it’s not bad, very good, but how haphazardly it is presented, almost like in your Dark Souls. There is no exposition, only detached comments on the agenda – the war has just begun, and all the characters in humanity already know who the zerg are, who the protoss are, and the Terran state of the Confederation, its crimes against its own citizens and the rebel movement “Sons of Korhal” leading military operations against it are even given a couple of lines in the dialogue briefings. It’s not even worth talking about what’s going on in the societies of the Protoss and Zerg themselves – the plot of the 1st StarCraft is one of those that would be good to go through 2-3 times, and only then the picture will begin to take shape as a whole.
And, I must say, Blizzard used to be able to tell dramatic fantasy stories using a minimum of means – those same notorious briefings between missions, where both “friends” and sworn enemies sit in equal measure, this is an extremely budget solution, but how I like it. Literally negotiations between politicians and history makers before sending people to kill and die for their interests. Strict, stylish, brutal. As, indeed, the plot of the game itself is a very non-trivial fantasy, let’s say so.
And what can I say, I still love the 1st Starcraft. I also liked the sequel quite nicely, especially Raynor’s campaign from Wings of Liberty, but it turned out to be too far from what the original was. The sequel does not have that complexity, that concentrated tension, that grotesqueness and abstraction – that style, finally. And although I am hopelessly bad at the game as an eSports discipline, I even like the gameplay of the 1st part much more – everything in it has weight, value, and even with small forces, if positioned correctly, you can cause colossal damage to the enemy, just like if you have an incompetent command, you can lose everything overnight – Starcraft is a full-fledged bearer of the title of “real-time strategy”, and, at the same time, the title "video games of my life".