AzraelCC
Scholar
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2008
- Messages
- 309
Maybe not inferior, but hardly stellar, particularly innovative or complex. It's a good game and a solid piece of fine craftmanship, it's not an awesome ZOMG masterpiece, therefore it gets way too much praise.
So what is an example of a ZOMG masterpiece? Dark Reign? Company of Heroes or the Command and Conquer series? True, Starcraft is not innovative in terms of its features--War Wind did the whole different races before Starcraft, and C&C is definitely fast paced. But they have glaring weaknesses that prevent them from being great.
Starcraft is about skill: maneuvering units WHILE making unit and logistical decisions. And it does so in a fairly elegant manner. The strategic options are simple, true. But they have to be, so that both players can easily react given the pace of the game. Elevated ground means greater range and less damage taken. Flanking can quickly decimate an army. Even the spells are very simple, no number-crunching to optimize while in the heat of battle. A dark swarm simply prevents ALL ranged damage. Blind reduces range to zero. Psi Storm pretty much destroys all tier 1 units unless level 3 in upgrades. This simplicity in cause and effect is not a sign of tactical or strategic limitations, but rather an understanding that the game moves at a fast pace, and thus almost every ability and unit should be clear in its utility.
I guess my point is that SC is a masterpiece given the brilliant game design of multiplayer. Blizzard isn't an innovator, but when it comes to distilling games to their core elements and making these elements work as a whole, few can come close to their design expertise (at least, with SC, Diablo and even WOW. God knows if this is still true after SC2 and Diablo3).
The only RTS that probably equals Starcraft in terms of delivering on so many levels is Total Annihilation, but then its a different beast altogether. It's a strategy game that focuses more on a player adapting to the hundreds of units available for the player, as well as logistics and macro level decisions. But alas, TA has come and gone, and the fun of having new units to play with every few weeks will probably not happen again for quite sometime. TA deserves a sequel more than SC, in my opinion. Supreme Commander just doesn't cut it.
Besides, SC is quite special in that while it's popular, it actually deserves most of the praise it gets.