Strategy Games – StarCraft II

A few years back a friend of mine introduced me to the world of Real Time Strategy (RTS) games. I had played games like Age of Empires and Command and Conquer before casually but had never delved into competitive multiplayer RTS. At the time, I hadn’t gamed much using a mouse and keyboard and had avoided it over the years due to lack of confidence in my muscle memory. My fingers would get lost across the keyboard and I would have to look down sometimes to find my bearings again. But here I was, playing my first game of StarCraft: Brood War.

I was invited to try out Brood War, this game was decades old and could run on my rather modest laptop. This was perhaps my first mistake of the whole ordeal. Playing one of the most intense RTS games using a touchpad! It sounds painful, and you would be right. It is terrible, if you are gaming on PC get a mouse and keyboard. Alas, I was pretty young at the time and wanted to check out what StarCraft was.

I eventually figured out the game mechanics, macroeconomics and basic micro management. In short, I knew very little. I could build a few marines from my barracks but my friend would silently kill me off using ‘Lurkers’. I had no idea what they were, I just kept seeing these spikes appear that resulted in multiple yells and pixels of blood where my marines once stood guard. In StarCraft there are three main races to play with:

Terran (humans)
Protoss (alien)
Zerg (Swarm)

I was using Terran (T) against his Zerg (Z). A noobs TvZ matchup and my lack of knowledge of the game, leading to my ultimate demise – Multiple Times. (RIP - Thanks for that, a****** lol).

Despite sucking, like really really bad at this. There was something much deeper that I found within these few rounds I played. The skill curve was exponentially high and it left quite a few questions in my head about how to get better at this game. I later revisited this genre once I had built my custom gaming rig and got into PC gaming. Loaded up StarCraft 2 Wings of Liberty and decided to do a bit of studying around the game. It was literally insane. Scouting, build orders, strategic meta and so much more. Even just the core game mechanics and raising meaningful actions per minute (APM) was a task. The pro scene at the time was pretty amazing and I learnt lots from attending local tournaments and watching streams/VODs. StarCraft is a game with a very steep but rewarding learning curve.

The game has switched to a free to play system now, this is probably in an attempt to attract a wider fan base. It was encouraging to tune into the World Championship Series the other evening and find near enough forty thousand strong watching. Some of my favourite casters were still on-board too.

SC2 is currently on its third (and final?) expansion of the game. Order of expansions:

Wings of Liberty > Heart of The Swarm > Legacy of The Void

I am yet to finish of the campaign for the last two games but may do so in coming weeks, I may even stream it on DLive. It’s been a very long time since I’ve played but I get a little spark when people stream or major tournaments running.

If you haven’t played SC before, give it a shot. It’s got a great story and multiple game modes/mods. Blizzard really put the work in and it goes a long way in terms of player experience. There is even a remaster of the original Brood War! So give it a shot and don’t forget to GL HF and GG WP!