Game Review of Brood War
   Brood War is my favoriate real-time stragegy (RTS) game which is an expansion version of StarCraft published by Blizzard Enterntain in 1998. The wars happened in the remote galaxy where 3 races, Terran, Protoss, and Zerg, fought for survival. The history of the war is quite long and the background story is rather complicate. In short,  in this episode according to the official story, Protoss seeks to reunite with their Dark Templar brethren and begins the rebuilding of their homeworld; Terran Emperor attempts to extend his power to outside human colonies; Zerg's Queen of Blade wants to revenge Terran Emperor.

The 3 races have inherent different characteristics in terms of the appearance styles, fighting strategies, and units and buildings. Terran is a human being empire. They use clone soldiers and mechanic weapons in the battle, such as tanks and aircrafts. The character of Terran is the balance in attack and defense ability. The cost of the Terran units are low, what's more, the medic can cure the soldiers, the SCV machine can repaire the mechanic units. So after a rigorous fight, you may find Terran doesn't lose any unit.  Protoss is a mysterious race with powerful magics, high tech weapons, and high costs. Protoss recruits experienced professional warriors and magicians who have supreme fighting skills as well as high recruiting fee. The character of Protoss is expensive unit with outstanding assaulting ability and strong armor. Zerg is an antique race in the universe. Individual Zerg creature is vulnerable but they have strong reproduce ability at very low cost. So even you killed hundreds of zergs , you may find more and more zergs rush at you as tides. 

Compared with other RTS games, the most prominent two advantages of Brood War are the balanced fighting system and the moderate system requirement. The design of the races and units are well balanced, although thousand of people have played millions of games, there are no dominated races or tactics that guarantee winning and no rubbish units. You can rush your enemy at the first several minutes with 6 zerglings. You can command your soldiers, tanks, and aircrafts mixed force to assault. You can sneek-raid the enemy base with invisiable dark templars. There is no limit for your imagination. The system requirements, including processing speed and the network connection bandwidth, are very moderate. It can comforablly run in a PentiumII at 200Mhz with 1Mbps network connection even if there are several hundred units moving in the map. I am very curious how to synchronize up to 8 players in the game in real-time, which need to send and receive the state information of every unit including the motions, ammo, and the interactions. 

The drawback is the long learning curve.  You need to spend tens of hours to get familar the characteristic of the units. Afterwards, you may need several months practicing and several hundreds of games to learn the conventional tactics before you can fight with a veteran player. Sometimes this may make the newers frustrated.

Brood war is one of the official games of the worldcybergames (WCG) competition. Some professional game players live on the prize of the competition, they can hit the keyboard and mouse 200-300 times per minute, amazing.

Overall, if you enjoy challenging other talent players worldwide and not merely kill some leisure time, Brood War is a good choice for you.

  • Basic Information 
  • Game Title
 Brood War
  • Company
 Blizzard Enterntain .
  • Type of game
 Real-time strategy
  • Price 
 Mac/PC CD-ROM $19.99
  • Minimum stated hardware requirements
 Pentium 90 or higher, 16MB RAM, DirectX-Compatible SVGA Card, Microsoft-compatible Mouse
  • Minimum reasonable hardware requirements
  • Game Summary  
  • Quick Overview
 A real-time strategy game, 3 intergalactic races, Terran, Protoss and Zerg fight for survival. กก
  • Story Line
 The official story line is as follows, 1) Protoss seeks to reunite with their Dark Templar brethren and begins the rebuilding of their homeworld; 2) Terran Emperor attempts to extend his power to outside human colonies; 3) Zerg's Queen of Blade wants to revenge Terran Emperor.  
  • Player's Role 
 Mine the resources including the minerals and gas, develop the base and build the troops, annihilate the enemy's buildings and lead his people to victory.
  • Installation
 CD/ROM installationกก
  • User Interface
 Mouse plus keyboard. Mouse left button to select the units, right button to specify the destination. Plenty of hotkeys
  • Game Play
 Control the units and build buildings. Design adequete strategy to win the war againest the oppenents.
  • Scoring 
 Scoring is not important, while, there are some statistics shown at the end of the game, such as how many units killed, how many building destroyed, et al. 
  • Artwork 
 Quite impressive exotic style. 
  • Sound and Music 
 Exciting music and realistic sound effects, including the explosion, conversation of human, and  roar of the zergs
  • Special Features
 Blizzard provides official Battle.net for the player from worldwide to compete with each other. You can setup your own battle.net in lan. Another interesting feature is the replay function. You can record the entire battle and study your opponent's control and learn their tactics.
  • Manual
 Plenty of on-line resources.
  • Bugs
 The bugs are fixed with patches from Blizzard.
  • Game Review 
  • What is good/fun about the game and why? 
 The fun comes from the cooperation and competition with other human players. Computers' AI are always inferior to that of smart human players.
  • What is bad/not fun about the game and why? 
 The only drawback I think is the long learning curve. You need to spend tens of hours to get familar the characteristic of the units. Afterwards, you may need several months practicing and several hundreds of games to learn the conventional tactics before you can fight with a veteran player. 
  • How does it compare to similar games in the same genre? 
 There are several other famous RTS games, such as Red Alert, Age of Empire. They are confined by the realistic settings, no flying machines in the stone age, man only with sword unable to fight with man with pistol.
  • Why is it better or worse than similar games?  
 The advantage of Brood War is their balanced design of the units. There are some simple and prevailing strategies in Red Alert, build the tank factories as much as you can, that is it (Red Alert fans may not agree). However, for Brood War , people are keeping find new fighting tactics even the game has been published for 7 years.
  • What is the appropriate audience for this game? 
 Age range from 12 to 30.
  • How does it do in terms of the issues raised in the talk on game design?
  • Summary
  • Highlights 
 Imaginary background, balanced fighting design, incredible low system requirements.
  • Rating 
 Top 1 RTS game up to now (a little bit subjective)
  • Low Points
 Hard for newers and slow learning curve.
  • Epilogue 
  • Web resources related to this game 
 Official website: http//www.blizzard.com/broodwar/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starcraft:_Brood_War
WCG2006: http://www.worldcybergames.com/wcg2006/wc_officialgames.asp

General Game Review Form
Basic criteria 1-5 stars
Fun Player's experience is the central of the game. Whether the players enjoy the game and feel amused. This item is totally subjective.  
Low system load The game should run comfortably on main stream computers. Running smoothly at least together with one MP3 player application deserve 4 stars. No lag and no delay is 3 stars. 
Complete game procedure The game procedure should be reasonable and complete in common sense. Welcome page, highest score statistics, and allowing continue playing after the player revive will deserve 4 stars.
User friendly manual A comprehensive user friendly on-line manual for gameplay will be 5 stars. The explanation of the player control is 3 stars.
Convenient player control The user control should be convenient and comfortable. Allow players to re-define the keys will be a 4 stars game.
Easy to learn Whether the player can learn the gameplay in a short period of time. For arcade game, master the gameplay in a hour will be 4 stars.
Appropriate difficulty Whether the game is too easy for most of players or too difficult and make the players frustrated and struggle. Allowing the player select different difficult levels will be a 5 stars game. Repetitive gameplay will be 2 stars.
Advanced criteria 1-5 stars
Novelty If there are new elements or interesting points in the game design.
Graphics Whether the visual appearances of the game are impressive and stylish.
Audio and Sound Whether the game supports audio and sound effects.
Multiple players Whenther the game supports multiple players. Allow the players to compete with each other will be 4 stars. Support network will be 5 stars.
Easy to extend If the game design is easy to extend for additional features.