StarCraft Battle Chest
Binding : CD-ROM
ProductGroup : Video Games
Manufacturer : Blizzard Entertainment
Brand : Blizzard Entertainment
Label : Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher : Blizzard Entertainment
Model : 4297
Platform : Windows
Studio : Blizzard Entertainment
ReleaseDate : 1999-10-24
Lowest Used Price: USD $13.50
Lowest New Price: USD $17.99
- This includes the hit StarCraft, the incredible StarCraft - Brood War, and two official strategy guides, for hours & hours of space-based action and combat
- Play through 56 mission in 6 unique campaigns, to decide the fate of the galaxy
- Over 175 player maps over a wide variety of battlefields
- Play multiplayer battles over battle.net
- Battle for control of the galaxy with the StarCraft Battle Chest!
The StarCraft Battle Chest is an incredible package of the great StarCraft games, on one DVD!
Amazon.com Review
The full versions of StarCraft and the acclaimed expansion pack Brood War, as well as complete strategy guides for each, make StarCraft: Battle Chest a treasure chest for real-time strategy fans.
Instead of two similarly powered enemies facing off, the three distinct races in StarCraft have unique capabilities and strategies. Everyone still competes in the RTS genre's typical race for resources, but that's the only shared trait. Terrans can move their bulky mechanized bases as necessary, while the reptilian Zerg grow their colonies and warriors from mutating larvae. Meanwhile, the noble Protoss warp in equipment from their home world using psionic powers.
Not only does game maker Blizzard juggle the races' playability and match it with superb art and sound effects, it also weaves together an engrossing three-act plot. Early on, as a Terran magistrate, you spend a breathtaking 30 minutes defending against a Zerg onslaught. As the story unfolds around you, you'll experience the Zerg's hive mentality and decipher the mysterious Protoss by the game's dramatic conclusion.
Missions vary in scope and are effectively framed with dialogue, chapter screens, and in-mission exposition. Multiplayer games are also very well represented by Blizzard's own free Battle.net service. If you'd rather play over a local area network, StarCraft will generously "spawn" up to seven copies so your friends can join in.
In keeping with StarCraft's groundbreaking design, Brood War presents you with three sides of a galactic conflict. Scheming humans, insidious Zerg, and proud Protoss collide again, with stunning new cinematics setting the stage. Old friends and foes and ominous new arrivals give the story a breakneck pace, while a handful of additions to each race's arsenal makes for tense battles. Brood War also features stellar new environments and ambient art, as well as more than 100 additional multiplayer maps.
Some missions require a bit of finesse, breaking the resource-gathering routine while making good use of the new units. Humans now have Valkyrie missile frigates as well as medics who automatically try to heal your grunts. New for the Zerg air force is the acid-spewing Devourer; the new Lurker unit provides heavy-duty (under)ground support. Along with the Corsair fighter, the Protoss reenter the fray with Dark Templar, which can merge to form the devastating Dark Archon. Unfortunately, units old and new still suffer from weak artificial intelligence in path finding.
Real-time strategy games don't get any more epic or any more satisfying. --Jack Gardiner
Amazon.com Product Description
This package includes both Starcraft and Starcraft: Brood Wars plus Prima Publishing's Official Strategy Guides, which offer you strategies, statistics, and details about new worlds to give you the upper hand in gaining control over the galaxy's resources.
Old favorite (2009-06-07)
I had this game a few years ago and I played it all the time. I had lost it at some point and thought it would be fun the play again. It doesn't seem as fun now though. It still has a fun story line, but the fact that you can't change the resolution dulls the quality of game play down quite a bit.
Great Game! (2009-06-05)
This is a fantastic game, I have never played a RTS game before this and I was hooked instantly, gameplay is smooth with no choppiness whatsoever and it can be very challenging. Buy it, you will not be disappointed!
A fun RETRO game (2009-05-17)
This is a retro game - no way around it.
However, I actually enjoy retro games. I actually just got done playing Another World and Fallout 1 & 2 on my laptop.
Having been playing alot of Desktop Tower Defense games lately, I thought I would upgrade to a true RTS game. Starcraft kept coming up high on everyone's favorite list, so I thought I'd give it a try.
The Good:
- This really is a fun game. I'm only on level 9 (out of 30) on the original, but it's fun. Level 8 took me about 4 hrs to finally beat. But some of this is because there's no instructions in the game (see The Bad). After reading the strategy guide for the level I finally figured out what I needed to do. However, I had fun playing the whole time without getting discouraged.
- The graphics aren't all that bad. I was expecting much worse. Though they're not bad, they're not great either. About the same as Fallout 1. I am surprised they haven't been improved by a patch.
- No Easy/Medium/Hard setting. I actually prefer to NOT have an Easy/Medium/Hard setting. On some games my first instinct is to pick Medium, but then I will often get stuck or find it's too easy. And then I wish I had picked something different. This game, you have to really be strategic. Some levels may be too easy and some may be pretty darn hard. If they're hard simply refer to the guide. Which brings up another point. you don't have to keep playing a level until you demolish the CPU. You just need to win. I tried out Middle Earth RTS and your people carry over. I got a few levels in and couldn't beat the level. After hitting a forum, I found out it's impossible to win if you didn't max out your army from the previous levels.
The Bad:
- Video. I run this on my laptop and the screen turns black and the game starts in the upper left part of the window consuming only about 25% of my widescreen laptop. The rest of the screen is black. It's pefectly playable, but awefully small. However, I noticed that when I put my laptop in my docking station connected to an external monitor it goes full-screen. Of course full-screen on a 24" widescreen monitor is not good for this game either. No amount of tweaking to the shortcut seemed to help. The only option is to change the desktop resolution to 800x600 before starting the game which is a major pain. Some Googling and it seems most everyone with a widescreen laptop experiences this. They all refer to a freeware download that let's you run Starcraft in a window. This actually works VERY nice, and was surprised at how much I liked it compared to the smaller screen in the upper left. However, there's comments from some users that after using the program, some people have been banned from Battle.Net since it saw they were using a 3rd party program with Starcraft. I'm not interested in playing SC on Battle.net so that's not a huge deal for me. But really, if you're going to actively sell a game at the game shops, you would think this would be fixed by Blizzard. It's one thing if I found this at a used/discount store, but I didn't. Also, I'm surprised Blizzard hasn't released a patch to smooth out the graphics a bit. It's not horrible, but it's hard to imagine that it would be too hard to fix it up a little better with a patch. Many other games have patches that improve the graphics. Doom, Quake to name a couple.
- No instructions. Really. No instructions. The strategy guide helps, and the first levels help give you a feel for the game, but really? No instructions? This is part of what hurt me on level 8. I wanted to beat it without having to read the strategy guide. In the end, the guide told me what units I should have before I attack, and some of them I had never used, let alone knew HOW to use.
End rating: 4 stars. I'm having fun, and that's what counts for a retro game. Minus 1 star since I have to use 3rd party freeware to get it to run in a window or proportioned correctly on my laptop.
The best game of its time, now a classic (2009-04-10)
When reviewing this product, I must put it into perspective for the time of my review. Starcraft came out in 1998, some 11 years ago now. When it was released, it was a huge hit and won PC game of the year. Now that computers are much faster and graphics have improved, the game can seem a bit out dated to players who have never played it before. For us gamers who remember it from the glory days, we can play it again and still enjoy it, but if your looking for a new game to try, this might be the wrong one for you. Having said that, Korea still has T.V. channels devoted to this game and it is still widely played there.
Starcraft is a futuristic real-time strategy game (that means that you are looking down on units that are under your control). There are three races: Protoss are super-advanced aliens that use incredible technologies and strange energies. Zerg are a primitive dinosaur-like species that use beasts and fleshy creatures. Terran are the human race of the future using technology to aid our fighters in battle. The three races are well balanced and very unique, giving the game excellent replay ability. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
sheer pleasure (2009-04-05)
this is the fourth time i have bought this product...
between my grandson and three other computers...
i have been playing this game since it came out..
i am waiting for the new starcraft 2 to come out..
and it looks like it's going to be better... but this one i have enjoyed for many year along with other players online for along time...
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