StarCraft: Brood War

aka: SC:BW
Moby ID: 1421
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StarCraft: Brood War is an expansion pack for StarCraft and a direct continuation of its story.

With the demise of the Overmind on the Protoss homeworld at the end of the original game, the Zerg are left leaderless. In an attempt to regain control, a number of cerebrates merge to form a new Overmind. Kerrigan, a human/Zerg hybrid however wants to take control of the Zerg herself. The Protoss are evacuating what is left of their people from their ruined home world. Meanwhile the United Earth Directorate (UED) have learned of the recent developments in the sector. Fearing for the safety of Earth they sent an expeditionary fleet there to secure it.

Brood War brings several changes to the game, altering some gameplay aspects of the game, the most important change being the addition of new units.

The Terrans receive the Valkyrie, a craft with air-to-air fighting capabilities. They also obtain the Medic, which can heal all non-mechanic units and, through upgrades, can use the Restore (remove all ailments on a unit) and Optical Flare (reduce the sight range of an enemy unit to 1) powers.

The Zerg receive the Lurker, obtained after mutating a Hydralisk, which can, and actually must, burrow to attack. They also gain the Devourer, after mutation of a Mutalisk, an air-to-air unit whose acid shots have ability to temporarily lower the enemy defense, allowing other units to do increased damage.

The Protoss receive the Corsair, an air-to-air unit, which has access to the Disruption Web power (which, once cast, prevents targeted enemy units from firing outside of the web). The Dark Templar, already seen in the original StarCraft are now a producable unit. Their main strength lies in their permanent cloaking, allowing them to deliver their strong close combat attacks unharmed. Additionally, in the same manner as two Templar can be merged as an Archon in StarCraft, two Dark Templar can now be merged to obtain a Dark Archon. A Dark Archon has access to several powerful powers: Mind Control (giving permanent control of the targeted unit), Maelstrom (temporarily rendering all non-mechanical units within the target area unable to do anything) and Feedback (removes from a target unit the amount of energy it has available for special powers and inflicts it this amount as physical damage).

Besides the new units, some units already featured in StarCraft can now be upgraded in certain areas. For instance, the Terran Goliath can have the range of its ground-to-air missiles be tremendously increased. Similarly, the Zerg Ultralisk can now receive speed and armor upgrades.

Other changes include a better AI and rebalanced existing units, plus about 100 new multiplayer maps.

Three new campaigns are available. In order, a Protoss campaign featuring 8 missions, a Terran campaign also featuring 8 missions and a Zerg campaign comprising 10 missions (plus a bonus mission if some requirements are met in mission 9).

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Credits (Windows version)

216 People (176 developers, 40 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 29 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 146 ratings with 3 reviews)

A Blizzard Hit!

The Good
Almost everything, including-

Graphics- Well, okay, these could have been nicer, but they're pretty good on their own. I still like to watch little Protoss Dragoons drown in their own liquid!

Sound- It's kind of repetitive, but it's fun to hear each unit respond as you click it, and it's cool how if you select multiple units, the highest ranked one responds.

Gameplay- Playing the single-player campaign is fun, but NOTHING beats Blizzard's Battle.Net. Its reasonably easy to get used to, if a unit isn't available, it quickly explains why, and the first mission in single-player campaigns is completely tutorial.

Replay Value- 73 out of 10. This game has so many maps it isn't funny, and if you go onto Battle.Net (for a one-time setup fee of- FREE excluding regular ISP costs) there's new maps coming out every day, even now! And if you're tired of playing classic games, go to use map settings for awesome games like Sunken Defense and my own Fast and Free build!

Controls- They're easy with a mouse. Add some hotkeys, and a five-year-old could play!

The Bad
Barely anything, but if I have to point something out, I guess it gets a little repetitive. It's always (at least in my case) build a bunch of units, attack, get killed, go back to step one. Then again, I'm not a great player, I'm just a fan...

The Bottom Line
Blizzard strikes again! This game is really a great one. If you liked Command & Conquer, you'll love this. The fact that it has THREE sides (Zerg- bug-like things, Protoss- Advanced Aliens, and Terran- Humans) and one of the sides (Protoss) has mind control abilities and the ability to call a group of units from anywhere to a certain spot instantly, and the ability to cloak anything around it (uh-oh, I'm revealing too many of my secrets...) makes it a GREAT game, that I recommend to everyone!

Windows · by Paul Brown (16) · 2002

GREAT!

The Good
THIS GAME IS THE GREATEST STRATEGY IVE EVER PLAYED SINCE DIABLO!!!!!! WOW what can i say.Theres about 1 million different maps you have. There are 3 groups . ZERG(BEASTS, CANNIBALS) Protoss (a little more advanced more like robots) And finally Terran (human)

The Bad
I didnt like....................umm .................. the music? they could have more groups but they will in starcraft 2.

The Bottom Line
A MUST GET THE BATTLE.NET THING IS CRAAAZY

Windows · by Amirooo Aliooo (14) · 2001

An amazing RTS expansion, way better than its Warcraft cousins.

The Good
What I like about this game is that it's such an open-ended game. Each unit and building can be used in multiple ways, so the possibilities are practically endless. The multiplayer is just amazing. I also liked that there are three different races and each of them have different advantages and disadvantages. I liked the part where you had to mine 2 different types of resources, rather than 1 type or 6 different types, it's the perfect amount.

The Bad
There are a couple of small balance issues, I also didn't like when the other players lagged and slowed down the game (in multiplayer). I didn't like that the computer could simultaneously control 30 units and such. The last thing I didn't like is that the game can sometimes run slowly if there are other programs running in the background.

The Bottom Line
This game is an open-ended game with multiplayer, and single player story, although, I would like to see a multiplayer story mode in a future release. [Some information on this game was provided by my good friend Colin]

Windows · by Mattz1010 (14) · 2004

Trivia

Colour Palette

Blizzard had to change some player colors for two of the new tilesets included in this expansion set. For the Tundra tileset, they changed the white player to green, because the color did not show up well on the mini-map. They did the same for the Desert tileset for the brown player. The color of the text displayed in the Tundra tileset was also changed from white to light blue, for the same reason.

References

One of the game's heroes, Artanis, can be read backwards as singer Sinatra.

Secret Music Track

StarCraft: Brood War contains one secret music track. It is activated by typing radio free zerg anytime during the Zerg campaign.

Unit Responses

As in many Blizzard games, continually clicking on units will have them utter special comments. Clicking on Lieutenant Duran results in this dialogue: "My name is Duran" "I already told you my name it's Duran, DURAN!" "What's so funny?" "Please, please tell me now..." "... is there something I should know?" The last two comments are actually the first line of the chorus from the Duran Duran song Is There Something I Should Know?

One of Artanis' responses when clicking on him repeatedly is "Stop poking me!", which is what the Orc Peon would say in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. Another of his statements is "This is not Warcraft in space!", which is a reference to the repeated criticism on the initial alpha version of StarCraft, which looked like Orcs in space to many initial viewers.

Game Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 1999 (Issue #177) – Best Add-on of the Year
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2000 - #48 in Readers All-Time Top 50 Games Poll* PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2000 - Best Add-On in 1999

Character Awards

  • Kerrigan was picked as the All-Time Greatest Game Villain by GameSpot users in 2010, defeating Darth Vader in the Final, with 60% of the votes. After being selected by the GameSpot staff as one of the 54 villains to make it directly into the First Round, her other "victims" were Gruntilda (with 77.9%) in the First Round, the Pac-Man Ghosts (57.8%) in the Second Round, Sweet Tooth (67.1%) in the Last Sixteen, Bowser (51.8%) in the Quarterfinals, and The Joker (55.2%) in the Semifinals.

  • Also in 2010, the IGN staff selected her as #17 in their Top 100 Videogame Villains classification.

Information also contributed by Ajan, CaptainCanuck, PCGamer77 and Rambutaan.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by MAT.

Macintosh added by Belboz.

Additional contributors: Warlock, Jony Shahar, ~~, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, Cavalary.

Game added May 11, 2000. Last modified March 3, 2024.