StarCraft

The Good
Hopes were pinned on Starcraft that it would be the next-generation RTS game, which is not surprising as it came from Blizzard, who have established themselves as one of the great computer game producers making games today. And the play balancing IS top-notch, the cinematics are of Hollywood quality and quite clever, the races are incredibly diverse and their various storyline plights involving. Plus, multiplay on Blizzard's Battle.net can't be beat.

The Bad
Unfortunately, while Starcraft is a very fun game to play, it is hardly revolutionary. It has some serious flaws which keep it from being truly great. It is surprisingly retro in its unit management scheme: you can only queue up a certain amount of units for production, and once they are created have no kind of behavioural commands to allow you to detirmine how they react in battle. As well, the unit AI, especially in pathfinding, is truly attrocious. Why oh why do player units still run around and bump into each other and the scenery when we tell them to go to a position three screen inches away?! Another AI deficiency is the old "my buddy is getting whacked right next to me but damned if I'M gonna get involved" problem.

The Bottom Line
Your typical "gather as many resources as you can and build units as fast as you can" RTS game. Play as the human Terrans with their familiar and durable tanks and fighter aircraft, the Zergs with thier disturbingly organic and rapidly produced creatures, or the enigmatic and powerful Protoss. Each race has its own buildings and units, and the balancing between the three is pretty good, if slightly slanted towards the might of the Protoss. If you're any kind of fan of the real-time strategy genre, you should play this game. Even in spite of its many flaws, there's lot of fun to be had, and an interesting story to get sucked into.