COMMENTARY: After 21 Years, I Finally Beat ‘StarCraft: Brood War’

I finally did it. Twenty-one years after its release, and multiple attempts, I finally beat StarCraft: Brood War.

I really like StarCraft and the classic Warcraft games. Warcraft II was the reason I got into PC gaming. It’s the game that motivated me to assemble my first desktop PC, complete with Windows 3.1 and a 250-megabyte hard-drive. StarCraft came out a few years later. I didn’t take to it at first, thinking it was just Warcraft in space, but it grew on me a lot over time.

So if I like StarCraft so much, why did it take me so long to beat Brood War? I’ve thought about that and I’m not exactly sure. Part of the reason could be because the game is difficult – more difficult than any of the Warcraft RTS games.

Also, after spending so much time with Warcraft, it took me awhile to adjust to how desolate and dystopian StarCraft is by comparison. Warcraft II and Warcraft III have a lot of color in them. The world of Azeroth, as war-torn as it is, is a more inviting place than the Zerg-ravaged worlds you find in Brood War.

Also, I had all my games stolen – twice. I went a long period of time without having StarCraft in my possession after buying it.

However, when StarCraft: Remastered was announced in 2017, I pre-ordered it, determined to make this the time I would finally beat Brood War – and it looked like I was going to. I have a 4K laptop that really takes advantage of the 4K resolutions Blizzard added to the game. You really see how talented Blizzard’s artists were even back then. The level of detail on all the sprites is still impressive. I powered through the Protoss and Terran campaigns in Brood War, and most of the Zerg campaign.

Then I ran into a level called To Slay The Beast, and it broke me. I tried repeatedly, but my speed was nowhere close to what is required to beat it. The AI is relentless and I was completely outmatched. So as close as I was to finishing it, I did something I rarely do in a video game: I gave up.

However, months later, I ran into something unexpected:

I had been reading an article on Microsoft’s history in video games on a certain website. It was a very lengthy piece, and it was talking about how the original Age of Empires was made, how it compared to ‘90s RTS games in general, and how the (at the time) fledgling Ensemble Studios was trying to set it apart from WarCraft II and Command & Conquer. One of the things they talked about was the AI. They mentioned that in WarCraft II, the AI cheats. Meaning, even though the player has to deal with fog of war, and has to scout the map to find out where the enemy is, the enemy AI always knows where you are on the map, and how they didn’t want that in Age of Empires.

That stopped me short. All those years playing Warcraft and I didn’t know that. That’s a big advantage. I felt a little betrayed.

That got me thinking: if that’s true, then it’s probably true for StarCraft as well. It definitely had to be true of the To Slay The Beast level I had gotten stuck and given up over – because the enemy is descending on you within five minutes of starting the mission. There’s no way the AI could know where you are that quickly unless it was cheating – and now I’m thinking about cheating myself using cheat codes to finish the game.

So I did. I can’t think of a game I’ve ever cheated to finish before, but I did it with Brood War, and didn’t feel one pang of guilt over it. I used an invincibility code for all my units. None of them could die, or even take damage. That included my building units as well. That allowed me to take my time building my base like I wanted as the enemy sent scores of units at me, and I laughed at their futile, pathetic attempts to thwart their own destruction. Then I built up a massive force of Zerg Guardians and Devourers, and methodically decimated every pixel of the enemy base, and every combat unit I could find. After how much trouble that mission gave me, I took my time, and enjoyed myself more than I thought I would, given I was using a cheat code to do it.

I felt like Darth Sidious in Star Wars: Episode I.

My problem with the classic Warcraft and StarCraft series, as much as I love them, is that, when you play single-player, the games do a great job of showing you the systems, how to build a town, and engage in combat – but it doesn’t do a great job of giving you the skills you need to get really good at the game, because that requires speed. There are no systems in place to give you incentive to replay missions and build your APM (actions per minute), other than going into the multiplayer arena and getting wrecked.

I’ve never understood why Blizzard’s classic RTS games don’t have a ranking system of some sort to give the single-player missions replay value. After every mission, the game will give you a breakdown of your statistics of how you did on that mission. It’s nice information to have, but it doesn’t really help you. It would be nice to get some sort of a ranking based on those statistics. That would help the player ‘git gud’ for the harder levels in the campaign, and help prepare them for multiplayer.

For example, in Nintendo’s Advance Wars series, there’s a ranking system. After you beat a mission, you’ll get a letter-ranking based on your battle efficiency. A higher ranking allows you to unlock extra content in the game. This provides incentive to the player to replay single-player missions for a higher ranking. Classic Warcraft and StarCraft don’t have that, and they should – or something comparable.

So it’s finally done, and now, I can finally, finally jump into StarCraft II. I’m a decade late, but looking forward to it. Hopefully it won’t take me another 21 years to complete it as well.