Starcraft 64 (Nintendo 64) Review

Starcraft huh? Well now this great game is here on the 64. So now you can play until all the land in the world will be yours to lead, and/or to rule with an iron fist! To tell you the truth, I thought this game was going to suck! I did not even give it a chance, but now I wish I could go back in time and slap my self like a red headed stepchild.

Starcraft 64 is so much like the real game that it is seems that the original should have been for this system. You start out with 5 workers and one command base. The object of the game is to destroy all the enemies of your race, but when you start out all you're worried about is to get as many minerals as you can. Minerals are like money but they grow on trees in way. The workers are sent out to get minerals so you can build up your land. The workers then are able to build things, like storage buildings, (you will need these to move up your max number of people higher) or barracks so you can start to organize your army. There are tons of things of you can make but you will need a lot of mineral and gas, you have to build a refinery on a gas pot to harvest gas. As you build up your space and civilization of terror, you can expand and conquer other lands, and races.

There are 3 races to choose from, the Terrans are the humans, and the race I like the most. They have the ability to lift most of their equipment out of harms way, if you're attacked and not able to defend your base. The Protoss are odd looking creatures that have shields to help protect their kind, but it takes long a time for workers to build there needs. The last race are insect like creatures called Zergs, that instead of building there needs they reproduce their equipment. In this way I mean that all their workers and warriors are hatched, and there bases and other stuff are grown till they can mature. The Zergs are the weakest but it takes no time for them to build their equipment, so they attack in swarms and attack in their numbers!

There are several ways to play the game, in one-player you play a story line, or you can just play and destroy your foes. There are also a lot of scenarios you can play like stop these people, or build this and that etc.  There is also a football game were the players and crowd get down and dirty on the gridiron! When you plug in a second controller and have a friend, you can duke it out with each other, or team up to destroy the bad little monkeys that attack you! You can have up to 4 or 5 enemies you can fight depending
on what you're playing.  When you stick your 4-meg memory expansion pack into you system you can play 3 other episodes and have the extra vehicles that came out for the PC expansion, blood war.

Graphics
The Graphics in Starcraft 64 is the best and worst part of the game at the same time. The bad part is that the people look so small and have no detail along with the other stuff. While at one point they are bad they are so funny to watch. When you get in a battle you actually feel like you're watching a real war! A good example is when a person or structure is shot down, they blow up and there guts spill all over the floor! The cool part is that even thought the graphics are not the best, the war scenarios makes it the best because each side can have up to 200 units or people in one game! So take all the units to battle and you will really have the equivalent of a world war 2 battle! Even though I said the graphics are the worst part in the game they arent bad. Everything else in the game is better so the graphics just happened to be beat out by everthing else!

Gameplay
The gameplay is about the funniest thing I have seen in a real-time command game. You control all the units and tell them what to do and build. Each structure and unit are different throughout the game. The workers can only build and mine, while the medics can only heal or blind the bad guys, or like another character, the marines who only fight or scout to the dropships that only drop-off troops or other units to different areas of the map. Now speaking of maps; there are so many maps you can choose from, each with different terrain and different obstacles that help or cripple your attacks and
defenses!

Sound
The sound is pretty good for a 64 game. There is lot of speech but it can get annoying and repetitive after a while. The music is good and sets the mood of the level, and the building and fires, to the people fighting and die make the game tops!

Value
The Value is the best in the whole game. You can play over and over again. Maybe you will actually play this game for a year instead of 2 months like I do! You will want to play over and over again to see everything the game has to offer, and to master the game so you will play for hours.

Pros

• Cool battles
• Lots of maps
• Lots to do
• A hell of a lot to play with
• Your friend can play with you
• More than one race
• Lots of speech (pretty big thing for a Nintendo 64 game)
• The game is easy to get used to....But expect to get the hell beat out of you!

Cons

• Too DAMN Hard!
• Frame rate can be noticed, but very lightly
• The computer opponents are to cruel!
• Need the expansion pack to play 2-player

Overall

This game was great and I enjoyed playing it a lot. If you like games like this and have a Nintendo 64, you need to get this. You will love playing it and when a friend comes over you can have even more fun. But my advice would be to build as fast as you can, and to get the expansion pack, you will need it!

Graphics: Gameplay: Sound: Value: Overall:

8 10 8 10 9

Starcraft Review by Big_T