In some ways, like general balance and its de-emphasis on death balls, the original is still superior to the sequel. “I also found myself missing some of the better features of StarCraft 2, like Protoss warp-ins and the ability to cue up building orders. Trying to select 12 specific units out of a larger group rarely gets you the result you wanted, and you still have to open a separate menu to see mission objectives in the campaign. Certain aspects of the interface haven’t aged that well either. The unit pathfinding is still frustratingly bad, especially for large units like Protoss Dragoons and Zerg ultralisks. The downside of Blizzard’s dedication to reproducing a better-looking version of the original StarCraft is that it didn’t fix any of the long-standing quirks. And most importantly for me, the hundreds of amazing and hilarious custom maps that used to take up most of my StarCraft time are compatible with the Remaster, and it’s never hard to find a variety of maps to play. Matchmaking, at least in these first few days, has been more stable and much, much quicker than ranked play in StarCraft 2 currently is. A functional improvement over the original version is that ranked multiplayer has added a visible ELO number that goes up and down after each win or loss.

Campaign missions are preceded by new, full-3D talking portraits in the ready rooms, each of which has also gotten a spectacular makeover. “That new art is applied to all of the modes from the 1998 original and its Brood War expansion, which have been expertly updated. And with Dynamic Lighting turned on, the glow effect on an archon’s attacks actually casts light on nearby units. Modifications to how terrain is rendered give a depth and sense of place to aged maps. Zooming in - which is now a thing you can do! - lets you count the spines on a hydralisk’s head. Even common units like Marines pop against the background, easily mistakable for full 3D models in their shining, bulbous armor. Other than that, the amazing campaign and competitive gameplay are almost completely unchanged, which is exactly what the esports community wants, but slightly annoying for casual players accustomed to modern conveniences like working pathfinding AI.When I say StarCraft Remastered looks really good, I don’t need to qualify that with: “Good for a 19-year-old game.” Blizzard’s art team has created units and maps that are about as detailed as I could hope for from a sprite-based isometric style. It takes an all-time classic RTS and makes it look like my fond memories of it, rather than how it actually looked. Booting up StarCraft Remastered isn’t too far off from living that nostalgia fantasy. Imagine that you could actually buy a working pair of those fabled rose-colored glasses people are always talking about.

Starcraft remastered kerrigan