It looks about this good for real.
It sort of sounds like “Flashdance” and it sort of sounds like an inappropriate word, but either way, it suits our purposes just fine.
Earlier today, we played a match of Stracraft, and lost. As shocking as this fact may be, what’s more shocking is that we’re starting to get a little bit tired of it. Not angry, or nerd-ragey, just tired, so we decided to go trolling the web to see what Stracraft II alternatives we could find.
As it happens, Starcraft is a popular choice for makers of Flash-based games, which gave us a chance to try out a few interesting iterations of unbridled creativity.
The first are a whole of host of little games that basically consist of shooting ever-increasing amount of “race X” with your “Siege Tank/Hydralisk/Stalker” until you get overwhelmed. They’re easy, fun and result in your inevitable death, but they kill a few minutes at work.
Next, we found a Starcraft II tower defence game, aptly named Tower Defence. It follows a long line of similar games that feature a curving roadway, multiple tower types, and an plethora of enemies to kill. The page itself is a bit buggy, but the game is a great deal of fun, at least up until you get overwhelmed and swarmed under by the ravening hordes.
The most interesting Starcraft-related Flash game that we came across was a Starcraft RPG. Apparently created as an homage to the first game, it features 5-10 hours of gameplay, classic graphics, and a truly terrible interface. It’s obvious the creator took some time in producing it, however, as it also comes complete with save points, the ability to construct units, resources, and original voice-overs.
While the text is in terrible, broken English and the controls are sketchy at best, this one rose easily to the top of the heap as being the most unique and engaging. Although it comes with multiple difficulty settings, it does seem to be stuck on “shoot-you-in-the-face” hard no matter what you do.
It kept telling us to recruit more units, but we couldn’t figure out how and instead blundered poor Jim Raynor into combat with two Zerglings. He lost.
Another interesting thing to note about this game, and perhaps it was just our version, but they stuck poor Jim Raynor into a pink Marine suit. Now, not even that could limit his toughness, but it was still somewhat of a disconnect, and sure didn’t help camouflage him on the barren desert rock we commanded him to scout out.
Regardless of his fashion choices, its apparent that Blizzard’s game continues to live on in the Flash world, and will continue to do so long after the release of Starcraft II. That’s a good thing. For every one hundred or so commonplace shoot-em-up Flash games out there, someone manages to come up with something original and unique like this Starcraft RPG.
If only we’d been able to figure out how to build a Siege Tank. Even pink doesn’t stop those bad boys…or girls, perhaps.
Plus, it would give Jim Raynor the opportunity to say something like – “just a Siege Tank girl on a Saturday night, lookin’ for the fight of her life”.
Oh that’s right. We quoted Flashdance.
