25 essential video games every gamer should know

5. StarCraft

This 1995 resource management real-time strategy game is considered a classic PC multiplayer game. Its sequel, StarCraft II, is incredibly popular in South Korea, particularly in the pro-gaming scene. Similar to Counter-Strike 1.6, the modding community has taken to building new gameplay modes and levels. This game has helped Blizzard Entertainment popularize it’s online service Battle.net and remains one of the most popular online games in the world.

Players can choose from one of three races: Terran, Protoss, or Zerg. Each race has its own unique buildings, units, and requirements. Terrans are a human-based race that’s considered the most adaptive of the three races and have an assassin unit called Ghosts who can cloak and call in nuclear strikes. Protoss are an alien race that is highly technologically advanced and require more time and resources to create units but are stronger. Lastly, the Zerg are a group of creatures that mutate as opposed to upgrading and they operate as a hive mind. The goal of each game is to gather resources, build an army, and find and eliminate the other players while also defending your own base. There are several fan-made game modes as well, including tower defense gameplay.

Starcraft II expanded on the traditional gameplay with a more robust campaign and recently, Blizzard has remastered the original StarCraft with better graphics and audio. Both the original StarCraft and the first campaign of StarCraft II are available to play for free, while the remastered StarCraft can be purchased for $14.99.