Developed by Blizzard following the sucessful WarCraft series, Starcraft is undoubtably one of the most innovative and popular RTS games to hit the market. Introducing for the first time three races all completly unique yet perfectly balanced, this made for some fantastic gameplay with zergling rushes, to siege tank massacres. With starcraft having such a cult following there are bountiful mods available from simplistic character changes to new scenarios, and challenges to face. The fact that Starcraft has been game of the year sums up just how good this game is, so crank it up if you are not already playing it!
Cool story, a lot of attention to detail, very nice landscapes. Much user-friendly campaign editor and scripts. Attention to balance in the long term (although there still are underwhelming units like the Scout or Valkyrie)
The only thing is that developers got a bit lazy with the special effects... many weapons have the same explosion, without being the same attack weapon (ghost and tank and vulture grenade for example - I actually took like fifteen years to notice the obvious :P). This is compensated with sounds I think.
On the cons, it is way hard to mod. And yet maps can be made like mini-mods. It actually spawned even the MOBA genre with "Aeon of Strife" map.
Overall, superb! (even if iopriginally wh40k ripoff)
The sequel doesn't even match it. Too generic.