When comparing Starcraft vs Artemis, the Slant community recommends Starcraft for most people. In the question“What are the best LAN party PC games?” Starcraft is ranked 9th while Artemis is ranked 26th. The most important reason people chose Starcraft is:
There are three selectable races in the game, Terrans, Protoss and the Zerg. The Terrans being human, while the other two are alien races. What makes the game stand out is that each race feels exceptionally different from one another, each with their own personalities. This makes for a different experience depending on what race has been chosen to play with.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Tons of personality that keeps the story and gameplay interesting and entertaining
There are three selectable races in the game, Terrans, Protoss and the Zerg. The Terrans being human, while the other two are alien races. What makes the game stand out is that each race feels exceptionally different from one another, each with their own personalities. This makes for a different experience depending on what race has been chosen to play with.
Pro Built-in offline LAN support
Being an older game, Starcraft suports offline LAN due to not as many people having internet back when it was released. This is something that many games (including Starcraft 2) regrettably do not feature anymore.
Pro Well balanced race selection keeps the gameplay fair
The game is fairly well balanced, so nobody gets an advantage by choosing a certain race. While each race will have their own unique abilities, the balancing of these abilities allows the game to play even handed, with no real advantage to any race.
Pro This game can be downloaded for free
Blizzard is now offering the original Starcraft (titled Starcraft Anthology) as a free download.
Pro Highly specialized units that are easy to learn but hard to master
This helps keep the game challenging and interesting even at a high level of proficiency.
Pro The focus on social interaction and teamwork creates a highly interactive game
A team of players will have to cooperate in order to play and succeed in this game, making it highly interactive. Each player will need to interact with the rest of their team throughout in order to succeed, making for a very social and party centric game.
Pro Fulfills every fun Hollywood space battle trope you can think of
Artemis is designed around many popular sci-fi tropes, providing an enjoyable sense of fan-service for those who are interested in sci-fi pop culture and movie media.
Pro Creative scripting system where anyone can write a scenario makes for endless gameplay
Users can create their own mission scripts, which they can then share on the developers' forums so that other players can make use of them. This way there is a never ending amount of new gameplay.
Pro A choice of 6 distinctive roles, that allow for a variety of play styles, which keeps the gameplay fresh and interesting
Crew on the bridge consists of a captain and 5 stations.
- Engineering - in charge of energy distribution and the DamCon.
- Science - in charge of scanning and information distribution.
- Weapons - in charge of military equipment.
- Comms - in charge of monitoring communications between enemies and friendly ships.
- Helm - in charge of piloting the ship.
Being that there are a few different roles to choose from it will take many play-throughs to experience them all, which gives good variety to the player, especially when considering that the experience even with the same role can play out differently with a group of different players.
Pro The player vs. player gameplay completely changes up the strategy of the game, making it much more competitive
Version 1.1+ allows for PvP, making Artemis very interactive in a different way from the co-op. This way those that want to be competitive have an outlet of gameplay.
Pro Node Played it
Cons
Con Old and outdated
With the original release dating back to 1998, the game is quite old now and its graphics are not on par with current game offerings.
Con Lacks widescreen support
Starcraft is only available in a 4:3 resolution. However, a hack to make it work in widescreen can be found here.
Con Difficult to play online
Artemis is built with LAN play as its focus, making online multiplayer a bit of a pain as the user has to port forward. However you can use a service such as Tungle and connect to the dedicated Artemis network, which makes the process much easier