Oh ye Blizzard faithful, the day of reckoning has finally come!
So WarCraft III has apparently already pre-sold some ungodly number of copies at this point, so it seems almost beyond the realm of my capacity to have any affect on whether or not most of you will buy the game or not. Regardless, it's my job and I'm opinionated so you all get to read it nonetheless. However, unlike any past reviews I may or may not have done regarding other Blizzard titles, this one probably won't warrant the same amount of hate mail flooding into the office. Yes I like WarCraft III! Sorry to those of you who were just waiting for the opportunity to say mean things about my mother, but you're out of luck. Blizzard has crafted a finely tuned real time strategy game here with production values up the wazoo. There's not a whole lot you can seriously complain about with a straight face, but I'll try anyway. I'm a complainer by trade after all.
WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos is not the same game that was originally presented to us three years ago. It has since undergone both small and rather large changes to become the final product that it is today. In its final stage, it comes to us as a little bit more than an RTS. Some of the little bits are some light role-playing elements that really manage to help the single player game along by connecting you to the main characters that play a part in the story. In multiplayer they can turn the tide of the battle with a click of the button in some cases. The kicker is that in order for them to be of any use at all, you have to get them out into battle to gain experience points. It's a nifty way to do things and turns to a bunch of fun and frustration depending on which end of the stick you're standing. The heroes you'll find in the single player campaigns all represent a type of hero that you'll find in multiplayer. You'll get to learn their awesome set of spells for when you finally get to jump into multiplayer and test out your skills against human opponents.
The other bits that I originally had thought would be another addition to the RTS mold are the quests. But really they turn out to be added objectives. They are done in a more RPGish manner where they're a little random and off the storyline, but basically are just added objectives that you find in other RTSs as well. The main difference is that some of these are optional quests designed mainly to give you a little more to do in a map and to help your hero level up a little more before the real combat begins.
The campaigns make good use of the quests, both optional and mandatory, to build up the believable world of WarCraft yet again. While it's certainly not the most original property on the face of the earth (meaning that elves and orcs and the undead get used so much in fantasy it's like watching a dead horse beat itself), the characters and situations managed to be believable enough in a mature enough story to keep me interested. I have to say though that some of what happened during the game and some of the characters seemed to have some weird mirror world thing going on with those in Starcraft. Regardless, it works well. Throughout the game the story will progress in the action and in the cutscenes, both rendered and real time. I actually liked the little interludes in the game that progressed the story, although I can understand how some people might think they go on to long and break up the action. For me they managed to ground me not only in the conflict but in the fact that it takes place in this funny little brightly colored 3D world, which almost ended up making the pre-rendered cutscenes seem a little out of place.
Before you all start thinking I'm a lunatic, I really did love those cutscenes, even with the change in style from the game itself. They're absolutely beautiful and you'll find yourself watching them repeatedly to take in all of the little details. I've said it before and I'll say it again, when you have little rewards like this to look forward to on a job well done, it's easier to keep plugging away at the enemy until you get that reward you so richly deserve at the end of each campaign.
The campaigns themselves are laid out well. You'll move from controlling the Humans to the Undead to the Orcs and finally the Night Elves on your way to saving the world from total destruction at the hands of the Burning Legion. Not all is as you might expect when you load up the game. There'll be enough plot twists to keep you guessing, even if you guess right most of the time, and enough moral ambiguity on each of the race's parts to make you wonder sometimes which one of the races are the bad guys. Sure the Undead seem like a good culprit, but really I think they're just misunderstood.
The levels will be fairly familiar to anyone that played WarCraft II or even Starcraft. Most of the levels will involve you razing at least one outpost while protecting your own. Inside of this major set, you'll have some side objectives to disguise the fact that you're trying to destroy the enemy towns such as gathering 15,000 lumber when Night Elf Tree of Life (the main Night Elf building) is worth 3,000 lumber. Of course you're going to go raze the entire town when you find it, it's just too hard to resist. There are a few of these types of missions like this, which add a little more spice to the immortal RTS equation. You'll also get levels where you'll run through a dungeon killing enemies and saving friendly units that will bolster your ranks as you go. You'll have to find keys and open doors and all of that jazz as well. As you can see, there's not a ton here in terms of main objectives that will be completely new to any RTS buffs out there. But it's done well enough that you either won't notice or won't care.
Of course, much of that credit could also be given to the excellent unit and race design. Each of the races have been tuned and tweaked and created with a special delicacy in mind. Each of the races has clear advantages and disadvantages from each other. Take the Orcs. Even their small units pack a punch, but they take more food units to keep around so your army will be smaller. Or the Night Elves that have excellent ranged attacks, but little to no melee attacks leaving them open for a serious whooping if enemies get in close.
The races are all pretty unique from each other in both look and function. The graphics throughout the entire title are truly amazing and really need to be lauded. The races and individual units, from the actual model to the interesting portraits that are almost caricatures of the units, are really alive with personality. My favorite, as usual, is the sickest of them, the Undead. All of them have style in droves however and you'll surely find yourself zooming in on several occasions to get a better look.
WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos is not the same game that was originally presented to us three years ago. It has since undergone both small and rather large changes to become the final product that it is today. In its final stage, it comes to us as a little bit more than an RTS. Some of the little bits are some light role-playing elements that really manage to help the single player game along by connecting you to the main characters that play a part in the story. In multiplayer they can turn the tide of the battle with a click of the button in some cases. The kicker is that in order for them to be of any use at all, you have to get them out into battle to gain experience points. It's a nifty way to do things and turns to a bunch of fun and frustration depending on which end of the stick you're standing. The heroes you'll find in the single player campaigns all represent a type of hero that you'll find in multiplayer. You'll get to learn their awesome set of spells for when you finally get to jump into multiplayer and test out your skills against human opponents.
The other bits that I originally had thought would be another addition to the RTS mold are the quests. But really they turn out to be added objectives. They are done in a more RPGish manner where they're a little random and off the storyline, but basically are just added objectives that you find in other RTSs as well. The main difference is that some of these are optional quests designed mainly to give you a little more to do in a map and to help your hero level up a little more before the real combat begins.
The campaigns make good use of the quests, both optional and mandatory, to build up the believable world of WarCraft yet again. While it's certainly not the most original property on the face of the earth (meaning that elves and orcs and the undead get used so much in fantasy it's like watching a dead horse beat itself), the characters and situations managed to be believable enough in a mature enough story to keep me interested. I have to say though that some of what happened during the game and some of the characters seemed to have some weird mirror world thing going on with those in Starcraft. Regardless, it works well. Throughout the game the story will progress in the action and in the cutscenes, both rendered and real time. I actually liked the little interludes in the game that progressed the story, although I can understand how some people might think they go on to long and break up the action. For me they managed to ground me not only in the conflict but in the fact that it takes place in this funny little brightly colored 3D world, which almost ended up making the pre-rendered cutscenes seem a little out of place.
Before you all start thinking I'm a lunatic, I really did love those cutscenes, even with the change in style from the game itself. They're absolutely beautiful and you'll find yourself watching them repeatedly to take in all of the little details. I've said it before and I'll say it again, when you have little rewards like this to look forward to on a job well done, it's easier to keep plugging away at the enemy until you get that reward you so richly deserve at the end of each campaign.
The campaigns themselves are laid out well. You'll move from controlling the Humans to the Undead to the Orcs and finally the Night Elves on your way to saving the world from total destruction at the hands of the Burning Legion. Not all is as you might expect when you load up the game. There'll be enough plot twists to keep you guessing, even if you guess right most of the time, and enough moral ambiguity on each of the race's parts to make you wonder sometimes which one of the races are the bad guys. Sure the Undead seem like a good culprit, but really I think they're just misunderstood.
The levels will be fairly familiar to anyone that played WarCraft II or even Starcraft. Most of the levels will involve you razing at least one outpost while protecting your own. Inside of this major set, you'll have some side objectives to disguise the fact that you're trying to destroy the enemy towns such as gathering 15,000 lumber when Night Elf Tree of Life (the main Night Elf building) is worth 3,000 lumber. Of course you're going to go raze the entire town when you find it, it's just too hard to resist. There are a few of these types of missions like this, which add a little more spice to the immortal RTS equation. You'll also get levels where you'll run through a dungeon killing enemies and saving friendly units that will bolster your ranks as you go. You'll have to find keys and open doors and all of that jazz as well. As you can see, there's not a ton here in terms of main objectives that will be completely new to any RTS buffs out there. But it's done well enough that you either won't notice or won't care.
Of course, much of that credit could also be given to the excellent unit and race design. Each of the races have been tuned and tweaked and created with a special delicacy in mind. Each of the races has clear advantages and disadvantages from each other. Take the Orcs. Even their small units pack a punch, but they take more food units to keep around so your army will be smaller. Or the Night Elves that have excellent ranged attacks, but little to no melee attacks leaving them open for a serious whooping if enemies get in close.
The races are all pretty unique from each other in both look and function. The graphics throughout the entire title are truly amazing and really need to be lauded. The races and individual units, from the actual model to the interesting portraits that are almost caricatures of the units, are really alive with personality. My favorite, as usual, is the sickest of them, the Undead. All of them have style in droves however and you'll surely find yourself zooming in on several occasions to get a better look.
While the looks and feels of each may be unique from each other, they aren't necessarily unique from past games. Blizzard veterans will probably recognize a few gameplay mechanics borrowed from the venerable Starcraft upon playing, such as the Blight, which is the same as the Creep the Zerg used. Night Elf buildings can get up and move around to save themselves. Undead buildings come into being much like the Protoss buildings did so you only need one unit to summon them all. Sure it all comes together a little differently, but is the same in theory.
The balancing issues in terms of spells and unit strength are things that will be adjusted for years to come if Starcraft is any example, but they've got a damn good start and have instituted some great checks and balances between the races if you know where to find them. For an easy example, some people may feel overwhelmed by the onslaught of an Undead horde of raised skeletons. But there are plenty of magicks that can unsummon them if you know where to find them. Balance of force is key here for victory. I can't wait to see some of the crazy strategies that will undoubtedly begin surfacing in the coming weeks. There's already quite a few. And when you add in the ability to record and watch matches to see where you went wrong and your opponent went right, they'll be honed down to a science before too long with counter-strategies and theories springing up all over the place. At least one can hope.
Which brings me to the AI strategies. It seems as though it sometimes still suffers from the same run straight into your base regardless of your defenses strategy, but occasionally, I've been surprised by flank attacks against my army and into my bases by flying units and Zeppelin transports. I also have noticed that units can pick out targets of importance a little better than I'm used to although for some reason, my heroes seem to be down on the line of importance to them. But my healers and spell casters certainly find themselves bleeding or dead during the course of a big battle.
Strangely enough, multiplayer, as fun as I have found it so far, is also where I hold some of my objection. I know that the idea behind this game was to keep things a little more personal. Keep the number of units on the field down to a minimum. Keep things under control and the managing of huge forces from bogging play down. But I like huge numbers of forces. Sure, you're forced into more personal battles where you care more about each unit than you might have in Starcraft where many matches ended up in the hands of an onslaught of Guardians or Carriers. I always loved that part of the game though. There was something about bringing that many units to bear and seeing them falling on your base that was exciting. The lower unit cap now means a huge number of defensive buildings are necessary however if you want to run through the countryside to take care of some of the neutral creeps that are out and about to give your hero some levels up before coming up against the enemy. And while having neutral units on the field is a cool thought, it also means that rushing is almost out of the question, which is another strategy that I was fond of both using myself and defending against. The early stress of deciding which way you want to go with your army was always interesting.
The balancing issues in terms of spells and unit strength are things that will be adjusted for years to come if Starcraft is any example, but they've got a damn good start and have instituted some great checks and balances between the races if you know where to find them. For an easy example, some people may feel overwhelmed by the onslaught of an Undead horde of raised skeletons. But there are plenty of magicks that can unsummon them if you know where to find them. Balance of force is key here for victory. I can't wait to see some of the crazy strategies that will undoubtedly begin surfacing in the coming weeks. There's already quite a few. And when you add in the ability to record and watch matches to see where you went wrong and your opponent went right, they'll be honed down to a science before too long with counter-strategies and theories springing up all over the place. At least one can hope.
Which brings me to the AI strategies. It seems as though it sometimes still suffers from the same run straight into your base regardless of your defenses strategy, but occasionally, I've been surprised by flank attacks against my army and into my bases by flying units and Zeppelin transports. I also have noticed that units can pick out targets of importance a little better than I'm used to although for some reason, my heroes seem to be down on the line of importance to them. But my healers and spell casters certainly find themselves bleeding or dead during the course of a big battle.
Strangely enough, multiplayer, as fun as I have found it so far, is also where I hold some of my objection. I know that the idea behind this game was to keep things a little more personal. Keep the number of units on the field down to a minimum. Keep things under control and the managing of huge forces from bogging play down. But I like huge numbers of forces. Sure, you're forced into more personal battles where you care more about each unit than you might have in Starcraft where many matches ended up in the hands of an onslaught of Guardians or Carriers. I always loved that part of the game though. There was something about bringing that many units to bear and seeing them falling on your base that was exciting. The lower unit cap now means a huge number of defensive buildings are necessary however if you want to run through the countryside to take care of some of the neutral creeps that are out and about to give your hero some levels up before coming up against the enemy. And while having neutral units on the field is a cool thought, it also means that rushing is almost out of the question, which is another strategy that I was fond of both using myself and defending against. The early stress of deciding which way you want to go with your army was always interesting.
The gamble of very early expansion is eliminated from the arsenal of strategies as well due to the mobs that hang out in front of unoccupied gold mines. You'll have to have an army before you can claim a new base for your own. It's a bit shortsighted to think that these types of features won't necessarily create new strategies my feeble mind can't imagine on its own, but it also a little sad that some of my favorites don't seem to be viable options for the most part.
But even with those things I consider flaws, I had a bunch of fun with the beta over Battle.net and even more fun with the LAN we've had going around the office here with the copies we received from Blizzard. One quick note to those used to older Blizzard RTSs... There's no spawn option this time, so you'll need your own disk. Sorry.
The final kicker of course, is the world editor, which will add a ton of replayablity. I hate to keep bringing past games into the equation, but if you played Starcraft at all, then you know the amount of solid extra missions that fans created for the hell of it that were a ton of fun. The editor itself will take a little time to get used to simply because 3D is a little more complicated than 2D, but it's a powerful little tool that gives you access to everything, even camera control for in-game cutscenes of your own.
Last but not least, simply because I never found a place for this to flow is the sound. It's impossible to talk about WarCraft without giving a little homage auditory designers. As usual, there's plenty of good voice acting, some so-so voice acting, and very little bad. Unit acknowledgements range from powerful to amusing. You'll even hear some old favorites like "Dabu" and "Zug Zug" pipe up on the Orcs side. Sound effects are once again top notch and fit in well with the rest of the top tier production that made it into the game.
But even with those things I consider flaws, I had a bunch of fun with the beta over Battle.net and even more fun with the LAN we've had going around the office here with the copies we received from Blizzard. One quick note to those used to older Blizzard RTSs... There's no spawn option this time, so you'll need your own disk. Sorry.
The final kicker of course, is the world editor, which will add a ton of replayablity. I hate to keep bringing past games into the equation, but if you played Starcraft at all, then you know the amount of solid extra missions that fans created for the hell of it that were a ton of fun. The editor itself will take a little time to get used to simply because 3D is a little more complicated than 2D, but it's a powerful little tool that gives you access to everything, even camera control for in-game cutscenes of your own.
Last but not least, simply because I never found a place for this to flow is the sound. It's impossible to talk about WarCraft without giving a little homage auditory designers. As usual, there's plenty of good voice acting, some so-so voice acting, and very little bad. Unit acknowledgements range from powerful to amusing. You'll even hear some old favorites like "Dabu" and "Zug Zug" pipe up on the Orcs side. Sound effects are once again top notch and fit in well with the rest of the top tier production that made it into the game.
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