WarCraft

Summary

Genre: Strategy
Number of players: 1

Review

A very early strategy game, WarCraft was Blizzard Entertainment's first foray into the RTS genre (well, at least the first that I know of. I'm not a Blizzard buff, y'know). The WarCraft series went on after this title to result in WarCraft II, and soon the upcoming WarCraft III. But is the original WarCraft worth getting, or was paving the way for the later titles the limit of its usefulness?


Gameplay: If you've played the other WarCraft title, or StarCraft, you'll be familiar with Blizzard's RTS style. You must build up a base and an army by harvesting gold and lumber, and you can purchase upgrades for your weapons and new magical spells at certain buildings. It works the same in WarCraft as it does in the other games, although there are significantly fewer units and buildings from the later games.

However, that doesn't ruin the game, since there are a fair few varied units, from the peasant workers, to archers, warriors, knights, catapults and two different spell-casting units. There are two races to control - Orcs and Humans - both of whom have pretty-much identical units, just with different names and appearance. For instance, the knight and the wolf-rider are basically the same unit. There are a few differences, however, when it comes to spells: for instance, the Orc Necrolyte can raise up dead bodies into skeletons, and the Human Cleric can heal damaged units instead. The differences are thus subtle, but they are there, and later on into the game, when you get access to these units, the race you've picked can have a significant impact on gameplay.

Gameplay overall is good. The game allows for a number of different attack strategiesm, whether you try to overcome your enemy with a charge of footmen, whether you try to use catapults for a siege, or whether you use magic spells. However, there are limitations. For instance, you can only group four units together at a time, making a co-ordinated assault very difficult against the computer, who can move all of its units at once. Also annoying is the fact that to get your units to do anything, you have to press a keyboard key before clicking the place you want the unit to move to on the map. Those used to the right-click shortcut of WarCraft II and StarCraft will find this fiddling around highly infuriating and distracting from the gameplay, and it certainly is a bit tiresome.

But these shortcomings aside, the game plays perfectly competently, if a little slowly, but it definitely has a certain charm to it.


Challenge: As a rule, real-time strategy games can be quite challenging, with lots of missions to complete, and WarCraft is no exception. There are campaigns for both races, with quite a lot of missions to do in each, with quite a varied compass to them, and with a few highly-demanding levels. In addition, there's a custom-mission type mode, where you can pick a map and starting units, then go head-to-head with a computer opponent. There's a lot to do, and quite a lot of lastability, if you get into the WarCraft mode.

One point that has to be mentioned here, however, is an unfortunate factor of imbalance. Namely, the 'Summon Major Elemental' spell of each race's top spellcaster. The units created by these spells are just too powerful, and are basically unstoppable by ordinary units. Once you've created two or three of these elementals, you've won the game, and if you focus all your efforts on creating the building needed to get these spells, you can win without bothering about any other strategy. The computer takes ages to get the elementals ready, and, using them, the game goes really, really flat. A shame.

But still, you can't get these units until the very last missions of the campaign, and you can always make it a point of honour not to use them in custom mission mode...


Graphics: The graphics are... old-style. In other words, murky, blurry, pixelated, and just plain poor. But considering the game's age, it's a bit unfair to put too much blame on them. Still, as the game stands, the graphics are very second-rate.


Sounds: The sounds, too, aren't great. The background music is rather bland, and while battle noises are satisfying and realistic, unit speech leaves a lot to be desired. An amusing touch comes when you repeatedly click your units, resulting in an angry 'Are you still touching me?' - but the problem with the speech is that every single unit uses the same speech samples - which starts to grate a bit...


Summing up: Well, it's not StarCraft, nor is it as good as WarCraft II. But that's what you'd expect - and, still, this game does have quite a bit going for it. It's actually very enjoyable, and as I said earlier, it has an atmosphere and charm that was perhaps a little less apparent in WCII. There's quite a lot to do, and a lot of strategic possibilities. It's still worth a place in your PC gaming library, even though superseded by its sequels.


Gamesmark: 81%


Reviewer: Maverik



Tangycheese's opinion: Mav's being a bit generous with the mark, but overall I agree with him. It's just a shame about the most powerful Elements being so powerful that they can take on entire teams almost single handedly. Also annoying to say the least is that to move a character you have to click "M" and then on the map! Bah! Still, not a bad little game, but get StarCraft, Warcraft 2, Dark Reign or Total Annihilation instead.