Finally! Orcs in 3D

Author's Rating:

Pros: great graphics, mesmerising scenery and very interesting and plausible storyline, that is very well realised

Cons: can be rather addictive

The Bottom Line: 
Top fun, extremely addictive and pretty damn good to look it. Definitely worth the money!

Author's Review
For those of you who aren’t all that big on computer games, Warcraft III is just another in a successful line of somewhat cheesy, but entertaining and thoroughly playable Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games from Blizzard. The first of these came out a good ten years ago, and was charmingly simple and completely addictive. The second Warcraft showed a marked improvement graphically, and much greater versatility in the game in terms of re-playability, with hordes of custom games and mapmaking abilities. The third installment in the series is an entirely new and different beast, though it retains much of the same feel as its predecessors.

The main storyline behind the game involves conflict between Humans and Orcs on an unspecified globe somewhere out there in the cosmos. The storyline is ratcheted up about fifty notches in the third game, with two new races and an enormously complex and engaging plot. One of the best additions to this game is the appearance of in-game cinematics – not the sort of cinematics you’re used to seeing in terms of game introductions and so forth (though those are quite mind-blowing in Warcraft 3), but relatively short cut scenes utilizing the game’s graphics engine that explain details about the storyline, and what the characters involved are up to. You can’t fast forward through them, which is sometimes an irritation, but for the first-time player (or, if you’re like me and played it a while but have forgotten everything) they’re very useful and explanatory.

The gist of Warcraft III is this: Demons are invading the lands occupied by all our races, and are coming to destroy it. The nefarious evildoers are being aided in this quest by an army of undead, which is being lead by some unknown leader, and they spread plague and death among the people of the human kingdom of Lordaeron. Eventually, the Undead take over this land, and force the Humans to flee further south into Azeroth, or over the sea to the continent of Kalimdor, where one of our new races, the Night Elves, have existed for thousands of years in peace. The remnants of the Orcs also fled to this continent with the coming of the Burning Legion (as the Demons are known). Of course, with the arrival of the Demons, everyone is equally screwed over. It’s a whole lot more involved than that, but I’d need thousands of words here to explain it fully, and that’s something I can’t be bothered doing.

That out of the way, here’s how the game looks. In a word, nice – the 3D graphics are somewhat cartoonish, and many of the characters look a little bit like buffoons, but that adds to the fun. The scenery, on the other hand, is incredibly put together, whether it’s the verdant forests of Ashenvale, or canyon-studded wastelands. Creeks flow and tumble with realistic texture and colours, and trees are very well represented too. The designers at Blizzard did a fantastic job with the landscape design, and sometimes you’re tempted to just sit and gawp at the scenery instead of getting on with killing critters and gathering resources. It’s a good-looking game.

The game-play is a bit of a learning curve as you’re going through, but the basics are pretty easy to master. As with every other RTS game ever made, the basic idea is to mine gold/lumber/other useful resource, use said resources to build stuff and make an army, and then use said army to beat the snot out of the opposing force. This is pretty well realised, but Warcraft III takes the game-play a few steps further, starting with the addition of creatures called Creeps, who are basically map critters who occupy certain areas, and are used to gain experience for your hero (more on that), money from killing them, and sometimes useful items as well.

The biggest change in this newest incarnation of the Warcraft series is the addition of Hero characters. Basically, he’s the main badass you control. In a campaign, he starts at level 1 and tops out at level 10, so the game has a certain RPG element there, particularly as the Hero has the ability to store items such as healing potions, spells of protection and other very RPG-ish things. The hero's inventory is limited to half a dozen items, so it’s not a free-for-all item bonanza as RPGs are, but still a large departure from the usual RTS format. As you’d expect, all of the campaigns revolve around the hero, and most multiplayer games revolve around these characters too. Each race has three types of hero, which can make for some fun experimentation whether you’re playing custom or multiplayer games. The Hero characters also have several spell abilities, four for each hero, and these can be upgraded as you go through. Each Hero has an Ultimate Spell, which is basically a non-upgradeable kick-butt spell that you can get upon reaching level 6. Many of these involve either turning into some sort of crazy killing machine, or a spell which can level entire bases when used properly.

There are also other novel additions – you have the ability in many maps or levels to buy mercenaries to supplement your army, and there are various shops from which you can buy useful stuff when you run out of creeps to plunder. Of course, as with most games of this type nowadays, online play is the biggest gimmick of all. Give many game-playing teenagers the capability to be a l33t haxor online, and they’ll take it. It can be thoroughly addictive sitting up at midnight trying to play against similarly-skilled players in rather fast and furious cooperative games, let me tell you. My skillz were always bloody terrible, but it was still great fun.

The best feature of this game is its shelf life. Although the campaign isn’t awfully hard and shouldn’t take most players terribly long, it’s still pretty long and involving. Once that’s out of the way, you have almost unlimited opportunities to play either custom games or multiplayer games, especially since there is a rather complex and interesting map creator bundled with the game. Given some time and effort, you can come up with some fascinating maps, and so you have essentially an infinite variety of custom games, depending on how bored you get sitting down and playing the same game over and over. Having these features certainly gives you bang for the buck, however you use them, unlike many other games that simply make you go through the same campaign any time you want to play the game.

This game has been incredibly popular ever since its release about three years ago, and it’s a lot of fun to play. Just be careful that you don’t get stuck sitting and wasting away while you’re clicking and dashing off keyboard commands – it’s happened. Dishes go moldy, houses go uncleaned, and bodies go unfed. That’s the power of a good game, and Warcraft III is certainly one of those.