WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

The Good
I don't have much to add to the other reviews here. The sound, graphics, user interface and so on are all done very well here. As has been pointed out, the graphics on the playing field in particular are noticeably superior to those of the popular Command & Conquer series from Westwood.

The basic concept - form and execute a plan to overcome the opposition by marshalling diverse resources and defeating it in battle - is one I've always enjoyed. The underlying idea is not that different from chess, although of course in the RTS genre the opposing sides do not wait to take turns.

Chess is also a good analogy in particular for Warcraft II in that the two sides, while appearing different on the surface, are in fact fairly similar in capabilities. Not being a teenage boy, I haven't ever played the orcish side, but I can't really see much difference between a juggernaut and a battleship, or a dragon and a gryphon.

One item that needs to be stressed is the custom scenario editor. I haven't used it myself, but many others have, and it's finding the results of their efforts that have extended this game's life for me (more below).

The Bad
With one exception, most of my reservations are nit-picking:

• the scoring system emphasizes the number of enemies killed. The score is meaningless in any practical sense anyway, but it would be nice if cleverness could be rewarded somehow. A neat win is esthetically more pleasing to me.

• the user interface is not quite as rock-solid as I would like. When the pointer gets near the edge of the screen in particular is where the chances of unintended results get quite high.

• if I saved and reloaded a scenario in progress, it sometimes seemed as if all my enemies had suddenly quit playing. I got in the habit of rebooting the whole game every time I wanted to resume a saved scenario, which seemed to always give me enemies minded to fight.

• in this version there is an apparently unintentional play imbalance. In scenarios where both sides start with fairly limited resources, one strategy is to create a barracks before a town hall, create a warrior, and send it after the opponent while it's still possible for one warrior to destroy everything the opponent has. I've won scenarios with this sort of "blitzkrieg" attack, but it's not very satisfying. I've read that the "battle.net" edition has outlawed this strategy by forcing the technology tree to begin with a town hall, so apparently others don't like it much either.

• the included single-player campaign is only fifteen missions, which didn't seem long enough...

• ..but later I discovered all the included single player "built-in" and "custom" stand-alone scenarios (although as applied to what comes with the game itself, the distinction eludes me), and that was additional fun for a while. But eventually that led to my biggest objection:

• aside from the "blitzkrieg" strategy, there is only one other strategy needed, and that is to dig in, wait until your opponent runs out of resources, and then move in to destroy him. In fact, so all-encompassing is this strategy that I never needed to learn many of the capabilities of my "pieces" in order to win every scenario that came with the game.

Was this deliberate? One thing limiting resources does is also limit the time anyone spends playing a scenario, and that may have been a factor in Blizzard's design decisions. But the custom scenario editor in the proper hands proves that other decisions are possible. I've recently completed a scenario I found on the net ("Rocnor") that took me hours (possibly days) of real time to finish. The computer simply had inexhaustible resources and a very fast generation time for dragons from multiple roosts on a very well-protected island. My guard towers killed more than 20,000 of them by the time I won. More importantly, I couldn't win at all until I'd completely re-thought my strategies and also learned to employ some those mage spells I'd never had much use for.

Now that was fun! There's life in the old game yet.

The Bottom Line
A generally well-designed game with a good balance of thought and action. A violent game (albeit a fantasy-themed violence), and not for those who prefer cooperative games where everyone lives together in peace and harmony. Everyone interested in RTS games should experience it - there are lots of them about, but how many are still being played (and still sold!) five or six years after their introduction?

The Good
Just about everything.

To start with, it looks great. There was some 3D rendering done that makes the top-down view look better than games 3 and 4 years older than it (like Age of Empires II). Other graphical enhancements make the game flow very smoothly.

There's always background music - which was picked perfectly - and sound effects are classic. You will laugh out-loud the first time you hear "They're destroying our city!" until you realize your city is in deep $#!^.

The story line is on-par with great RPGs - something often overlooked in many RTS games to begin with.

You get to play both Orcs and Humans, and while each has similar units, they're different enough. Example: Orcs have peons, Humans have peasants. Both pretty much do the same things, but peons sound like peons, and peasants sound like peasants. Each has their own individual sayings. Same for grunts/knights, trolls/archers, all the way up to death knights/mages. Extreme thought went into making it balanced AND different. Death knights can raise dead (when bodies are around) and cast destruction spells (death and decay, anyone?), mages can cast invisibility and fireballs. Paladins can turn undead (which hurts and scares death knights) and heal. Ogre mages can cast floating eye-balls.

Details, details, details. While waiting for your peons to collect gold, you start clicking on them over and over again, and you find out that they start to get pissed off at you! Turns out every character in the game will get pissed off at you, and each category of character gets pissed in different ways ("Don't you have a Kingdom to rule?")

Map editor to share with your friends.

One CD can play four people at the same time, up to eight can play one game! Full-fledged ability to play any of the multi-player maps - no cheap spawn copies that only let you play a little bit.

The Bad
On my 1.2 Ghz, I can't figure out how to slow down the mouse scrolling (I've tried the options menu, it doesn't work).

Some of the battles got a little long, some were more difficult than I cared for (I LIKE taking in an army of Death Knights...what do you mean that's all the gold I get?!?)

The Bottom Line
Don't let the Real-Time Strategy portion get you down. It may be that, but it's so much more. It's just a fully-enjoyable game that will keep you laughing and playing for a long time. Even my wife knows what happens after I say "My tummy feels funny... ."

Blizzard was so financially set after this game, they could have just created WC3, 4, and 5 all based on the same basic game and retired. They didn't. I can only imagine that they didn't want to detract from the game in some way by screwing it up with cheap or cheesey add-ons or sequels. There was only one real add-on, and there were similar games like StarCraft, but even that was quite different.

The Good
I remember playing the Command and Conquer demo and thinking what a bother it was. Shortly afterwards I tried the Warcraft 2 demo and was pleasantly surprised at how much different it was (in a good way.) The SVGA graphics were fantastic and very smooth. The interface was great, especially for its time. The buildings and units were instantly identifiable. However, it wasn't until I got a hold of the full version that everything came together into one incredible gaming experience.

I think my favorite part about the game was that it did not try to overcomplicate matters like later RTSs. There were relatively few units and buildings, but you knew just how they were supposed to be used. And is there really a need for balancing 15 different resources? The comic responces of annoyed units did not hurt matters either.

The Bad
The AI wasn't all that great. It was extremely common to see enemy peons/pesants making unescorted beelines to your fortified mines once their resources ran out. It was also very easy to lead the AI's units into ambushes. The computer was pretty good at doing humanly impossible things like having 10 wizards start shooting fireballs simultaneously though.

Some people might not like the cartoonish graphics, but I didn't mind at all.

The Bottom Line
The game that did for the RTS genre what Doom did for first-person shooters. If you consider yourself any kind of an RTS gamer, you have no excuse for not having this masterpiece in your collection.