WarCraft: Orcs & Humans

The Good
Warcraft was to Dune II as Doom was to Wolfenstein 3D...a step up for the whole genre. As the second real-time strategy game natively released for the PC, it improved upon its predecessor in almost every way, and began the long-running rivalry between Blizzard and Westwood as strategy developers.

Warcraft takes place in a fantasy setting. You can choose to play as either the humans or the orcs, with over a dozen unit, building and spell types for each side...each of which are equivalent. The human footman is the same as the orcish grunt. The human conjuror does the same tasks as the orcish warlock. While this might seem like a step backwards compared to Dune (and it is) it does make the game easy to play. And there are small differences between the humans and the orcs which serve to add strategic depth: for instance, the human archer can shoot one tile further than its orcish counterpart.

Warcraft was an extremely innovative RTS game on many levels. It was the first to have a random map generator, multiplayer support and a level editor, vastly extending the game's replay value. All three of which are taken for granted these days. But even without these Warcraft would have been a good game, as the campaign mode alone is superb. Each of the 12 missions per side are connected by an excellent story, and the level design is top notch. In Dune, each mission was basically the same as the one before it: build up a base and destroy the enemy. But in Warcraft you've got a lot more variety in your missions. Some of them start you with a fixed army and require you to conduct raids on orc encampments, or rescue peasants. Others have side quests that allow more powerful technologies to become available. They are a bit on the hard side and drop you off in the deep end of the pool relatively soon, but you certainly won't be bored playing the campaign mode. Warcraft also supports internet play via Kali, although it never became a hit multiplayer game like its sequel.

In Dune, you could pump out just one unit type and win. But Warcraft forces you to use combined arms, as making just one unit type will most likely lose you the game. Infantry are your primary unit type in the early game, but they can be killed easily by knights. Knights in turn are susceptible to massed archers. Archers get countered by catapults, and so on. It's a really subtle balance, every unit and building plays an important part. Even in the late game you'll still be making use of your most basic unit types, as the weak units make up for it by being quick training and cheap.

The game's AI is mediocre today, but back in Warcraft's time it was the best there was. Rather than just blindly attacking, a computer-controlled opponant would scout the perimeter of your base, searching for weak spots. If you piled all your troops near one entrance, the enemy would not attack there unless it was numerically superior. Decoy tactics wouldn't work against it, and it even singled out expensive/valuable units in battle to weaken you as much as possible. The AI had an annoying trick of slipping troops past your defenses and into your peasants. This was especially bad since peasants had no way of protecting themselves...you'd often lose half of your economy just because you left an entrance unguarded. :(

The game's graphics, though unremarkable, carry the point across well. I actually prefer them to those of its sequel. Warcraft II's graphics look too neat and organised, like a game board instead of a battlefield. Warcraft, on the other hand, manages to capture the rugged feel of real terrain. Audio is also a winner. Glen Stafford's music fits perfectly, and in the typical Blizzard style your units give you several different responses when you click on them. "Zug zug!"

The Bad
The game isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Warcraft has a number of flaws that can't be justified just because it's old, and which probably prevented it from attaining the super-seller status of its sequel.

Saying that the controls are annoying would be an understatement. In Dune II, if you wanted to move a unit you'd click it and then click where you wanted it to go. Easy. But in Warcraft, you must click the unit, click the "Move" button on the left-hand side of the screen, and then click where you want it to go. Even when using the keyboard shortcuts this is time consuming, and it's amazing that Blizzard got away with such a user-hostile system, especially since a much better way of doing things had been implemented in a game two years older. Being able to move up to four units at a time is nice, but considering you have to group them manually by holding down Shift and then clicking units one at a time to add them to your group, it was actually quicker moving masses of units in Dune.

I won't belabor the standard complaints: the pathfinding is awful, the AI is retentive, etc. But there are many annoying design decisions that you'd never be able to get away with these days. The only building you can drop off gold at is the town hall, and you can only have one of those the entire game, so once you've exhausted the gold near your base you have to send your peasants on really long trips back and forth between the nearest available gold and the town hall, making it maddenlingly easy for your enemy to raid your gold-gathering lines. And the town hall is the only building you can create peasants at, so if you lose even ten peasants it takes a long, long time to replace them.

Like its sequel, Warcraft is orc-biased. The orcs have the most powerful unit in the game (the demon) which not only eats the human's elemental for lunch but can be spawned for free once you've got a Warlock. Demons can demolish a town with impunity, and the orcs also have a spell which grants invincibility to any unit for ten seconds. Did it ever occur to Blizzard that invincible demons might not be so good for the game's balance?

The Bottom Line
Today, there is absolutely no reason why you should own this game (except for collecting or nostalgia purposes), as its archaic controls and dated gameplay mechanics make it a rather unenjoyable for today's RTS gamer. but Warcraft was one of the most influential games the strategy genre has ever seen. It furthened the concept of RTS games by leaps and bounds. Its flaws are made up for by its innovation.

The Good
The first of a long line of very successful games. In warcaft 1 you find out how it all begun and why the orcs and humans are having the war in the first place. And even though people today might not be very impressed with the graphics, it has still got good gameplay and is very good for its time.

The Bad
Well obviously since it is such an old game the graphics are not exactly what you would call spectacular, and as is the downfall of many other RTS games there is not much variety in the missions. It just comes down to defeating a computer player before the computer player defeats you. Another annoying thing about warcraft 1 is that they hadn't come up with the right click to move and attack idea back then so you have to click on the move icon and then click on the world map etc. and that gets quite annoying after a while.

The Bottom Line
This game is worth buying if only to find out how the battle between orcs and humans started in the first place. And it is also not a bad RTS if your not looking for spectacular graphics.

The Good
Seeing as it is the original in the chain of X-Craft like games, it is generally good. Creative theme and original battle system.

The Bad
It was a bit slow and predictable. The levels got repetitive after a while.

The Bottom Line
If you have never played Warcraft, I highly suggest it. You manage units on a battlefield in order to accomplish a mission given to you at the beginning of each level. You train and upgrade your units at the expense of your available natural resources (Wood, gold and food) and build buildings with different fuctions in the same manner.

The Good
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans introduced what is now considered, the "Blizzard RTS". The game features the battle between the Orcs and the Humans as they fight for control over the world. Right off the bat the menu for the game looks great and the music... is pretty nice considering this is 1994, this is dos, and most people lacked soundcards or even external speakers. You get the choice on either playing the Human or Orc campaign right away, both are pretty close to the same, although slight differences are noticeable. Warcraft was quite complex for its time and quite difficult. The graphics look great, even better then Command And Conquer, the smash RTS released just two years later, and the game has this really classic feeling like you are playing something that was from your childhood, even if it was not.

The Bad
To say Warcraft is a bad game would not be accurate, it's not a terribly bad game, it just suffers from one of the worst issues an RTS can have, it's slooooowwwww....

By slow I mean you click a unit, you click move on the sidebar, you click the ground, then he starts CREEPING forward at around a quarter a mile an hour. The units in this game could NOT in any way move any slower! Another thing I did not like that much is the unique road system, where you had to build roads and construct building next to them, although this was neat and made bases look professional, it slowed base construction and made it difficult to set up secondary bases near enemy bases for confusion and quick assaults. My final complaint is the lack of using the left mouse button for orders, although some mouses back then lacked it, it would have been a nice thing as it adds to the slow feeling having to click your unit, click move, and clicking the ground instead of pressing the right mouse button, come on Blizzard, Command and Conquer did it 2 years after you guys. Well I guess I can not really complain about it, it was added in Warcraft 2 and this was before it was a common RTS feature.

The Bottom Line
A great classic RTS with some faults, but it's still worth playing... If you have patience.

The Good
The game is great for the story. The story is told through the game is very entertaining and has enough in it to keep it interesting. The original game of course can not be compared to the new ones of today (2008), but it is great in terms of gameplay and units and overall creativity shown in it. Upgrades that are reflected in the game in units is a very nice touch for an early game such as this. The overall music and the sounds are also nicely done. Commenting on graphics is useless as one could not compare, however as I said the sound part of the game could be comparable to the modern games. The game manual is also a well done piece of work. It tells the interesting story from both sides and has good descriptions of the units and buildings. Too bad the upgrades for the units are not described here. The intro and end animation sequences are also interesting in terms of design. However, I can not comment on graphics. Also the amount of units and buildings and resource development for the game of such age is worth admiration and the struggle it take to play the game through despite the modern RTS that are available.

The Bad
There are of course the negative parts to any game. The first is cumbersome user interface that is present in the game. The movement of units overall is hard and the game proceeds to slow. This of course could be the observations of the person who is used to modern RTS games. Another problem is computer AI. It does throw an interesting move on you once a in a while but it ends at that. After a while it is possible to counteract the computer and I found that there a one strategy that works for all maps (except where it is limited force) in both campaigns . This is of course a let down of the game. However, back than nobody could boast about a really smart AI. For this reason a lot of complaints might not be applicable to the game since they come from a person used to modern RTS.

The Bottom Line
If you are a WarCraft fan and want to play the whole story you should play both campaigns of this game. If you are able to play this game continuously after that in skirmish mode and etc. Well you are a hero and I will shake your hand. Myself, I was never able to bring myself to replay the game, yet due to the interface issue, slowness and dull AI. If you are however coming to see what WarCraft is all about well then I would suggest starting with the second one or even the third one and working the way back.

The Good
Well, it's a decent game but nothing more. It was refreshing change from Dune II (simply because no other adequate RTS was released during that time) and the music/sound effects are OK.

The Bad
The game is slow - either badly programmed or simply meant to be slow. The enemy is stupid and the entire experience is lacking.

The Bottom Line
You should probably play this just to get an idea how much better the second game is.