WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos

The Good
Not to much. The units were well drawn and the animations were excellent. Also the voices were well done and the maps were varied but the good stuff but...

The Bad
The races, though different, all felt the same to me. Every unit felt like it was mirrored from another race with a couple different magic spells that ultimately did the same thing.

On top of that all the units seemed like mobile structures. How can 3 guys with swords take out a heavily fortifed tower when being shot at by 3 other towers at the same time. Base defences are supposed to DEFEND bases. Not act as temporary brakes on an attack.

People tended to do the same thing every game too. It was a sudden rush of a ton of units every game. No matter the map. That's not very much fun because it's just whoever can rush the fastest that wins the game. There are no tactics, just swarming.

What is the point of being able to rotate the camera? You can't do anything with the rotation and it recenters automatically. Plus you are stuck at the same perspective and zoom levels. The game had so much potential but it wastes it at every chance it gets.

The Bottom Line
Meets the quality of the last 3 [Blizzard]Craft games, being a boring and repetitive reincarnation of the same game just this time with fancy looking graphics.

The Good
I like the way the characters are drawn, the graphical enhancements upon Warcraft 2. The concept of being able to build up your heroes.

The Bad
Micromanagement. They wanted to change it around a bit, so they added micromanagement. Why the hell they wanted to kill a good thing, I don't know. And this isn't coming from a big Starcraft or Warcraft II fan, I played Warcraft II a lot, and I accept change, but this killed it for me. Everything is dependant on the heroes, there's too small of a selection of units, and you can only have 80 food at a time, with the amount of food you need for each unit ranging from 1-5 so obviously you can never have an army to defend and to attack, you have to choose. Upkeep sucks, the lack of upgrades and units sucks.

The Bottom Line
An utter disappointment in terms of multiplayer.

The Good
The single player mode. Those single player missions, connected by a great story and brilliant cutscenes are really what makes this game worth buying. Playing through the missions of Humans, Undeads, Orcs and Night Elves is really highly entertaining and let's you forget the real world for about 2 days.

The Bad
The multiplayer mode - actually the reason why I could hardly await the release of this game. I LOVED the multiplayer mode of StarCraft with it's many, many tactics and possibilities. But after some days of gaming it became clear that War III is actually a huge step backward concerning multiplaying as the battles are very, very repetitive. War III only knows 2 tactics: rush or tech. That's the only decision the player has to make. No surprises await the player in the rest of the match: Rush: Me or the opponent is dead. Fine. The match practically ends here as mistakes are not forgiven in War III. Tech: After many minutes of hectic building, 2 or more huge armies clash together - a short fight takes place and the game practically ends as base defense is not really a problem in War III (we forget about the rather defensive undead race here).

Well that's it. A typical WarCraft III match. Okay, you learn some spells here and there or try building another unit ... but actually the matches keep being the same again and again. (Most spells are useless anyway and there aren't many unit types either)

So. That's it. Nice try, Blizzard ... but PLEASE go back to the roots with StarCraft 2 !

The Bottom Line
A nice RTS game enriched with RPG elements and a well told story. Fun to play in single player. Yet, if you're looking for a replacement for the aged StarCraft ... look somewhere else.