WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

The Good
First of all, the chrome is as shiny and brilliant as can be. The graphics were souped up nicely from the original Warcraft’s somewhat blocky sprites to a smooth and spiffy SVGA. The colors are bright and full of contrast. Buildings and units are a joy to look at…and also to listen to. WC 2 set the standard for injecting personality into an RTS, with convincing sound effects (swords clash, bombs boom, etc.), charismatic vocal responses, and a sweeping musical soundtrack. The intro cinematic is also very well done.

The basics of the first WC are expanded upon just enough to make for a great sequel. There are more units and buildings, but not too many. There is one new resource to collect, oil, but no more. It’s just enough new stuff to add naval and air dimensions to the combat. Zeppelins, Flying Machines, Oil Tankers, Subs, Battleships, and more enhance what was already a pretty cool arsenal of fantasy toys.

There are two full campaigns, one for each side (Human-centered Alliance vs. Orc-centered Horde). There is also multiplayer. More on those below.

The manual and box art are wonderful. I don’t even like this kind of fantasy-themed stuff that much, but WC2 certainly got my attention with its loads of style and gameplay.

Finally, I give Blizzard high marks for not following Westwood’s lead in making a buggy, clunky, cheesy, wildly overrated mess like Command & Conquer. The RTS genre is not my favorite even as it stands now. How bad would real-time games generally be if we didn’t have Blizzard around?

The Bad
Like most RTS games (at least 1990s ones), WC2 puts a heavy emphasis on speed over strategy. There are no build queues or unit formations. Shortcut keys and fast mouse-clicking can cover up a multitude of tactical sins and just plain not thinking. It’s not a big problem in this kind of light, mainstream game, but it still seems a little bit like cheating to the more hardcore strategy/wargame player. Also, the pace makes WC2 exciting, but also a bit stressful. If you just want to relax and unwind at your computer for a while, WC2 is not that good of a choice. Then again, it’s less intense than Doom, so maybe it’s a happy medium.

The enemy AI is merely passable. Which is not a problem, unless you happen to be like me. I generally don’t like to play campaigns or online/multiplayer, so I’m stuck with the skirmish mode. I tried hard to get through the campaigns, but I kept losing interest and quitting before I got very far into them. Would it have been that hard for Blizzard to have included a random map generator?

It’s not the most rewarding game in the world. It’s quite fun and passes the time, but I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished that much when I’m done playing it.

The Bottom Line
Clearly the product of much love and affection, I love WC2 against all my better judgment. A guilty pleasure, yes, but a pleasure nonetheless. Unlike Command & Conquer, WC is a genuine classic.

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
I'm not the first person to write a review for this game, other reviewers have pointed out the quality of the music, interface & graphics and I agree with them. Even today the cartoonish graphics are a joy to watch; notice the Christmas lights on Orc buildings during winter missions. Also, compare a Grunt from Warcraft II with a rifle infantry soldier from Red Alert (which appeared one year after Warcraft II) and you'll realize how well Warcraft's graphics have aged. Moreover the voices of the units (especially the Orcs) are great, Zog Zog & Swobuh!

Warcraft keeps things basic; there are only three types of resources and a limited number of units, but you'll really know their different strengths and weaknesses. No unit will ever become obsolete or replaced by another unit. Units do get upgraded. The units are balanced, there is no super unit with which you can easily win a mission. Footmen can easily destroy a Catapult, Catapults take out Guard Towers, Guard Towers are a great defense against Dragons and Dragons kill Footmen. So your army will need to consist of almost all available units in order to win. By the way some of the units have great magical spells like raise dead and the spell that turns an enemy soldier into a sheep or pig.

And oh yeah, the mission editor is easy to use (but why did it require Win 3.1 when the game ran in DOS).

The Bad

• Both sides are almost identical, so once you've completed the Orc campaign, the human campaign isn't that much fun to play (playing with the Orcs is more fun anyway).
• Units do not always respond to your commands and there are some pathfinding problems. Especially getting your naval units somewhere involves a lot of mouse-clicking.
• In the campaigns, your computer opponents always seems to start with a lot of gold and a well fortified base. In the final missions this enables the computer to send wave after wave of dragons / gryphons when your just getting started, frustrating.
• Mouse scrolling goes to fast.
• Bad A.I. An easy way to win the game is to wait until your computer opponent has mined all the gold from the mines near his base. It then keeps sending unprotected peony (easy kills) to mines near your base until it runs out of gold. Also your units perform a lot better on the battlefield when you control manually.

**The Bottom Line**
An RTS game from the dawn of the genre that's still fun the play despite the approximately 3.5 million RTS games released after it. Really addictive. Although I've often told myself "I've had it up to here with this game", I always enjoyed playing it when I came back to it after a couple of weeks.