WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos

The Good
This is by far the best completely 3D game I've ever played, and the first that actually takes full advantage of the 3D terrain. Revisiting the world of Warcraft in a completely 3D environment was a blast.

Warcraft III combines elements of classic RTS strategies and an RPG system to create a whole new experience with RTS', as they did with Warcraft and again with Starcraft. Way to go, Blizzard.

The single player campaign is really good, especially compared to the usual boring storylines that go along with RTS game that only serve as a length tutorial.

The Bad
The game COULD have been great, if it weren't for a number of flaws that seem completely unecessary. First, there's the upkeep. Everyone hates the upkeep. It's unbalanced and makes little sense.

The idea behind the upkeep is, once you reach 40 food consumption, for every ten gold you retrieve, four of it is lost. It's some sort of tax. And when you get to a higher number, you lose 60% of your gold to it! This makes a little bit of sense - the larger your armies, the greater you have to spend to keep'em happy, or something along those lines.

The second horrible thing is the food limit. Starcraft had a pop limit, which was disappointing to most people, but it was a high number; 200, so only rarely did you reach that in your battles. Warcraft III has an attrocious ninety food limit. NINETY. Very few take up one food, most take up two or three, many four, and if I remember correctly, some even five.

The bad, bad food limit combined with the upkeep leaves you with a small army that costs 60% of your income. Your must take this small army and charge the enemy, which, if you're lucky, will destroy some of its defenses, but if the enemy has half a brain, it's going to be able to out defend your pitiful army. So you must regroup and attack. Only problem is, that pitiful army took all your money. And then the enemy attacks. And you're screwed because you can't afford to do anything about it.

The game is very, very unbalanced this way. But, to be fair, you're expected to use your heroes to do most of the strategic fighting, and it usually works because of the spells they have. But it still makes for some unexciting small shortlived frustrating battles.

Another bad thing about the game is the differences between Warcraft II and III. Of course, Warcraft III is a huge step up in the genre, but it loses most of it's "Warcraft" feel. The Human's "elven archer" has been replaced by a gun toting Irishman. There are no ships (none that you can build, that is) and the oil resource has been removed completely. The Orcs no longer look humerously primitive, they look more like the Humans, only..."Orcish".

Warcraft III's story takes place after the unpublished game, Warcraft Adventures, and there is far too many refrerences to the game. If Blizzard hadn't been so proud, and released the game, Warcraft III would probably be much more enjoyable, and we would have another great Warcraft game to play.

There is also no spawn version to install, and the only multiplayer option is a network or battle.net.

The Bottom Line
The single player campaign is a lot of fun, but the mulitplayer is lacking and there are far too many annoyances to make this game worthwhile.

The Good
This was the very first Warcraft game I played. It was so good that I'm now playing Warcraft II BNE edition. The story was very good, providing the background for the battles and adding a sense of risk and reward. Not one single klinker in the voice acting. Music never became repetitive because it added to the drama of the scene as you built your forts. I'd get an exultant feeling when I saw my army decimate the opposing forces after failing and reloading my game. I would be Balancing my forces when they attack and assisting them when they are injured or binded. I had a blast learning how to use the strengths of every race to win a scenario.

Its the first time I've felt SO guilty about running a cheat code that I'll go back and play a scene without cheating.

BTW, the voice-overs were the funniest of all the Blizzard games.

The Bad
2 things really bugged me about this game. * The long load times.
The 'bubblegum chewing' animation when the characters spoke. It was wretched when LucasArts & Sierra did it in their early Adventure games. Its pretty standard for game studios to lipsync their characters now. It was disconcerning to see that archaic design shortcut in such a A list game.

The Bottom Line*
Fun, challenging, engaging and well worth your money.

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.