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Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
Posted:
5/10/02 by Funkodrom
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(32)
 Shining1 and Funkodrom battle over the merits of Blizzards newest RTS
Shining1: Warcraft2 was a very special game for me. It was my first introduction to RTS, and was nothing like anything I had played on the PC before. It was a game from the golden era of PC gaming, when the PC finally stood up, turned its cap backwards, thumbed its nose at the consoles and stopped being just a business machine. Doom, Warcraft, Civilisation et al demonstrated the PC's true gift as a gaming device - and then the internet arrived. With a modem and a good server, you could go further than ever dreamed possible and actually play a PC game *with* someone. It was a wonderful time.
Well, now the consoles have pretty much stolen Doom (and are banging on the internet, too), and no-one plays Civilisation anymore. Of my precious teenage memories, that only leaves Warcraft2. Now the sequel is out, is my past in good hands? Well, yes, at least mostly. The storyline seems to have aged poorly during the 7 years it took to reach the stores, but the GAME itself is better than ever.
Funkodrom: Warcraft 2 scarred me. I was playing my first RTS, Command and Conquer, as often as possible with friends via a null modem cable. RTS was great, I loved it. I also loved fantasy, Orks, Goblins, Knights and Wizards. All that stuff was cool. So when Warcraft II came out to decent reviews in the gaming mags I thought it would be a perfect game for me. How wrong I was. Boring single player missions, annoying graphics, units that took up too much of the screen, a horrible plague spell that allowed a necromancer to wipe out your entire army, annoying 'funny' unit speech, an over complicated resource system. One of the most disappointing games I've ever played. It's biggest crime was that my brother liked it and refused to play C&C with me any more. Starcraft came and went without registering on my game radar. Why on earth would I want to play another game by the people that produced that horror? Besides which the UK is one of the places where Starcraft wasn't the puzzling phenomenon it seems to have been elsewhere.
S: *sigh* Starcraft sales in Korea: 1 000 000+. Starcraft sales in the U.K: 12.
F: So now, 7 years later, and after months of constant badgering from Shiny that I should really give Warcraft III a go and try and finally put an end to my Warcraft II wounds. I decided to borrow The Shaker's copy and give the game a chance. I was also desperate to get back into RTS after a gap of several years since my last decent multiplayer exploits with the original Red Alert.
S: It's probably worth pointing out at this stage that Funkodrom and I generally have very little overlap at all when it comes to the things we like in an RTS game.
F: Whenever Shiny and I talk about what we like and dislike in an RTS game we have totally the opposite opinion to each other. There is very rarely anything that we both like. In fact I can't think of one thing we've ever agreed on about RTS's before.
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