Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
When Warcraft III finally shipped, after years of waiting and cinematic trailers each more impressive than the last, it happened to be on July 5th, a mere day before my birthday. Can you name a more obvious birthday present to a computer gamer?
Despite that, and everything gaming media's attention, I hadn't been paying too much attention to Warcraft III during its development (the same thing went for Starcraft, but either I paid even less attention or that game was much less hyped). Sure, I kind of trusted Blizzard to do a high quality game that would be worth getting, and I read a few previews and stuff, but I wasn't all that fired up about it. It's Blizzard, they do great things, but they also take their time and don't say when it's going to be finished. So I didn't hold my breath waiting.
But now it's here, and I've started playing it. Time to see if it matches my supposedly calm but solid expectations.
To start off, Warcraft III (okay WCIII from now on) isn't a game that overwhelms. It's not as jaw-droppingly beautiful in that state-of-the-art-3d-way some other games out there are, which is about the first thing you notice. The WCIII engine has done what Blizzard always seems to do and aimed to be playable on a wide variety of hardware. There aren't a gazillion polygons rounding out every inch of the models or options for madly high-resolution textures. Instead it always runs smoothly (even though you can probably kill your system by setting resolution too high as usual, haven't tried that yet, which is unlike me ...). And despite the relative lack of polygons on models the game retains a very special and stylish look and feel of things. I come to think of the old Heimdal games from the early or mid 90's when I look at WCIII and a bit of Sacrifice as well when I see the characters move. Of course, Sacrifice throws a lot more polygons at its models, but there is something in the look of them when they move and when you see them closer up in cutscenes that immediately makes me think of Sacrifice.
Speaking of cutscenes, they're all done in-game using the 3d engine. There aren't any out-of-gameplay mission briefings or cutscenes, only a few loading screens with maps. All the rest of the storytelling is done with the game engine, on the maps. While this is often said to maintain continuity and immersion I can actually miss the briefings of Starcraft or Warcraft II a bit. The briefings often conveyed a lot of story and were interesting to watch. The introductions in WCIII (at least as far as I've played) are mostly pretty brief, and it doesn't feel like quite as much is going on in the way of plot twists and similar. The dialogues also seem much briefer and less inspired, and of course you're now looking at slightly-too-zoomed-in character models in the sequences than nicely prerendered talking heads. The models just don't have the amount of detail or expressions to work as well.
Of course, there is one exception in the storytelling, and an area where WCIII outshines everything else. I'm of course talking about the movie clips that introduce each campaign (maybe conclude as well, haven't got that far yet). They just don't get better than this in quality. There is nothing more to say about that :-) ...
On with some more complaints then: the voice acting doesn't have me as convinced as I expect from Blizzard. Sure, it's not bad or anything, I just expected more from it. Especially the orcs, what I've heard of them so far has been a disappointment. They just sound way too human. I want more grunts and growls dammit, lots more! The green guys were so much cooler back in Warcraft II. Maybe they pick up in their own campaign ... Haven't clicked on everything to madness yet, but it does seem like some units have a little less to say than usual. My favourite line so far is the yell of the mortar team when they're built. "Moooortar Combat!" has me smiling every time, but I'm sure there's a lot more to find.
The music so far mostly has me longing for the catchiness of the Warcraft II tracks. Have read that the night elves and undead have the best tracks though, so I'll wait with judgement until I get to them.
Seems like a lot of negative stuff so far? Well, I guess it does. Still, it's only small things, things that aren't bad but maybe not as new as you thought. Like I said in the beginning, nothing seems really overwhelming on WCIII. Blizzard is very careful when it comes to altering winning formulas, that's for sure. Heroes are cool special units that can gain levels and pick stuff up, but they're not hard to use or learn about. The interface is very smooth and similar to previous games, so you have no problems diving right in. The camera is very restrained for a 3d game, basically allowing some zoom in and out and rotation that resets as soon as you let go of the button.
Still, despite all this appearant unimpressiveness, you do get hooked pretty fast. It's so easy to play and control, and what the game really has going for it is the flow and pace. You don't have that many units in play compared to some other RTS games (upkeep costs and food caps ensure this), but that's just fine for keeping focus. And the durability of the units in combat is just perfect. Unless you're up against something seriously overwhelming you always have that little time you need to pull a unit out of combat or throw a quick healing spell on it before it's too late.
So, it's growing on me, and I think it will continue to do so for a long time as I proceed through the campaigns. Not to mention when I start trying out multiplayer of course ...