This game is slowly being forgotten and that sucks. I hope that years from now it garners significant praise once again and it gets rediscovered by Gen Z as this hidden masterpiece - but at this rate I just can't see it happening, and this profoundly upsets me, because games like this are a lost art.

Without exaggeration, "Warcraft III" is a beautiful masterwork, an influential chapter in gaming, and one of the best games ever made. Gaming annals do not wish to commemorate it in the same club with the likes of "Mario 64", "Ocarina of Time", "Half-Life", "Symphony of the Night", "Grand Theft Auto III", "Final Fantasy VII", and all the other significant classics, despite the fact it popularised two highly pervasive gaming genres still in vogue today(MOBAs and tower defenses, and those were just offshoots). I understand that this was in large part because it's a PC game(and console gamers in the west tend to largely bypass it), because "World of Warcraft" tends to overshadow it(very deservedly), and that "Starcraft's" impact might predate it(also more than deservedly), but "Warcraft III" quite significantly changes the ballpark that even "Starcraft" feels old by comparison, and it truly feels at times like "Warcraft III" perfected the RTS format so much that there was nothing left to do. It went the way of My Bloody Valentine, perfecting an entire rock subgenre so well that everybody else saw no point in competing or itterating on it. But those who know it still intricately understand its appeal. I've met so many Warcraft fans in my day and not a single one of them is a less than passionate lover of this game.

"Warcraft III" came at just the right time for me. I was 9 years old and already a big fan of the second game, which itself was very formative for my taste in games and stories: I love the fact "Warcraft II" had so much lore. It was sophisticated. It had geography, mountains, rivers, cities and nations who were all specialised and had different interests, timelines, important actors and shit. It was a complex system, and it was one that my 6-year old brain just loved tearing apart and discover the nuances and interplay between all of them. And with that, it was probably the first time I ever remember getting hyped for a sequel(itself a very rare thing for me), knowing well "oh it's coming" and just wondering whatever Blizzard has in store for continuing this story. I was very scared even then that it would fall short, or not feel the same, or that I would be in some way disappointed - but boy were those fears assuaged. "Warcraft III" more than delivered and it paid off that I knew all the geography and history from the previous games. You can aim a lot of deserved criticism at modern "Warcraft" storylines but the fact it always had consistency in regards to its geography is a top tier effort that deserves applause(although this praise in particular should be handed to its famous sequel MMO).

For me, "Warcraft III" as an RTS game has a lot of magic in how much it's this sheer funbox where you can have a lot of 3D units and elements and just let them interact with each other. The range of units you can combine that interact with each other and game objects is varied enough that it allows every single play style and player personality to shine, whether you wish to brute force your opponents, use magic buffs, cut them at the supply lines, use siege units, do aerials, go with stealth, go with corruption and poison or anything else. The intricate hotkey system gives every player a lot of flexibility, and it becomes very easy to find a quick function for anything with just a couple of clicks on the keyboard, whether that is giving a long list of actions for your units to perform, adding or removing units to entire groups, or ordering them to follow other units and sync with their patterns. It's great that it detracts from one of the primary fears that many people have in playing RTS games in that you get to give units things to do without having to constantly supervise them, and this flexibility and utility makes it stand apart from "Starcraft" and other contemporaries.

The models, despite being more low-poly than the average Nintendo DS game, are so very colourful and are painted with so much life and vibrancy that even after 20 years this game still feels as amazing and as appealing as it did on release. Just load up the World Editor and take a close look at the Tauren Chieftain model. Look at the way he swivels and gazes in the distance. This was from one of the last bastions of the pre-realism era when games were allowed to be colourful and cartoony, and where every model playfully looked like a toy, and there was nothing wrong with that.

So many units have so much personality. The Dwarven Team with their taunts to the opponent that screams them being an underdog that will win("Ey you! Catch!!!"), the frenzied yet desparate focus of the Dwarven Rifleman("I got the beast on me siiiights!"), the lightly goth and the seductive fashion of the Human Sorceress. Even for the kinds of characters that would traditionally be unappealing the modelers at Blizzard found a way to make them stick in the minds of players: The Orc Shaman for example has a wolf cowl over his head that makes him really look like he has a cute wolf head, and even spiders were made cute through the Crypt Fiends, with their humanlike eyes and mouths, and their gravely, lurchy slurring about "seeds" and stuff.

Hero units however, changed the ballpark and the text for how RTS games were handled, and were what gave that genre finally an anchorable personality you could invest your hopes and ambitions onto. It is mandatory in "Warcraft III" that you use them and they were what made it feel like so much more than an RTS. In truth "Warcraft III" is an RTS-RPG hybrid, and this is important. The RPG elements were what helped bridge this game across to people who might not have experienced an RTS before. Hero units can have items that change the name of the game, such as dispelling magic, teleproting, turning themselves invisible or healing their entire groups, and having heroes gives you a lot of opportunity to take flexible control of a situation and think of the best way to respond, whether it is fleeing, baiting an enemy, continuing to fight or performing some other strategy that's just crazy enough to work. I remember how once in a FFA match I managed to lead two opposing teams to fight each other, and I still remember it as one of my proudest emergent strategising moments in my tenure. And crucially, the hero units are exactly what gave this game's story a lot of heart.





So the story.


"Warcraft III" came right in the middle of the fantasy craze that was started by the Peter Jackson LOTR movies and it while it was perfect timing, "Warcraft III" also had a lot of detractors from more serious fantasy fans for being too derivative, too tropey, and really too pulpy and low-brow for its good that it couldn't be regarded as a high art achievement of other fantasy. So certainly "Warcraft III" can't compare to the works of Tolkien and Le Guin, and it shamelessly borrows so many generic fantasy tropes while delivering no unique moral other than the standard cautionary tales such as "he who fights monsters", "protect the ones you love", "freedom and danger are better than living under oppressive comfort" and so many more. But - I think "Warcraft III" aims for something different that is nontheless still incredibly inspirational. It'd be far from me to say that any of the characters are bland, and every of the four core factions(save for the villains) embody something deeply important or face a human challenge that takes heroic effort to succeed, and the game so very lovingly loves to root for them and beg their heroes to succeed against all odds. Sibling fantasy game "Warhammer" would have aeons of history where many people would just morbidly and despairingly disappear in a flash with no consequence, but on the opposite, "Warcraft" has so much heart and it wants to see you identify with these figures.

On the human side you have the cool and mysterious Medivh as the wise old guy who shares secret messages, Jaina who is shrewd, beautiful, has mesmerising eyes and character design, and sees everything happening from a much wider perspective. Arthas, whose arrogance caused him to become doomed to begin with, still has to deal with an immensely unenviable catch-22 of how to rescue the entire human race from incoming(and seemingly unstoppable) world-ending genocide, so much that you would be even willing to trade your soul for it. Famously the "Culling of Stratholme" cutscene has been memed to hell and back but it also emphasises just how pivotal and emotional of a chapter that scene was, and how very significantly people who fought for the same cause had to draw lines in the sand, and you're here to see the terrible after effects of it.

You get Thrall's story. In media, Orcs used to be the universally agreed upon "bad guys", and Blizzard changed them forever, in a brave move that made Orcs so immensely heroic, noble and enviable. One of my favourite moments in the game was when the Orcs first settle on the shores of an unknown land, and they display so much altruism to each other. Many of their groups are scattered and lost upon landing, but they take the time to try to find them anyway, while in other fantasy settings the authors would make the Orcs edgy and petty by forgetting about their compatriots. In Warcraft, the Orcs are on this pilgrimage to find peace and build harmony which was taken away from them so long ago. They are tired of war. Even Thrall says "are we just destined to fight forever?" and this precisely strikes me as one of the core messages of what is really just a war game. This was finally a war game that has just had it with being a war game, and where Thrall does unimaginable things like trusting a complete stranger and his tribe of bull-creatures to guide them through unknown lands, or have heroes like Grom Hellscream break their chains of addiction and comfort, at a heroic price. The Orcs are beautiful, man. They inspire me.

It's immensely important that this was the "Warcraft" game that chose to have a lot of heart. So many characters here so obviously love and care for each other and wish that these awful times weren't here for them. I especially remember when Muradin pleaded Arthas to just give up on his lust on vengeance and lead his men home. Or how the Night Elves unambigously work towards the preservation of the world around them that they converse and help heal literal talking bears, and are so willing to protect the world they would even sacrifice their immortality for the sake of it. The Dryad units are being treated as these complete ditzes by fans, but I love how they're some of the most wholesome and innocent units around. They don't care for war or violence at all and just want to devote themselves to growth and nurture. By deciding to stand apart from its previous games, "Warcraft III" found a lot of maturity and good will by emphasising how love, friendship, heroism, renewal, discovery, authenticity and selflessness can win over war, destruction and death. The best symbol of that is the final level, which just presented a dream come true for me, as a child who was a fan of this series.

I could go on about how much of this game's story and characters are so fucking cool. They had to in order to make the Undead even passingly edible despite them being the bad guys. Villains like Kel'Thuzad are so intensely seductive and elloquent. I love how Tichondrious tries to be pragmatic and use corporate speak when dealing with his uncontrollable bloodthirsty subordinates, and how other Undead villains are so comically petty and edgy it's brilliant, and Blizzard realised that there's no way they could play the Undead's evil in a dramatically realistic tone because destruction is just so intensely absurd. But there are moments when the despair hits. When Archimonde tears the sand castle apart and wipes out an entire country of innocents is when you realise what the stakes are like in here and just how bleak and dire the outlook is. It really allows you to take the time to soak that low point in. You play villains for a time in here, and Blizzard makes sure you feel the repercussions of it and not glamourise being villains, like they used to in the previous games.

I could go on about Night Elves and how they're so obviously inspired by the crude, disfiguring animalism of "Princess Mononoke". The Orcs turned into complete pussies at the sight of them the moment their heads started getting shafted and ripped from their necks by supersonic arrows, and then get eaten by tall sexy amazon women. Cenarius is the Forest God and he'll make nature your nightmare, with vines grow and tear your buildings from the inside-out.

I could go on about Illidan. The coolest character ever to exist, with the coolest and most soul-shattering voicelines, when he talks with quivering and solemn breath about evil drawing close and demons being nearby. He triumphed where Arthas had failed cos he couldn't lose his cool and was far-sighted and calculating probably more than any other character in the story. It goes in his favour that he's one of the most memorable characters in the entire Warcraft universe and yet he was only playable for just a single mission. I feel sorry for my Arthas boiz(I love you) cos you get to know Arthas for two entire campaigns for people to build love for him, while Illidan won over the hearts of millions cos of just being featured in one single level.

When it comes to the story, the gameplay, the entire expereince, it is also essential to try out its expansion pack, "The Frozen Throne", but with one very important caveat: The game is so significantly improved with the expansion that many don't think "Warcraft III" is "complete" without it, and it has huge repercussions because the multiplayer meta changed from the ground up that you shouldn't devote too much of your time trying to learn strategy for "Reign of Chaos": Some dominant sticking points of the meta before "The Frozen Throne" is that the Night Elves are too weak and rely on skillful magic use because they can barely heal themselves, the Undead make it easy to be on braindead autopilot despite dropping like flies, and the Orcs are way overpowered, even without dedicated healing units, and you should watch out if an AI opponent controls Orcs. The old meta also put a lot greater focus on micromanaging units(which might be a cool thing depending on who you are), small skirmishes and lots and lots of wandering. It's the kind of game where it was vital to always have your entire army outside of the base and that had repercussions by allowing player bases to be sitting ducks ripe for the taking. "The Frozen Throne" changed this meta and other player habits significantly, and is going to be something I will address in the review for it.

The World Editor was also crucially simpler and less versatile before the expansion and in truth you couldn't do a lot with it. It wasn't advanced enough to provide so many of the incredible custom maps that were made famous on The Hive Workshop, having entire sprawling fan-made campaigns or other game modes and genres(such as the popular "Defense of the Ancients"). The custom maps in "Reign of Chaos" only had the selection of melee maps plus two fairly decent scenario maps - one of them was a hilarious and cute arcade game about dodging projectiles, but still none of them hold a candle to the depth and intricacy of the custom games made through the expansion pack.






If you're a younger gamer and you've never heard of Warcraft prior to "World of Warcraft", or have ever played a traditional base-building RTS, please lend an ear and see if you can give this game a shot. It's the best and easiest game to introduce a new player to RTSes, and the game displays so much beauty in the way it was hand-crafted. The World Editor lets you see every single model, texture and voice-line from up close, and it even shows you the way the campaign story missions have been built from the inside-out. It's the kind of game that shows traces about its creation process everywhere, and that absolutely inspires you to create games and worlds of your own. I'm an artist, and I have to admit I still draw a lot of artistic inspiration from Warcraft's visuals and craftsmanship, and I learned a lot of valuable lessons on design, programming, sound design and storytelling through it. I promise it's going to be one of those games that will carry lessons and insight for you for the rest of your life.

PERSONAL BEST: 108,300pts

The two mumbling beefcakes of 80s Hollywood are together at last! With the mission to storm straight into Nicaragua and violently usurp their current socialist government on the behalf of Ronald Reagan and initiate an entire massacre on civilians kick some alien ass in New Zeland in the year 2633, this arcade shooting cornerstone completely embodies Dukie's credo of shooting everything on sight, being tough, and chewing bubble gum.

It has to be said this is an evolution of Konami's many shooter games(evolving straight from "Scramble" up through "Gradius"), that sticks to the principle that you need the power-ups and that once you die once, you lose them all and are pretty much a gonner. It's a requirement to have power-ons all of the time, and it is damning every time you get something that is not the spread gun or machine gun. Often these swaps get irreplaceable, and you need them especially for the later-game bosses, although they're so hard they'll reduce you to using pea shooters anyway.

Like "OutRun", I think "Contra" can be credited for managing to invigorate the 16-bit artstyle. The jungles are pretty and lush, the sprites of the heroes are wonderfuly recognisable, crisp, realistic, and you can imagine the whole package being seamlessly translated for the Mega Drive. And also the alien designs can get really yucky and disturbingly organic. It's so funny and artful how this pastiche on "Commando" so seamlessly blends into the finale of "Alien", and just couple it with early forerunners of gaping stone faces shooting fireballs that are so obviously an inspiration for Sega's "Altered Beast".

"Contra" officially has 7 stages but with the change of landscapes it really feels more like 10. As a casual player it is perfectly achievable to reach(or even beat) about half the game, but then it just starts being very brazen and uneven with its difficulty spikes. Some segments are obviously breather portions meant for relaxation, just so that some insurmountable, bullet-spamming boss is waiting around the corner. But it was an arcade game, what can I say, and people must have been compelled to get to memorise all of these patterns, using only the advantage of your high platforming flexibility in tow. I know I certainly was, and every single time I took it on the hand, I always felt I could reach a step forward, and that excercising that excitement is certainly a mark of good game design.

(Glitchwave project #022)

Please get this mouseclick mod:
https://www.gamepressure.com/download.asp?ID=73651
It makes the playing experience SO much better.



Honestly I'm not really willing to write a full Warcraft 1 review right now, even though I fucking love the game more than it deserves and I beat it multiple times, and I pored a lot of hours into researching it for the betterment of the entire Internet(but those are stories for another day), but I will just make it brief: Warcraft, even with the dumb story twists in WoW, even with the attrocities that Blizzard regularly commits, is a stunning and captivating story that impacted my life. I might have started with Warcraft 2 but I have immense respect for the OG and I still play it every now and then. It might be far from a relevant game anymore but this little gem was the source of many of my inspirations and fueled my career milestones in a strange way. So that's why I feel so connected and grateful to it.

So I'd really like to see all the hacking efforts people made in making this game that much more accessible. The mouse mod is a fine start. I want to see how much further it can go.

P.S.: If you've ever contemplating an interest into getting into this whole "Warcraft" thing but are worried about the size of the games and its universe, please talk to me. I should know, I'm a big fan since 1995 and the interest in it hasn't gone down by one bit.