I just got this game a few days ago, already finished Humans&Undead campaigns and I am working on the Orcish one now. Here are my expressions (based on single player solely). Graphic: Nothing that could be called outstanding or breathtaking just a solid piece of work. That’s as far as all buldings, units, environment go because all the light effects (lightnings, ghosts, magic are better than the rest). BTW I can’t say that any building in 3D looks better than what it looked like in 2D Warcraft 2. Sound: Ok., nothing to be bitching about but again nothing to listen in awe to. I have Polish version unfortunately so some of the voices (especially of some heroes don’t sound well). Terrain 3Dness: This is really bad unfortunately. Tearrain is mostly 2D with rocks sticking out of it like in 2D rts, there are very few slopes. Basically you will not only see that terrain shape loses with Total Annihilation but also with still mostly 2D Age of Empires 2. Camera action: Another weak feature. You can turn it left/right a bit (but there is only one view that you can play in – camera returns to default position after you let go of turn button), zoom in/out even a tiner bit. Unfortunately even when you set resolution to 1024x768 and zoom out completely you’ll see only a small portion of battlefield. No camera freedom in this game especially if you had the chance to experience TopWare’s 3D rts (like Earth 2150, Black Moon Project or others) – total freedom there. Day/Night – Sure it’s nice that day doesn’t last all the time but unfortunately, unless you play in a dark room, when night comes it’s going to give you eye-ache. TopWare did much better job here. Creating groups of units: This is very well done, finally you can have the very same units in more than just one group – same as in TopWare’s productions Difficulty level – even though you can choose only Normal/Hard there’s a very good feature included. When you get to a mission that you lost you not only have the option to restart it but also to lower difficulty setting (even when you play on Normal setting) Worthless workers – when they’re not working an icon pops up showing that such a situation occurred. Already in Age of Empires but it’s still nice Blizzard implemented this feature – many producers don’t. Small unit limit – whether it’s good or bad is up to your personal taste. It surely makes the game faster but at the same time you have to leave your base almost defenseless when you decide to invade someone. IMO it’s good nevertheless as you finally don’t have to create 50 units to have a chance of successfully invading your enemy’s base. Unfortunately at the same time health and damage reach ludicrous levels which I dislike. Story – It’s ok but in some missions you can get the expression that they were just put there for no other reason but to make the game that bit longer. Starcraft story was much better. Unit behaviour - Too bad you only have 3 options (attack, stop, stand ground) and you can't choose formations. The most annoying thing however is that units can't "push" each other around so you have to make sure that the way for your unit isn't blocked by your very own units.
Dragoon, I disagree with a fair bit of what you've said there - day and night do serve their purposes (monsters are asleep at night, or the ones that sleep anyway). The terrain does have an affect on line of sight and whatnot - Total Annihilation may have done terrain a lot better (I don't really know about that though) but TA didn't have half the personality of the Warcraft series. Just keep clicking on the Dwarven riflemen for the some of the funniest stuff I've ever heard in a game - "I shot the Sheriff, the deputy and your wee doggie too!" As for the sound, well, like you said, it's the Polish version. I can only assume that the English version is much better (being that I don't speak Polish, but my experience with such things is that it's better in English than the language it was translated to). As one site said, it's evolution, not revolution. Warcraft 3 doesn't make any big leaps forward in the RTS genre, but it's definitely the best RTS I've played - Starcraft was very good, yes, but I find WC3 much better. It could also be that I've finally learnt how to co-ordinate my base...
I'm not saying that day/night serve no purpose but when I play during the day (real life) and sunrays fall into my room and some of them on my monitor it's very hard to actually see anything on screen because contrast in game during night (not real life night anymore) is too low. Making it higher in monitor helps only a bit. I agree that Blizzard games do have something that makes you want to play further in single player (TA and those TP's games which I played lack spoken briefings which convince you that yes you should go there and do your job).
W3 is very cool. Races - The races look well balanced (like in Starcraft but I still have to play some more to bu sure about w3). Heroes - I like hero leveling up, skills & inventory (I AM a RPG Maniac afterall). Units - The units are interesting & very good looking (most). The storyline is average but stilll good. Day/Night change - what do you expect? That night would be light? Difficulty - all well here Terrain 3D - average Sound - English is very good & they have much easter eggs (althought I didn't try clicking many times [NOTE TO MYSELF: Try annoying units by clicking numerious times on them]). I liked ghoul's easter egg Ghoul: wassup? Camera action - weak but the graphics are made well enough not to make the camera annoying. Smaal unit limit - I would have liked to see some majestic battles. You forgot to mention: Gameplay - VERY GOOD Movie insertions - FANTASTIC! Even better than Diablo 2! I was just stunned from the beauty.
Ah, WarCraft3, I been playing that game forever now, ever since I got back that is. One of the best features in WarCraft3 will have to be the map editor, damn that thing is so good, there are so much things you can do with that and all. With the editor you can make your own single player campaign stuff and you can even make little video type things(not like a movie scene thing, but like ingame video).You can change any unit you like(like damage and stuff like that). And there is much more you can do with it. I think teh graphics are pretty good, I have not really seen a RTS go that far into graphics. You can zoom in and out(which I really never do). There are shadows in the game and a bunch of other cool graphic stuff. But keep in mind, this is a real time strategy and you do not want to go too far with the graphics or else it would not be too good. And there are a bunch of other interesting stuff, and battle.net has some interesting features as well. Creeps, mercenaries, items, heros, levels, all of that are all nice to have in a real time strategy and I have not seen any of those in one....
You kind of had levels in C&C: Tiberian Sun and C&C: Red Alert 2, with the veteran and elite status, that gave the unit extra or enhanced abilities. You also had some of those things in Age of Empires, AoE 2, and SW: Galactic Battlegrounds - ie. the 'Heros'. I haven't got WC3, but I've played WC2, and it sounds so much better! I might even look into getting it.
I like WC3 tons.. I enjoyed the storyline which explains a fair bit of warcraft history, for me, that was the major reason I kept playing. As jar said, some of the things that the units say are absolutely hilarious. Dragoon, one thing about the graphics. What do we have these days? Better graphics yes, but on a GF 4. I don't know of any other game that lets you play on a high enough resolution with such effects without skip-o-mania. The graphics engine is very well optimized IMO. Compare it to games like SOF II and ugh. Maybe the effects weren't nice for you but for me, I sometimes stopped to admire them, especially on the new campaign screens.
I'm not saying that Warcraft 3 is a bad game, it is a very good one however I disagree with the fact that it gets 10/10 in some reviews. The review which I read described it as astonishing with astounding graphics whereas it's doesn't look revolutionary (anyone played Sacrifice?) just a solid piece of work on a high level. I'd give the game 8-8.5/10. As for engine Jinxed try one of TopWare's games and you'll see how much a programmist can squeeze out of average PC. Even with 196MB RAM and when I still had Matrox G400 32MB I could play in 1024x768 with all effects on and 32bit color. In addition to that you get 360degrees rotation around your units 90degrees up/down and a huge zoom in/out. All these with your mouse. Of course there's day/night and changing weather conditions. On a sidenote TopWare sells it games for no more (often much less) than 20$. And no skip-o-mania at all even during huge battles with storm around you. It does happen to me from time to time in W3 (GF3 64MB). One thing I forgot to mention about W3. It's so wonderfully bug free. Not a single crash to desktop or some other damned freeze.
If you like the worldeditor of Warcraft, it has been easy since Warcraft II. Take Star Craft for exaple - I like it much better, but the worldeditor doesnt work well. If you make things special (like add special units for an enemy or yourself) and then play it as is, the enemies wont build or collect resources. And it is rather tough to program a good, working campaign.
The StarCraft editor was easy to use...this WC3 one is confusing but you can practicaly do a lot with it, you gotta spend days and days figuring out how it works and stuff first or if you know programming good you may beable to understand this editor. I for one like the editor a lot, cause I like making maps on RTS games and stuff...
While we are on the subject of "easy editors", when I got Arcanum it has something on the box that says "Easiest editor I have ever seen!". Well, they must not have seen much. It is rather tough unless you really work at it.
Nothing Plus non of my relatives/friends/anyone I even remotely knew/know works there. BTW they're going to make world war 2 rts in September which according to listed features will include terrain changes not only caused by player (like in ww3: black gold) but also terrain changes due to weather. I can't wait (I'll post a review of course).
When why do you like Top Ware so much? I'm bored with WW2 theme. P.S. Why didn't you post this review in my Reviews thread? At least post WW2 's review there please 0
I wanted it to be noticed and reviews thread got into "bugs'n'features discussion" too much so some people might not look in there. As to why I like TopWare so much I think you can find answer in my previous posts. It's not that all their games are great but they do have that great rts engine and they do realize that not everyone buys top shelf pc every six months (like one programmist said it's not hard to make a game which will work on strongest pcs available - optimizing it to work on what people really have at homes is real challenge). Plus as I said 20$ for game is their top price (again at least they realize that 40-50$ in US is not the same amount of money in other countries). I must admit however that one of new games they'll distribute end of 2002 or beginning of 2003 does have recommended hardware: 1,8GHz 512MB RAM which pissed me off. Though at the same time minimum requirements are 400MHz proc, 16MB graphics card and 128 or 256MB RAM. Beats me why there's such a huge difference between the two.
WarCraft 3, Earth2150, etc. Well, one of the best RTS(/RPG-hybrid) game editors I've ever seen (aside from some "destructive" bugs) was the one for Tzar: Burden of the Crown (awesome game, btw). AS FOR WARCRAFT 3, I haven't played it. I've read a number of reviews, looked at alot of its screenshots, and my assessment is: it's ho-hum. The graphics look way-too cartoonish, bland, and basic. Colorful, but boring. Is this WARCRAFT 3 or Empire Earth??? I heard also, that despite this, the game chugs even on higher-end 1ghz+/GF3 systems. I've heard this alot to my surprise because if I recall, Blizzard said they were hoping to have this game run GOOD on AT LEAST a P233/64mb. I saw the screenshots of the graphics back then when they said this (about a year or so ago). Comparing them to the graphics in the screenshots I'm seeing now I see NO real change. In fact, I see none. This looks like the same game in those screen shots a year or two ago, why all of the sudden the high system requirements? As for Topware and their 3D games, like Earth2150: EARTH 2150 *CRAPS* on WarCraft 3, graphically. Earth2150, takes a big log of sh*t out of its ass, and womps WarCraft 3 over the head with it. The graphics in Earth2150 are quite superior to what I've seen of WarCraft 3 (side note: a couple of my friends who saw WC3's screenshots at first glance actually said,"Nah, I'm not going to get it. The graphics look like crap."--I was surprised, they usually don't care about graphics in a game.). Another game graphically superior to WC3 is: Ground Control. I guess people forgot about this game but WC3 can't even compare graphically to it. NOW, why do I mention this? Because I was able to run Earth2150, FAAAST, my old Celeron 433/64mb/Voodoo2! I was able to run Ground Control EVEN FASTER, I swear, using that same system and switching to my old RivaTNT 16mb (PCI) I was getting like 65fps or something, very smooth, no slowdowns (only in some super, uber-battle, then it drops to like 20fps, depending on how many polygonal things are exploding at that particular camera angle)! Then, I look at WarCraft 3, with its rather dated looking graphics, and see the system specs recommending something like a P3 600/GF3/256mb. WHA-WHA-WHAT?! Seriously, if Earth 2150 or Ground Control can handle lots of units and battles on the screen with better graphics and frame-rates, than surely WC3 can with its older, more dated graphics, and less-units allowed on the screen. WC3's units don't even have all the advanced AI-functions for all the individual units, it just has "attack, stop, stand-ground" or some crap. Is that to save CPU-processing power? RIIIIIIGHT. Ultimately, I'll have to make a final judgement when I ACTUALLY PLAY it, but it looks weak, sounds weak, crticized for being weak: thus, it probably is weak. I just started playing the Battlefield 1942 demo, this is an Operation:Flashpoint-style of game, this game has some supreme 3D-graphics and units and stuff rolling, running around shelling, bazooka-ing, and shooting at each other. If this game can let you run around in first-person (or 3rd, it's your choice), across high-quality-looking A+, expansive, graphical terrain, with dozens of other dudes and stuff, then surely, Blizzard can create a good looking 3D RTS game graphically and gameplay-wise on-par . And look at Dark Reign with its great list of possible AI-commands/orders. Or Total Annihilation, even. Or, well, Earth 2150. These are OLD games. WTF? Blizzard can't make a WarCraft 3 game up to par with such gameplay features? Have they not played Age of Empires II? Even Dune2000 and Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds game had more unit-AI options. SURE, the game may be "simple, but fun", but look at what happened to Westwood with their dejected Tiberian Sun. Or all the flak they got for their pitifully dated-gameplay in Red Alert 2. People will only put up with stagnation in gameplay to a point. That's why Westwood's Emperor: Battle for Dune, totally bombed and is already forgotten (I can't even find it in the bargain bins!). When I saw this game and saw WarCraft III and heard about all its limitations, my first thought was: "this is the last one they can make like this". If they make another RTS game with this same ol' sh*t, it will bomb like Emperor: Battle for Dune did.
Couldn't agree with you more Bortiis though I wouldn't go as far as calling Warcraft's graphics dated. BTW have you played WW3:black gold? I'm wondering whether to buy it or perhaps I should wait and get Frontline Attac: war over Europe (previously called WW2: panzer claws).
