WarCraft III: Reign Of Chaos 2009-10-24 00:00:00Rites of PassageHogwarts cameo?
Real-time strategy franchises tend to attract fanatical followings,
from the legions of Command & Conquer fanboys to the near
religious fervency of Total Annihilation devotees. None more so,
however, than Blizzard's WarCraft series - and its futuristic
spin-off, StarCraft - a series of RTS games which have honed to
perfection a formula which balances relatively simple gameplay with
surprisingly complex mechanics, innovative graphics and a healthy
dollop of bizarre humour. It's a long time since the last game in
the series grabbed the attention of the strategy gamer, making
WarCraft III one of the most anticipated PC titles ever; can it
possibly live up to the legacy of its forebears?
Set years after the conclusion of WarCraft II, with orcs and
humans living in an uneasy co-existence, much has changed in the
lands of WarCraft. For a start, they're entirely rendered in 3D
now; from the intricately animated menu screens to the often
stunning battlegrounds, every element of the game has been given a
polygonal, texture-mapped makeover. The interface, which will be
immediately familiar to fans of StarCraft, even features animated
3D portraits of each character you select - right down to the
bored-looking sheep who occasionally wander through the map.
Purists need not worry, however, as nothing has been lost in the
conversion to 3D. The basic gameplay of the series remains intact
and, perhaps more importantly, the character and humour of the art
in the original WarCraft games has been moved seamlessly into the
third dimension. Blizzard were perhaps wise to wait until 3D was
quite mature before releasing this latest game in the series;
uninspiring, badly textured models would have ruined the feel of
the title, but the quirky and beautifully animated models and
portraits seen here carry the classic feel of the title admirably.
Nothing offered, nothing gainedThe level of detail is almost unmatched in the genre
Those running low-spec systems will also be pleased to hear that,
despite the graphical splendour of the game, it won't cripple even
the most basic of systems. Playing four-player games on a network -
usually the type of play most likely to bring an RTS title's
framerate to its knees - saw smooth and perfectly acceptable
framerates even on our lowest spec system, a Duron 800 with a
GeForce 2. With a little tweaking, the game is undoubtedly playable
on systems even less well endowed than that. Real time strategy
titles have never been the most demanding games on the market in
terms of system spec, and it's good to see Blizzard continuing this
tradition and resisting the urge to add curves, bump mappi...
