Warcraft Orcs And Humans (1994)(Blizzard Entertainment) Game

Blizzard Entertainment's début in the genre of Real-Time Strategy (RTS), Warcraft is more a game of its time than a game of all time. Nonetheless, there is much to enjoy here.

As the game's subtitle indicates, Warcraft is about the violent struggle between humans and orcs, (the latter being a green-skinned race that seems to reflect man's irrational side - especially the will-to-power) for the land of Azeroth. The storyline is simple, though the introduction is fairly good: the rest of the tale is delivered through mission briefings. Compared to later games, Warcraft's general atmosphere is quite light-hearted, and almost cheerful in some respects.

Warcraft's gameplay is classic RTS, with the player constructing a base by collecting two resources - gold and lumber, then producing units via the various buildings, (with the number of farms limiting the maximum number of units). An interesting feature, (which, sadly, was not maintained in subsequent Blizzard games) is the need for roads to connect various buildings; this makes the game both more realistic and a little more challenging. It is also to the credit of the developers that the buildings and units of the two different sides look distinct, with each race having its own preferred weapons, (swords and bows for humans; axes and spears for orcs) and mounts, (horses for humans, wolves for orcs).

The two armies are similar to play, though not identical. Unfortunately, one of the main differences is that the humans can heal, whilst the orcs have a relatively weak raise dead spell; this tends to unbalance the game and makes one of the early orc missions particularly difficult. In addition, there are no static defences in Warcraft, (such as the turrets of Dune 2 or the towers or Warcraft 2); consequently, defending one's base can be quite tricky. On the other hand, the power of summoning creatures to fight for you (this comes quite late in the game, and uses renewable mana rather than lumber and gold) is a great feature which many subsequent RTS games have neglected, (with the notable exception of Warcraft 3).

Many characteristic components of later Blizzard games make their first appearance in Warcraft. These include spells, upgrades, RPG-style dungeon quests, multiplayer and skirmish options as well as icons depicting the various commands one can give. All this, incidentally, requires no more than four megabytes of RAM - a reminder that good gameplay does not need the resources of a supercomputer.

Anyone wishing to revisit the ancestors of current RTS games, would do well to try Warcraft, if he hasn't played it before. It still contains an idea or two which game developers would do well to incorporate into future products; it remains both challenging and enjoyable; and it reminds one of the numerous features that make a computer game memorable.