Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

"A story of a Warcraft 2 battle, with a review put in."

A small fort, off in the distance......that is your objective. Destroy this fort and all that lie within. Your signal your group to hit one part of the wall....and you break in. Everyone in the fort comes to attack you....and you see that your 9 comrades slowly get beat back and all die a and turn into a horrible pile of blood, goo, and gore. You curse silently to yourself, and look down at the remains of your troops. You will need to make more if you want to have any chance at all of winning this battle....

Ah, old memories. How great they are. When everyone had either a Sega or Nintendo, before Diablo, Half Life, Unreal, or even Quake, we had this game. It was called Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness. Though games likes this may have come before (like it’s original game, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, or Dune 2) but none before have ever reached the widespread appeal that this game garnered under its belt. This game is the first in the line of Blizzard’s breakthrough game, and it is still going 7 years later with Warcraft 3 just now selling over one million copies. Warcraft 2 is a Real Time Strategy also known as RTS. This does not mean that you on the clock, it means that you need to have quick time reactions, because you have no time to carefully plan your attacks defenses. However, if you don’t want to, prepare to be in a world of hurt.

You begin to regroup your tattered army, which is not a small task. You set to work on finding a new mine and a bigger forest so you can gain more wood. You know the hordes are starting to come to you.......you don’t have enough time to make your plans. You hear a small horn sound off in the distance......they are coming.

Warcraft 2 is set right after the first war of Orcs and Humans, with the humans fleeing across the sea, and the rocs trailing after them. However, the humans have new allies to help them, the most prominent, the elves. Now, with new allies, the humans hope to put a stop to the orcs once and for all. With new hope, new weapons, and an ever powerful feeling of disgrace to the orcs from the humans, they set to destroy every last one. However, on the orcish side, it is quite the opposite. After winning the war, the Orc hordes begin to build boats to travel across the large sea, and attack large colonies of humans. You must kill everything, and everyone in your path, without any mercy. That is the way of the Orc.

The Orcs surround your base, coming at you from all sides....you can cannot battle like this, cowering in the middle like a wounded animal. You begin to fight, pushing all your forces to one side.....and you break threw the onslaught. However, your small town is ruined, in the blink of an eye. Everything you worked so hard for is gone, all gone. A lowly peasant come up to you, and says “What shall we do now sir?” You turn around to look at him, and answer, “We shall rebuild.”

Graphics: 9

What? A 9 you say? How dare you! I should burn you at the stake! Take your eyeballs out and feed them to my puppy! And then make you drink a gallon of cod liver oil!
Well, that was what one person had to say about that. However, these graphics were not the best in the world. Everything was the best that PC games could do at that time, but when you compare it to other games for that came out a little time after it, you could see the vast improvement that happened after this game, and see the impact on what this game did. Some characters are a bit cartoonish, however, I see them to my liking. Everything feels very medieval, with the types of weapons and buildings that you find inside the game, however, the only thing that sets it apart is a few things which no Medieval, which is looking for oil and flying machines. However, everything is set up nicely.

The survivors move back into the burned down houses, looking for personal mementos that they left behind when they fled. You order your pesants to build a new town hall and barracks......you must get new soldiers to fight the Horde. Soon enough, you have enough peasants to get back to your normal duties, however, there is still a sense of fear that keeps coming back.....you must work faster.

Gameplay: 9
This being the first really popular RTS game, that means the gameplay must be very good. Yes it is. However, when you compare it to anything that comes out later, they all expand on what WC2 did, and make it even better (the bests one of course, are Starcraft and Warcraft 3.) However, with that was expected for this game, Blizzard showed everyone up and gave them the game of the year. In the beginning, you choose your race (Orcs or Humans) and set out to colonize parts of the country. However, the race that you didn’t pick is out to kill you, so you better watch out. In your first mission, you are set to build farms and a barracks. Farm make it able to gain more people, and barracks produce the bulk of your army, the standard soldiers. However, the farther you get into the game, the more types of soldiers and new building that give you different types of weapons. So, in reality, build something, get something new, that helps you build something different. Yes, it’s that simple, ladies and gentlemen. Each side is almost exactly the same, they each have one type of building that combats what the other race has, for example, peasant, peon, Dragons/ Gryphons, etc. So it really matters is you want to have green skin or human skin when you play Warcraft 2. So, what makes this game not get a 10 in the Gameplay department? I would say just one thing: The lack of good computer AI. Though some people might say that this game is very hard, sometimes the computer AI can just be plain stupid. Easily beaten, so you can go on making more troops and towers, and showed what the real power WC2 had for people: wanting to be the strongest base ever.

You know have an even stronger army then before...with enough money and wood to last a long time, you will not be surprised this time. You try to surprise them; the Horde would never think that you could have rebuilt this fast. You send in 3 squadrons of soldiers, each coming from different directions, leaving your base to be guarded by towers and the civilians. You quickly make breaks in the walls, and wait for the right time. You see an opening in their defense, and you take it. You charge in, taking out the sentries, and then, with your elven archers, destroy the rest of the guard towers. However, something isn’t right; there seems to be something awry....

Sound: 9
Everyone loves doing the seal trick. It’s funny. If you don’t know it, then I’ll tell you. If you see a seal, keep clicking on it. It keeps making it’s nice little seal sounds, but if you click on it too much, it will grunt. Keep clicking on it for about 45 seconds and it will grunt loudly and then explode into gore, and then fade away. If you find a bunch of seals, you got yourself a party! If you keep doing this, you will notice the difference in grunts every time you click on the seal. This shows the wide array of voices that Warcraft 2 has to offer. Every single living thing has it’s own sound from “Zug Zug” like a peon, to a “Your wish is my command lord” from an archer. Also, if you click on anything that you made, it makes at least one type of sound, from the refinery “the bubbling of hot oil” to the airships, you really get the feeling of everything having a personality. However, if you click on the same type a lot, and you cycle threw what al the saying they have, it begins to get annoying during a long battle, however, battle never last longer then an hour (at least for me, or you really, really, really, take a long time getting more people) so the sound is great, but easily outdone by everything now.

A large bell rings out, and The Orcs finally show their true powers, release waves of footmen to attack you. You quickly call in for reinforcements, and see that though this is your last ditch effort, it is theirs too. Soon enough you have a full scale war going on in the camp. Having destroyed all possible ways to get more soldiers, the orcs have no backup. However, the force outnumbers you 2 to 1 at the moment. When your back-ups come, you will be equal in everything. It is a long and hard battle, with each person fighting for survival, and they all die, one by one, until only a scattered few remain from one side. They are all tired, hurt, and bloody, but they must finish the job.

Fun Factor: 9
Though this game that changed a whole genre, you can tell why people don’t play it online anymore. The game doesn’t feel as new or original as it did 7 years ago. (Has it really been that long?) Because every other RTS engine has been modeled in some way or another, from this game, this makes this game seem like the beta version of Starcraft, and so on and so forth. If you go and play this game now, I bet you would say, “I can’t believe this was so cutting edge.” It was, but now, it is “iffy.” However, if you get past how old it is, you can see that there is still is Orcs to kill after all. If they were just found faster then you could play this game longer, but, and see what is has to offer, but now, since Warcraft 3 has come out, why bother. This game is amazing, but outdated. A little piece of gaming goodness is lost.

Graphics: 9
Gameplay: 9
Sound: 9
Fun Factor: 9

Reviewer’s Score: 9/10

Now, the the end of our Warcraft 2 story. I made the story because this is a special review, for a classic game that deserves more credit more then ever.

A lone warrior comes up to you. “Your command Lord?” He says.You say to destroy the rest of the Orc buildings. You have beaten the Horde now. However, they always come back. How long will there be until they come back?

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/03/02, Updated 09/03/02