To the original Orcs and Humans of Warcraft and its successor Warcraft II: Orcs and Humans add two new races Night Elves and the Undead Scourge.

They all appear in the latest in Blizzard's masterful series of real time strategy games with Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. This one starts 15 years after where Warcraft II left off. The orcs and humans are still enemies but they are about to face a much bigger danger. The Burning Legion is returning and this time they intend to stay.

Graphically this game is mind-blowing for its genre. The chapter introductions are cinematic in their complexity and the in-game reproductions of the scenes are fairly impressive too.

The animation-style interface is easy to use and the prologue is pretty much a tutorial to show you how things work. The command panel is easy to use - a list of buttons which alter depending on what type of character you have highlighted. Click on your hero and his spells list panel will open, click on a peasant and you have access to the buildings menu. It's that simple.

Each mission is self-explanatory, you begin by building a base camp, training footmen, learning how to navigate your way around the map. Conflict is introduced in easy stages and if you happen to die, you can just replay the chapter again until you get it right.

You also play through the chapters as each race. After the prologue you start with the Human Alliance and battle your way through eight chapters before moving onto the Undead Scourge. The way your character moves from one racial type to another is also cleverly done, an integral part of the storyline.

There are additional sideline quests away from the main linear route which give you more experience, extra items or just help pass the time of day while your dogsbody units go explore the map for you.

Warcraft III also has a solid storyline. The change through the races works while the cinematic cut-ins are designed to advance things along when the game graphics can't quite handle it.

But, while there have been changes, most of the formula has stayed the same. You need to collect gold and lumber, your base needs a town hall, barracks, etc before you can develop specialist units.

It takes time to develop a workable strategy - go for stacks of troops and you run out of resources quicker (a new feature), construct your essential buildings and you might get raided by the chapter's baddies.

There is hope though. The first time I played through one of the chapters my hero was killed. Doh I thought, I'll have to start again. But no, build an Altar of Kings and you can respawn your hero and off you go again.

Each race plays differently as well. With the Undead Scourge you can just make dozens of ghouls or animate some dead bodies into skeletons and send them in overwhelm your enemy, but this won't work as well for the other races. The Night Elves are more effective using the stealth capacities of their units and the orcs are the tanks of the game, just splatting anything that moves.

The multi-player option improves somewhat on Blizzard's other major player - Diablo - by matching gamers of similar levels. Hopefully this will reduce somewhat the disparate levels of players all trying to get to the same reward.

And there is the all important editor, where you can create your own maps and play either against the computer, across a LAN (local area network) or through Battle.net, Blizzard's own internet games hosting option.

Together with the World of Warcraft MMOG (massively multi-player online game) due for release sometime soon, Warcraft III should keep the real time strategists happy for a while.

July 10, 2002 15:00