Gameplay

SPlayer, AKA Suckplayer

The great thing about Blizzard games of the past has been the good single player game that taught gamers the basics of playing, all the while giving atmosphere and character to the setting. WarCraft III, unfortunately, does none of this.

Admittedly while the single player game in StarCraft was very different from multiplayer, in WarCraft III there is no resemblance at all. One can still learn the buildings and hotkeys, but even the tech tree is glazed over. As for character and atmosphere, quite honestly, WarCraft III is just too tired, silly and cliché to provide a proper experience.

Doh, two came to the party

Me Ogre be dead

Oh the irony

Undoubtebly the characters in StarCraft weren’t the brightest lightbulbs, often caught up in their own petty problems too much to see past their own noses. This made itself particularly evident in Brood War, where the Protoss and Terrans got bamboozled in the most ridiculous fashion by Kerrigan.

Blizzard takes that kind of cliched blindness too far, or they’ve used that trick too many times. The design team needs new writers desperately, what passes for “plot” in the single player campaign isn’t just bad, it’s a cry for help. The characters, motions and twists are tired, they need to be put to rest – we dare anyone to find something fresh in WarCraft III.

Even the big feature of WarCraft’s RPG elements – the quests – is really nothing to brag about. For the most part they are tasks that the player would have done anyway, except that occasionally he gets a reward item now for his hero. In fact, quests are the primary form of the in-game cutscene that manages to give away every strategy and tactic needed to win a mission. The designers literally tell players how to beat every map. What’s the fun in that?

Fresh like Chinese Thousand-Year-Old-Eggs

Unfortunately the same lack of freshness permeates the level design. It’s not that they are badly done, imbalanced or frustrating. Far from it, in those respects WarCraft III excels. For lack of a better word, however, they lack soul. There’s no spunk, no energy, nothing fresh going on; not even compared to StarCraft, never mind contemporary titles. Oh yes, you have heroes and the oh-so-interesting no production missions (which are now more numerous.) To paraphrase the Simpsons, what have I done to deserve such a flat and tasteless game?

I still say the Lich is a chick character

My most frustrating FFA ever

'tis night time

Maybe the missions spent too much time in the design and testing phases, got overprocessed? Perhaps it’s time for fresh blood in the design department as well? There is simply nothing new to catch the attention. With WarCraft III, the single player game has become the ultimate clone of StarCraft; perfectly executed, designed, copied and ultimately stale. Even the cinematics just can’t compare to Diablo II.