Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (Mac/PC CD)

I have a Pentium 3 866 with a Geforce 2mx 32mb graphics card and I am running Windows 2000 and I have no problems jacking the graphics levels up to max.

The Gameplay is what makes this game so enjoyable. The 4 races (Humans, Orcs, Night Elves and Undead) are all quite different from each other in quite anumber of aspects, from how they gather resources to combat units and abilities. For instance, whilst 3 of the races hack down trees to gather lumber, the Night Elves accumulate wood without destroying the trees (though be it at a slower rate).

The Micromanagement has been kept to a minimum, gather Gold and Wood, build a force, go kill. But there are differences to most RTS games. The use of heroes is especially a good move as is adding 'creeps' (Neutral monsters) which defend gold mines and other neutral buildings and provide potential experience and magic items for your heroes.

An upkeep has also been itroduced so that a player with a large force of troops receives less gold from mining than the others to help stop the larger force from growing to the point where you will face wave upon wave of forces. This does however make players more aggressive in their playing nature, as you can no longer churn out masses of troops at a quick t'rate and in order to receive more money again, it is wise to harrass the enemy and lose a few troops in the process in order to reduce the upkeep.

The story is also a highlight to this game, but the real star is perhaps the Movie sequences which look almost equally impressive as the film Final Fantasy. The detail is just awsome.

In short this game is about fun, the humour element has been kept (keep clicking on your units to hear some humorous comments, just like in Warcraft 2). The online multiplayer system is very fair and allows you to be matched up with players of similar ability via levels of experienc, depending on your wins/losses ratio.

This game keeps you entertained and is not just eye candy, I whole heartedly reccomend it.

Warcraft 3 is a real-time strategy game set in a universe of both technology and magic, where you order an army in an attempt to eliminate your opponent from the game by destroying all their buildings, or in single-player mode possibly achieve some other goal such as holding a strategical point on the map for half an hour. While many other games of this genre are very shallow and offer a few hours' worth of gameplay, Warcraft 3 has an involving and rich storyline, coupled with both in-game conversations between characters that may tell you what to do and out-of-game movies that further the storyline and look so realistic they may well have just come out of a film.

While the single-player campaign may be difficult, you can reduce the difficulty at the end of a mission you have just lost if you are finding it hard.

The 3rd edition in the Warcraft series also adds 'heroes', units that are both powerful warriors and can cast varying spells. They can also be levelled up in an RPG-style fashion, adding another strategic element to the game which works very well.

In the Warcraft 3 storyline, there are four races, each tailored to suit different styles of gameplay, and everyone can find one race that they enjoy playing as and tend to get the best results out of. The four races are as follows;

Humans: A well balanced force, consisting of cheap original ground units and solid air units and spellcasters.

Orcs: Especially strong ground units but somewhat lacking when it comes to spellcasting capabilities.

Undead: The most numerous army in Warcraft, the undead have the ability to raise the corpses of foes and friends alike into an army of walking dead! (Eek!) Weak ground units at first but once they get into their stride are very powerful.

Night-Elves: The last race, the Night-Elves, live in the forests of a distant land and are very reclusive. When it comes to their army, ranged units and spellcasters are their speciality but they lack in melee capabilities.

The soundtrack is very good and provides different music for each race, it never seems to get tiring - there is however little music on any options or title screen, apart from a sort of humming in the background which is slightly eerie and could be improved.

The real gem in the crown is Warcraft 3's Internet play capacities. While the online community is very unforgiving and requires a certain style of play, you will get used to it with practice and eventually will be using your technical terms like you've owned the game for years! There is also clan support so you can create a group with any friends you may meet, plus a world editor so you can design your own maps and host them online! Broadband is, however, recommended.

All-in-all, a wonderful game which should provide you with hours of fun!

The game is based in a fantasy world, where humans and orcs have been fighting for generations. Now, a new threat has emerged in the form of demons, and each race (Humans, Orcs, Undead and Night Elves) must fight for their own survival as they stand up against unlikely foes.

Warcraft III boasts compelling graphics that are of extremely high standards. One of the existing reviews states that the characters were blocky - this is untrue. Obviously, you are not using a good enough graphics card. On a decent PC these days, the game looks fabulous, with great sceneries and well-animated characters. To run the game at its optimum level, I recommend a 1.5 GHz with 256MB RAM with a decent graphics card of 32MB, these being the minimum settings.

The same review mentioned also announces that 12 units are selectable at a time. This is true, but it's not true that this game is just about rushing your enemy with as many units as possible. It's clear that the author of that review has not played the legendary Starcraft, the base of Warcraft III. The system is smooth and the game is easy to pick up with useful tutorials as well as hints and tips.

Warcraft III has two main types of gameplay. One is the Campaign mode, where the main action of the game takes place through story. Second is the awesome multiplayer options, online or through network. I haven't tried the online game yet, but it uses Battle.net, the same success I experienced in Starcraft. The network option is completely flawless, unlike Starcraft, and I found it easy playing on a Mac to PC network.

On the whole, Warcraft III is an awesome real time strategy game that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys thinking games. Other recommendations would be Starcraft, Age of Empires or the Command & Conquer series.