"In the age of chaos, two factions battle for dominance...." (Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (PC))

Member Name: Mutalisk

Product:	Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (PC)
Date:	11/09/09 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: important in terms of gaming history, charming, nostalgic, will run on any modern computer.

Disadvantages: dated, slow, tricky interface, lazy unit balances,

Warcraft, Orcs and Humans is a 1994 real time strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the Warcraft franchise, if only due to the explosive popularity of the MMORPG, World of Warcraft.

The game allows the player to take control of either Orcs or Humans, and orchestrate large battles with one another. Following standard RTS practice, this includes manufacturing towns and cities full of buildings with allow you to train troops, upgrade armour, spells and weapons and advance technology trees, all accrued by simple resource management.

Graphically, the game is incredibly dated, its pixellated VGA look doesn't by any stretch live up to today's standards, and the combat design is also a little flawed, as each unit in both the Orc and Human faction has a completely identical counterpart. This feels a little lazy and could, even back then have been mixed up a little. Also, there are only three kinds of level, and only a few units can be selected at any given time, making grouping armies together a mouse-bashing hassle. This is made even more tricky by the necessity of spell micromanagement, in terms of both buffs and attacks.

Its still incredibly nostalgic for many though, and relatively speaking, has quite a lot to it, its splattery graphics are still very colourful and, along with the sound effects, retain oodles of charm.
Still, its not worth buying for the first time, unless you're studying the phenomenon of retro gaming. There are better put-together RTSs than this, such as Warcraft's sequels, II and III, and of course Korea's favourite, "Starcraft" which are all to this day, still incredibly playable.

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans offers very good multiplayer facilities for the time, supporting up to four players on any one network. It can't be played over the internet without a lot of patching, and even so, I doubt many people are even still playing it. Games like this are much more fun when played with other people, particularly friends.

The game was one of the first to appear on an actual CD, and as a result features a great deal of pretty cool cinematic FMV sequences between each level, like many games of its time. I recommend this to fans of Retro gaming.

Summary: A nice bit of nostalgia, dated as it might be, and in terms of RTS history, a very important game.