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

After a 15-year stewing period, the Orc clans have regrouped and decided to unearth the hatchets and bury them in the human alliance. In true RTS fashion, you choose from Orcish Hordes, the Human Alliance, the Undead Scourge or the Night Elves Sentinels and, using wood and gold reserves, build bases and armies needed to leather the competition.

Unlike many a strategy fest, Blizzard have done away with unit envy and opted to give you more control over much smaller groups, but rest assured, the developers have really done their homework on this one. Expenditure of those all-important reserves won't allow you to sustain massive armies, so the key lies in developing your forces with a considered upgrade and maintenance approach.

It may be a time of war, but it's also a time of heroes, and you'll need them in order to stand a fighting chance. Whatever race you choose, quests and battles endow your heroes with greater physical and magical abilities, and experienced heroes help your surrounding troops, adding some zing to their swing.

Unsurprisingly, Blizzard have done more than just spruce up the gameplay; the proprietary 3-D engine produces a beautifully detailed world in which to wreak bloody mayhem. It all sounds great too, with believably voiced and regularly comical dialogue. --Tae Mawson

Its just that addictive!

The game follows on from Warcrft 2, by continuing the battles between the Orcs and Humans.
But it goes much furth than that, by introducing 2 new races. The Night Elves and the Undead Scourge.

With this it brings a indept storyline and challengeing levels, which will at times will drive you mad and at others make you forget about things like, food, work and sleep.


Good all-round game with endless replayability   April 10, 2005
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

I originally bought this game on the recommendation of a friend of mine, having never played any of the previous games in the Warcraft series or indeed heard of it, but I was pleasantly surprised with the end product.

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!


My Best   July 9, 2004
ghost (UK)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful

I have played all sorts of games since the early 80's. I have owned almost every decent console that came out since those days. I am not the kind of gamer that gets distracted by things like "cool" graphics or big ad campaigns. I have time only for the good stuff!!!!! I play the "good stuff" to find games like Warcraft 3 that take gaming to the next level. You dont have to love RPG's, you just have to not hate them to enjoy this game. Surely not for everyone but this is the best(all genre) game I have played (incl Expansion Frozen Throne). Give it a go, you might find out that I have a good taste afterall.


Innovative & Excellent   March 25, 2004
S. Naqvi (London, United Kingdom)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

After reading various reviews, positive and negative, I had to give this game a try myself to find out the true perspective and what all the hype was about.

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.