Oh dear god does my back hurt, and yet I find myself here typing away, at my WarCraft II Battle.net edition review. If I dont do it, no one will, so here goes.
Once known to the world as 'WarCraft II Platinum', Battle.net edition (renamed) made its debut about 2 years ago now in 1999. The game is basically a bundle - the ultimate WarCraft II collection until the battle chest edition came out, WarCraft II B.net Edition contains WarCraft II, and its expansion 'Tides of Darkness'. Now, I really think this is a good game, but Im not so sure that a multiplayer feature was necissary, yeah its cool, but WC2 games go by very slow as you can que up units. Seems to me blizzard's trying to force me to pay more to my phone company. Bad blizzard, bad! What blizzard has ultimatley tried to do here, is to re-invent the wheel. You just cant do that. Its not right. WarCraft II obviously wasnt designed with a multiplayer feature in mind, (and yes Im aware the original has one,I own both versions) I dont think that warcraft II deserved an 8 person multiplayer. I mean, you can see the box above is decked out with advertisments. I think if I could, the one I would most like to add to that box is 'Now with more incredible features such as LAG'. Besides that, you now have to deal with people on battle.net, who can really be ____holes at times. This game just isnt worth it for the multiplayer - which is a shame, because it was designed for it.
As far as the graphics go, this game is a remake of a sequel. I mean, really, what do you expect from a game as old as this one. I suppose the animation for the fire satisfys me best, but one problem I really have is how the units are un-proportioned to the buildings. As you can see from the screen shots, the units are often, and many times bigger then the buildings. I dont know why, so dont bother asking. However, one feature that I feel StarCraft lacks, which WarCraft II possesses, is that you can have more then one unit working on a building at a time, increasing the speed at which said building is produced. Good blizzard, good.
I think the single player definetly has its ups, again, this is a game that you cannot que units in, when you could easily buy AoEII and que up to 15 units at a time, Im surprised at times that this game is can even compete. None the less, it does offer very satisfying end cutscene for the campaigns, and while I didnt put the effort into beat Tides Of Darkness, I can say the hero units were very impressive in the actual missions. I also like the style with which blizzard had the mission breifings done for campaign missions. I wish more would have done it like that. As far as the sound goes...what can I say? I mean, its not like before I played this game I had expectations of what an Orc grunt or Human Footman would sound like, I guess the sound as far as units goes is good. I know that once again the sound in the breifings I like, and the music to the game is very good. Its one of those games where (if you own the original version) you can pop it into your CD player and listen to the music from the game, which can be really boring, but in this case, proves to be entertaining. One other facet that really impressed me about this game, is that it did what StarCraft did not, what I had really hoped for in that game too, was the ability to possess units of all range, Land, Sea, and Air. WarCraft II allows you to build submariner ships, as well as a variety of Air Ships and the typical ground units, that alone is a good reason to buy it, but you'll still have to get around the problem of only building a unit at a time.
This game has dazzling graphics, average sound, an easy to learn interface and a good variety of units. Unfortunatley for this version, it loses too much due to the bad multiplayer feature of Battle.net.
What more can I say? Buy it if you like out-dated strategy games brought back to life too late in their career.
