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Pinback’s Top Ten Games of All-Time: #5
May 21st, 2008 by Pinback

#5: WARCRAFT III

I felt almost ashamed, picking up my box of WarCraft III and heading to the checkout aisle that fateful day. I had many reasons for this shame, but chief among them were these:

1. For the first and only time I could remember, at least in the world of gaming, I was succumbing to group mentality. I swear, when you walked into Frye’s Electronics that day, there was no way to avoid running into hundreds of boxes of WC3. If you discount the giant stand-up display which hit you when you first walked in, and which housed a couple hundred copies, and then went on to discount the four shelves stocked to the hilt with more boxes (and action figures and other hazerai), then you’d still be left with hundreds MORE boxes which clogged little displays at the end of each aisle lining the entire computer software section. Obviously, if you did not own WarCraft III, this instant, you were a completely worthless piece of human garbage, who was going to be forced to leave the store in a special line, at the end of which a group of store employees would point at you and laugh as you sulked out the door. Never mind that I hadn’t played any of the previous WarCrafts. Never mind that I hadn’t played ANY real-time strategy game, save for the first couple tutorial missions of “classics” like Earth: 2150 and Conquest: Frontier Wars, which were bought, installed, fiddled with for 30 minutes and then never touched again. Never mind all that, I just HAD to HAVE THIS GAME! WHATEVER IT WAS! BECAUSE EVERYONE WAS BUYING IT! Pathetic.

2. There were four different box designs, each featuring the visage of a representative from one of the four races portrayed in the game. I chose the Night Elf box because her face was so goddamn hot. I had just turned 30, but felt like the 14-year-old drooling nerd boy which I realize I was, just 16 years hence.

Naturally, I was happy to finally get out of there, go home, install the game, lick the front of the box a few times, and finally get back into the whole RTS game!

And just as naturally, after the first tutorial mission fired up, and I had to draw a box around a guy and then right click somewhere, I remembered that I hated RTS games. Oh well.

But full price at that time was $60, and I’d be damned if I was gonna shell out that kind of jing, and suffer the humiliation of succumbing to my sheeplike surrender to groupthink and marketing, just to give up after 30 minutes. So I pressed on.

Given my checkered history with computer games, I think the best and only review I need give to WC3 is that it is the first, and as of this writing, still the only, RTS game that I’ve ever completed.

What made it different? To me, the difference between WC3 and the rest of the RTS world is, I would later find out, what really separates all of the Blizzard RTS games from their competitors, and that is: STYLE.

You could go all “eh, all RTSes are basically just harvest, build, rush” and while that may be true to an extent, what kept me harvesting, building, and rushing with WC3 long after I’d have shelved a lesser game was the consistent richness and quality of the world that it created, and the perfection to which it attains these goals. It tells a story with the artistry of the deftest bard. It oozes style, and always in support of the greater vision of the game. Everthing about the game is like this. The opening cinematic is the best opening cinematic I’ve ever seen. The main menu is still the greatest main menu I’ve click around in a game. The whole thing is just solid.

And besides that, you have just a rock-solid RTS game, with just enough complexity to keep you on your toes and provide the richness and variety of strategies which you’d want, without straying too far from the tried-and-true conventions. “Hero” units, as well as the occasional non-base-building missions, give a nod to RPG-style character building, which provides a much needed and welcome break from the hordes (pun slightly intended) of faceless warriors which you’ll be cranking out by the hundreds.

After completing WC3, I went back to WC2 to learn a little about the game’s lineage, and to see why some people still maintained that the previous game was better. For its time, and budget, it too was an exemplary picture of how solid a product could be brought out if a company was committed enough. But to me, it still seemed like nothing but preamble to the glorious, unmatched main course which WarCraft III ended up bringing to the table.

And come on, that Night Elf was hot.


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