In the PC/Mac games world, Matt has always been a bit more bleeding edge, so his first impressions of Warcraft 3 are already posted. But - and I say this without fear of reprisal because Matt's away for the week - his trouble is that he lives in a box. Matt plays, maybe, four games a year. Now, the few he does play he plays hardcore and I have to recognize him for that... but this just means that he is easily swayed by the few games he does play and doesn't have an awful lot to compare them to. To wit:
So far, I'm not particularly impressed by Warcraft 3. It's nowhere near the leap in quality from 1 to 2 as it should be. It's basically just More Warcraft, which, honestly, is no bad thing. The Warcraft series on a bad day is ten tons better than most games on their best day. But I'm only a couple levels in, and I haven't delved into multiplayer. Hey, I said this was a first impression.
The 3D graphics are a complete waste. The individual character models are far too simplistic. This wouldn't be a problem if the game didn't insist on zooming in on the teeny figures for the pre-mission movie. You take a screenshot of any of those scenes and you're looking at PS1 quality graphics. Obviously, if you're only playing multi, you won't even see this. But here's what really bugs me about the camera. The in-game zoom function is more of a cinematic zoom, and as such, it's pretty worthless. Unless you want to get a good look at those sad character models (the water elemental is especially depressing.) The only other camera movement allowed is a rotate clockwise/counterclockwise, which you're likely to never, ever use in a game that relies on compass directions so much. Dungeon Keeper 2 (which came out ages ago) utilized 3D much more efficiently. In DK2, you can position your camera anywhere you like, it rotates much faster, and you can zoom all the way in for a completely first person perspective, allowing you to explore your own city. Warcraft 3 should have implemented that.
(By the way, the Idle Peon Catcher thing? DK2 had that too.)
Colored lighting. Hoo boy is there a lot of friggin colored lighting going on here. Highlighting, spell effects, attacks, glowing heroes... well, colored lighting doesn't impress me anymore. I think they could have toned that down quite a bit and offered up battle scenes with a bit more class.
One bright spot in the graphics is the texture details. Everything is colorful, everything looks fully designed. Moving clock tower hands, appropriately scaled trees... so the textures are great, but the models are not.
Voice acting is great as well... but the script sucks. A sucky script is nothing new in these sorts of games, but it becomes especially obvious when the VAs are so nice. Warcraft 3's story is entirely done in Medieval Cliche. the difference between voice and script is a direct parallel to the texture/model disparity.
You know something I despise about PC games? All the damn video settings you're supposed to tinker with. First, it makes reviewing a game damn near impossible because you have to keep checking whether you're seeing the game as the designers intended. Second, it sucks that you have to have an ace video card, sound card, etc to properly enjoy the game. Third, I do not enjoy troubleshooting each and every game trying to find the right balance of frame rate vs. high detail. This is why I prefer console games. The hardware is known, the game runs as intended, and I don't waste time fiddling with shit.
Sarcasm: I can hardly wait to meet all the amazing Warcraft 3 masters out there, lurking on battle.net.
