Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos

Well, at least we moved away from an orc and human staring at each other... then again he's staring at me... maybe I'm the human?

I first experienced Warcraft III at my cousins house the summer it came out. We were there on vacation and as I usually did I stayed inside and played games. He had Warcraft 3 so I got the cheat codes and started playing... and what a play it was. The game is divided in different scenarios from the perspective of a hero or heroes of a different fraction. First scenario is the prologue were we are introduced to Thrall, son of Durotar and the warchief after Doomhammer. Raised by humans as a slave he escaped and rallied the horde and freed them from their internments camp and are know haunted by mysterious dreams foretelling the fall of all that he knows. A man called the prophet summons him and bids him travelling across the sea to Kalimdor in the west. Thrall heeds his words and assemble the horde, but have to save Grom Hellscream who has been taken hostage by the humans. After the rescue the horde steals the human ships and set sail.

Our hero for the next couple of chapters

We are then taken to Lordearan, the capital of the Alliance which is crumbling as the elves have left and several human nations as well. A plague is spreading in the north, but the king don't want to quarantine the people and the prophet once again appear urging the people to move west, the only way to save them. They says no and he disappears. Then we follow prince Arthas as he is sent out to stop an orcish raid with Uther the Lightbringer. The orc's are demon worshippers and warns the coming of the demons. Uther dispels this and and we cut to Dalaran, the home of the Kirin Tors, magicians, and Jaina Proudmore who overhear her master Antonidas dismissing the Prophet once again and she receives orders to investigate the plague since the king won't bother other then sending his own son to check it out. Travelling the lands Arthas and Jaina discovers a death cult of necromancer spreading a disease that turn people into the undead which after long battles with the undead forces leads to Arthas purging a town and following the dread lord Mel'ganis responsible to Northrend, the arctic of Azeroth. There he stumbles upon a dwarves expedition led by Muradin Bronzebeard, brother of the Bronzebeard dwarfs king. He is on an expedition looking for a fabled runeblade Frostmourn. The dread lords attack forces Arthas with Muradin's help finding the blade, and discovering that the blade is cursed, but Arthas have gone so far that he claims it anyway, leaving Muradin for dead in the snow as Arthas himself destroy the undead and finish Mel'ganis of as his own soul is claimed. Arthas is transformed into a death knight and returns to Lorderan and kills his father in cold blood, destroying what's left of the alliance.

Still our hero for the next couple of chapters

We then follow Arthas as he goes on a campaign to assemble the cult of the damned, raise their leader who will be his most trusted ally and destroying the elven forces, corrupting their Sunwell and go on to kill some of the remaining orc clans and the city of Dalaran to summon Archimond, the leader of the Burning Legion, the force behind the orcish invasions and the Scourge (which is the name for the undead forces). This causes a gap between Arthas who follows Ner'zhul aka the Lich King, aka the Warchief of Draenor who was captured by the Burning Legion as he tried to escape from them. Furious he plans his revenge. Meanwhile this scenario forced the player to kill people like Uther the Lightbringer, Antonidas and Sylvana Windrunner, younger sister of Alleria Windrunner. Of course you didn't really kill her, just turn her into an undead. To me one of the more boring once since I've never felt that good with the undead. Depressing music, everything is dark and death isn't that funny. Although I really like the necromancers raise dead tactics to overwhelm enemies.

The Iron Man of humans Nightmares is back

The next scenario is the orcs again. Thrall have just landed on Kalimdor and must gather his troops while trying to survive this new landscape. He befriends the tauren chieftain Cairne in their fight against the centaurs and their shamanistic beliefs. He points him toward Stonetallon Peak and the Oracle living their if he wants answers so he goes there, encountering Grom and the Warsong Clan in the middle of a conflict against humans. Grom seems to be caught by a bloodlust, disobeying Thrall's direct orders to leave the humans alone so he is sent away to Ashenvale forest to build a settlement, but that only escalates problems as he is attacked by night elves who don't see kindly to someone defiling their forrest. After building their camp the demigod Cenarius appears which forces Grom and the orcs to drink from a pool of demonic energies, a pool spiked with the blood of the demon Manneroth who once enslaved them and started the wars between orcs and humans. They defeat Cenarius, but are reigned into the Burning Legion. Meanwhile Thrall reached the peak and was reunited with Cairne as they battle the human encampments around the Oracles cave. They reach the top and sees Jaina Proudmore entering, the only human lord that headed the warnings of the prophet. They battle through the underground traps and monster and are standing face to face with Jaina when the Prophet once again show up, telling them that they must put aside their hatred since a new threat is upon them. The first plan is to save Grom and the Warsong Clan. Thrall and Cairne battles the crazed orcs and demons that spawns the battlefield and bring Grom captured in a gem to Jaina and a ritual is prepared that gives him back his free will. Grom tells Thrall that it was in fact he that drank the demon blood first and in doing so corrupted most of the orc clans and they did so willingly. Thrall and Grom then proceeds to confront Manneroth. And here its supposed to be a cutscene, and to my surprise it actually played. Glad for that since it is one of the more epic moments when Thrall and Grom confront Manneroth, he brushes Thrall to the side and taunts Grom that lets out a Hell Scream and proceeds to dig his axe deep into the flesh of Manneroth that explodes in a fiery inferno. Thrall holds his friend as the blood curse is lifted and Grom Hellscream draws his final breath. Epic!!!

The enemy of the Night Elves is really resource planning

This of course opens up the final campaign that is the Night Elves. As the humans and orc allied themselves they go deeper into Ashenvale forrest where they are harassed by the Night Elves who doesn't kindly look to intruders, especially those who have slain their demigod. Sadly for them the Burning Legion appears and for this new threat priestess Tyranda Whisperwind decide to wake the druids from their sleep, especially the Archdruid Malfurion Stormrage and her beloved. As they search for the druid of the claw they encounter a prison, a prison to keep the Betrayer under guard, Illidan Stormrage, Malfurions brother. Tyranda releases him and while he guards the forest Arthas approaches him and tells him of the Legions action. Apparently they possess the skull of Gul'dan, the artefact used by Ner'zhul to open the portals on Draenor, causing its destruction. At the moment it is the driving force behind the corruption of the forrest under guard of Thycondrius, the dread lord that gave Arthas his instructions under the undead campaign. Illidan take control of the skull, but instead of destroying as he originally planned he consumes its powers and turn into a half-demon that destroys Thycondrius as was Arthas plan. Tyranda and Malfurion confront him and banish him for the use of demonic powers that once doomed the Elven race. Malfurion is then summoned by a dream voice together with Thrall and Jaina. The Prophet appears and tell them who he really is, Medivh, the Last Guardian. Slain as he was possessed by Sargeras and brought the orcs to Azeroth. He tell them of Archimonds real plan, to take the World Tree's energy. So they muster their defences and endure a siege for 45 minutes as the Legion climbs the summit. And since I played the game legit it was one fingernail biting session. After 15 minutes the human line was overrun. The orc line hold for 30 minutes after that since it was closer to my own base so reinforcement was faster. But Thralls orcs was forced to retreat leaving the Night Elves alone. During the final stages I fortified the two entry points with guardian ancients that threw boulder after boulder. The fountains healing my troops as they fought wave after wave of undead and demons. Resources thin and reinforcement far away, Archimonde himself appears, breaking down the line. 8 seconds left. The final stand, thank god the AI is stupid so instead of reaching his goal he is occupied attacking whats left off my base while the final second turns. I survived the siege and once again surprised to see the ending movie depicting how the wisps that Malfurion summoned surrounds Archimonde and destroys him. The weakest unit in game destroys the Archdemon himself. Great storytelling.

This is probably the definite version of the Warcraft games (with exception of the expansion, but it's not much it adds compare to the difference between Warcraft II and III). Even though they limited the army size I can easily go between different units and even cast support spells on their portrait instead of trying to locate a damaged unit. Some spells even have auto-cast features. Also the story is better laid out since there is a focus with the heroes you have. The problem is that it's really good to know the shortcuts, but it might be too much with 4 different factions to remember each and everyone. We even have inventory to either boost the heroes power, summon reinforcements or support healing and such. Also, playing this game legit for the first time through I discovered things that I missed as a kid. For example in the Night Elf mission to get the druids of the claw I stumbled upon a hidden passageway behind some trees and suddenly a cutscene played where the Largest Panda in the World showed up and I was forced to slay it. I recall seeing the cutscene but without the monster, which probably indicates that the god-mode cheat enabled my troops to kill it before the cutscene started. I always preferred the Night elves due to being elves, but as playing it I realises they are one of the harder since they really need to use magic to distract and immobilise their enemies and I've never been good at that. Of course they are the best when dealing with flyers since their base troop is an archer. And one should really start with the Priestess of the Moon hero since she's the only one boosting attack damage for archers of the heroes. A pity the demon hunter is the coolest.

Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal

How cheap, they used almost the same picture

The follow up and here we starts to see the really good ideas for the campaign. Actual hero units that are a bit better than normal troops and if you can manage the troops alright, you have a great time. Basic story is that the orcs back on Draenor (their home world) under the guidance of Ner'Zhul tries to open the portal again, succeed and starts raids in Azeroth. Here we are introduced to the greatest warrior that the orcs have, the leader of the Warsong Clan: Grommash "Grom" Hellscream.

Grom and Friends

Mostly the orcs fight some different clans to gather artefacts to open a portal and then more artefacts to open other portals... I honestly can't see the main goal of the plan really. I know the consequences, but beyond that I would say demonic influences like everything else in this series. The human campaigns starts with the arch-wizard Khadgar (the one closing the portal at the end of the main game) sensing a disturbance so he sends Aleria Windrunner, an elven ranger and her scouts to gather an expedition force to fight of these orcs. You gather Danath Trollbane and the paladin Turalyon, second in command of lord Lothar and probably the supposed main character of Tides of Darkness. It really ads up as a second in command, watching the death of Lothar and assuming his position afterwards. They push back a couple of raids and then follows the orcs back to Draenor and tries to retake the artefacts that was stolen from them to stop Ner'Zhul to activate some demonic plan.

Danath and Friends

Still can't get the controls working and here it would be pretty much necessary since this game is hard. First campaign of orcs I finished with just Hellscream still standing. Basically I did the first two missions of each campaign and then cheated to the end ("it is a good day to die"). The cheat isn't perfect though since you still take damage from magic attacks or friendly fire and with cannons and all destroying fire attacks you know the damn death knights or wizards will wreck you. So you still have to keep your guard up. Still, the human expedition push in and grabs the artefacts, especially the book of Medivh, but it's to late. Ner'Zhul have already mastered the spells and prepares to open several other portals. Basically he tries to escape Draenor and the demons that are hunting him and this causes the planet to be broken up. The expedition force sees this and must destroy the portal to Azeroth so the cataclysm won't reach their home as well and then they escape into the nearest portal to avoid being destroyed. Meanwhile some of the orchis hordes escaped to Azeroth before the fall of the portal since they also realised their world was doomed, and of course one of them was Grom Hellscream.

This game is much more fun to play the campaign since you got some actual characters to interact with instead of hearing about all these people in the mission briefings. You still exist as some unknown commander for either side, but this will be for the last time. And even though it isn't much about these proto-hero units since they just upgraded normal troops that either are fully upgraded with better stats or as in Alerias case longer range on her bow. The problem with these troops are that they must often survive the mission and with limited healing possibilities (at least humans got the holy light of the paladins), meaning every death knight is a gamble if you survive or not (since both sides fight the orcs in the beginning). And of course the orc have the best champion since who doesn't like references to Black Sabbath's Iron Man or Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare? I didn't get it when first playing, I might known who the bands were, but I didn't know their songs until almost 10 years later. Still, replaying it was pretty much a short stop for the next game Warcraft III which is why I cheated my way through since I'm not that good and the game is to archaic in play for my taste when I can't quickly change between troops or quickly get the spell I need in a certain situation. Everything changed with the next game.

He IS Iron Man

Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

This doesn't look like Kingdom Hearts

Ok, so I didn't finish Birth by Sleep, and my excuse is that someone in the family wanted to watch the Tour de France... and this is why Wii U:s tablet is the best gaming device ever. Instead I looked through my game collection and caught Warcraft II and since the movie just came around I got a sudden urge to play it... or rather I started to try getting it to work since Mac can't handle this game anymore due to the changing OS. So what to do? I knew it worked for DOSBox so getting the DOS files and the game starts running. Everything seems to work except movies and the voice over during the briefing. Which is half the fun of this game listening to the human campaigns briefings and the pronunciation of all these places. So I backtracked a bit, I assumed it wouldn't work due to not recognising the CD (a pack of other files caused that problem) so hey, why not through it through Wine. Apparently that doesn't work since it can't execute the files, and later I figured it wouldn't matter since apparently Wine really have a problem with videos overall (which I should have guessed  due to my Legacy of Time playthrough) so I shouldn't have bothered. And to compensate I listened through and watched the cinematic on youtube instead. Saves me the trouble and frankly I can skip playing as the opposing side (in this case orcs) since the maps are pretty much the same mission to mission.

Enough of talk, time to slaughter some orcs!

Basically the game tells the story of you, a human or orc commander taking orders from the top brass and conduct battle operations against the opposing side. Beginner levels are build this structure, save these troops and destroy the enemy base. And that is pretty much the beginning, then they give you escort mission of one of the leading officers in the army and have to quell a rebellion within your ranks. For the humans it's against the nation of Alterac and for the orcs the Shaman Gul'dan. And frankly, only the Gul'dan mission have any impact on later stories since its plot crucial in the Warcraft III expansion. The humans on the other hand have the loss of Lothar, the commander of the Alliance forces and a survivor of the first game and sets you up as the new commander. A pity he isn't mentioned much more in the following game. Although, if I would make a guess its due to Blizzard really pushing the orcs as "main players" to counter every other fantasy game where humans are the defacto good guys. The human campaign ends with a destruction of a dark portal which is where the orcs arrived from the beginning. Basically they are aliens. And you could make an argument for that you begin as the orcs and push the invasion and the human counters and push them back. Or you play it one by one, first orc, then human and so on. The reason is that the humans are the canonical winners of the second war, which is pretty much established in the expansion which starts right were the human campaign ended, but that I will talk about some other time.

Lothar, the greatest human commander in Azeroth, sadly backstabbed under a parley

Now, I played this game as kid with my best friend. He had a demo of the first three missions I believe, and then the neighbour older kid got the game so I borrowed it and played through it with cheats since I sucked at quick reactions. I actually played most of it without cheating, only the final three levels I cheated on since, frankly, the keyboard of the MacBook Air isn't the best and I would really like a mouse for this. I'm astonished I got that far actually. Also, I don't know if its the keyboard or the game itself, but I couldn't get the shortcuts to work for quick switch between different groups which made organising pincer attacks on the enemy or quickly change between, artillery, melee or ballistas rather problematic. Or maybe that wasn't a feature until the third game?

So why did I like this as a kid? The fantasy elements. This was pretty much one of the first games I played that could emulate things like grand scale wars like lord of the rings. You had elves, dwarves and orcs and even dragons. I didn't get much of the story though, not until I was at my cousins house and he actually had the manual that described the whole Warcraft saga from I to II and the tale was simply amazing. A wizard corrupted by a demon, a half-orc assassin, Lothar and the fall of the human kingdom, followed by the Alliance forming between humans, elves and dwarfs to combat this new threat and push them back. Meanwhile the internal struggles of the horde as Ogrim Doomhammer takes over as war-chief from the one starting the war in Warcraft I, followed by Gul'dan trying to raise the Tomb of Sargeras and defying Doomhammer. Ultimately they loose the war, but then we had the expansion... and let us just see how far I can get before the game kicks me to the curb.

Kingdom Hearts: ReCoded

Another cutscenes movie of a handheld game

Kingdom Hearts: Recoded... if Kingdom Hearts 2 made a Tron reference this is pretty much Kingdom Tron: The Movie. Premise is that it's at the end of the games timeline. Jiminy Cricket looks through his journals and the first one (clearly of the first game) has nothing in it since it was erased in Chains of Memories beyond a note thanking Namine... except that it appears another note appears. King Mickey, Donald and Goofy uses a special device to encode it as data (again with encoding things to data), but the information is corrupt so they send in an avatar of Sora to debug the whole thing. Basically yet another retelling of the first game, but they also put in Chains of Memories parts as well. Now everything would have worked smoothly if not for some reason they were all sucked into the "computer" together with Pete who contacts Maleficent so they cause havoc on their end while data-Sora tries to fix it with the real Mickey, Donald and Goofy. I don't get much else of the story other than that after much struggle rid the book of bugs and confront the one behind it... Namine? 

For such a simple premise as Disney- and Final Fantasy-characters in one game it's a really complicated plot. Maybe I just didn't care again since its like a 2.5 hour movie without the roaming around to figure things out and missing a lot of boss banter that sometimes gives a lot to character motives. At least I haven't needed to learn another control scheme or using cards to play.

Other things to mention is that mostly the same voice actors, but they changed the Genie from Dan Castellaneta to someone who actually sounds more like Robin Williams. And to be honest, even though I know it's not the same voice for Mickey I can't tell the difference. It also sets up the plot for the next game with fighting a resurrected Xehanort... which was the apprentice of Ansem... and yet only was a Nobody. Apparently by skipping Birth by Sleep I missed out on some important plot points so I should probably finish of that game next.