Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos (Blizzard, PC)

By PETER ELEY

(Herald rating: * * * * * )

Fans of the Warcraft games gave their verdict before Reign of Chaos was out when shops around the world preordered five million copies.

That makes it just about the biggest games release and one that will put these sagas of Orcs and humans back at the top of the real-time strategy league.

Interestingly, Blizzard had intended turning Reign of Chaos into a Diablo-style, role-playing game, but reverted to Warcraft's roots over a three-year development period.

The result is a traditional resource-gathering and conquest game, but one with depth and new units. While the single-player game is strong, Warcraft 3 has also been designed as a multiplayer game.

Four races — Night Elves, Undead, Orcs and Humans — battle for domination of a richly detailed fantasy world and there are obvious alliances.

Each race has distinct units and weapons, in particular hero units who become the mainstay of your force as they become hardened by experience.

If you have played Warcraft before, all this may seem familiar. But the game is about as good as any real-time strategy game has been to date. It is excellent value, with huge single-player campaigns, its multiplayer mode and a superb map editor for skirmishes and even large-scale missions.

Much of the game is new — one challenging feature is the inclusion of monsters who will attack Orcs and Humans alike. These can pose big problems and its pays to keep an eye on your base.

The graphics still have the old Warcraft feel and an almost cartoonish humour. They aren't cutting edge 3D but they are clear and work well. Specs are modest — a 400MHz Pentium 2 with an 8mb video card and 128mb of ram. It will also run on a Mac, and needs OS9, a 16mb video card and 128mb of ram.

peter_eley@nzherald.co.nz