Last week I took a break from the painting desk (I guess batch-painting all those Dwarf Warriors burned me out a little bit), leaving me some time to check out a different nostalgia-powered gaming release: Warcraft: Remastered!
As many of us may have had to explain to their spouses, non-gamer friends or family members at one point in their life: Warcraft is not the same as Warhammer. Admittedly though, the similarities are obvious, and I am sure that if one were to draw a Venn-diagram depicting the people who love Warhammer Fantasy and people who love Warcraft, the overlap would be substantial. In a 2012 blog post, Patrick Wyatt – one of the original Warcraft developers – revealed that there even were plans to license the Warhammer universe, instead of creating their own IP, which later became the world of Azeroth.
Even though a deal between Blizzard Entertainment and Games Workshop never happened, in some way, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans could be considered the very first Warhammer video game. It sure felt like a Warhammer game, and to my 10-year old self, it was close enough. Back in the mid-nineties though, I never actually played a lot of Warcraft I, as I first got my hands on the sequel – Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness – which was a better game in practically every single way.
On to the review…
During my week of little painting motivation, we got Warcraft: Remastered – a recreation of the 30 year old game, with updated graphics and quality of life improvements. Perfect timing to go on a little trip down memory lane…
The game launches to the original Blizzard Entertainment logo, which is a nice hit of nostalgia. Then, the opening cinematic starts, and it looks as terrible as it did 30 years ago. No AI upscaler is going to salvage this glorious mess of pixelated cinema. Don’t skip the cinematic though, because you only get to see this once. Since I didn’t screenshot it myself, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how I would get to see this cinematic again, I grabbed the image off the internet somewhere. The cinematic shot above is from the original 1994 game. The remaster didn’t include the subtitles.
Not super important I guess, but the menu screens look pretty nice. I don’t remember how they looked originally, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t as smooth as this. Time to start with the Human Campaign…
The mission objectives screen are a proper nostalgia hit, capturing the look of old 90s graphics, but in a proper resolution, and complete with grungy sounding voice over. In the 1994 version they took the time to actually animate these two guys sitting at the table though… I guess the art of pixel animation was lost somewhere along the way. Or Blizzard just fired the only person that still knew how to do that.
On to the obligatory side-by-side of the old in-game graphics and the new remastered graphics. In my view, this looks absolutely great. These remastered graphics really have the same look and feel, with the biggest difference being that you can actually see what is happening on your high resolution screen. I’ve heard some talk about “tall pixels” and that the graphics should actually appear more “stretched out”, but I’m not enough of a purist to care about that.
So what is it like to play?
I remember the first time playing Warcraft: Orc & Humans, a long time ago, and I remember that it was practically impossible to play. Admittedly, this was after I’ve already been playing Warcraft II for some time, and this step down makes all the difference. One a tiny resolution, the original game made it very hard to get a good overview of what was going on, and with a maximum unit selection of 4, combined with terrible pathing, it was very difficult to control your units. Back then, the experience was too frustrating for me to ever really enjoy and finish the game.
But now, all of those things are fixed. The game is actually playable… You can zoom out the viewport, so you can see what’s going on in and around your base, and you can select up to 12 units at a time (and assign them to groups with CRTL+1, CRTL+2. etc). The pathing is still bad, which is especially noticeable when looking at your Peasants/Peons gathering gold in your base, constantly bumping into things, and each other. But for me, this is an acceptable part of old gaming charm.
So is it a good game now?
Unfortunately, by removing the difficulty of controlling your units, it seems that all of the difficulty in playing through the game’s two campaigns has also been removed. The playbook in every “base building” mission is simply to mine out your resources, research all your upgrades and build around 12 Archers and 12 Knights (or Spearmen and Raiders for the Orcs), then attack. Rinse, and repeat. The AI simply throws small groups of units at you every now and then, and it’s always a matter of time before your army outgrows their capacity to defend.
So, is it a good game? Not really no. As said before, I think Warcraft II is a better game in practically every single way. More diversity between the races, better gameplay, better AI, better graphics, better mission design. But at least Warcraft I is playable now, and it will give you a solid 10-15 hours of entertainment.
What about the story?
When starting this play-through, I mostly was curious about experiencing the story of Warcraft 1, but well… there’s simply not a whole lot of that going on. “The Orcs are on a rampage to destroy Stormwind Keep”, and “the Humans fight off the Orcs and topple Black Rock Spire” neatly summarises the plot from both races perspectives (the Orc ending is canon by the way, as the Humans flee to Lordaeron in the North, where they will be pursued by the Orcs in Warcraft II).
It was interesting to see though how many places and characters from Warcraft I survived the ages, and have since been fleshed out in later games and novels. Garona Halforcen, Medivh, and Lothar appear in Warcraft as characters, and you get to stroll through a place called “The Deadmines”, which later became the first 5-man Dungeon for World of Warcraft players on the Alliance side. Nice.
Pros & Cons
In closing, some good things and some bad things about this remaster.
Pros
- Finally a version of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans with enough UI and control updates to make it playable.
- Great remastered graphics, true to the original art style, and gloriously HD.
Cons
- A bit of a rushed game with some bugs (restarting an Orc mission gave me a Human mission briefing screen, arrows missing in the remastered graphics on Orc Mission 8).
- Some lazy UI issues like the opening cinematic only ever showing once on your first game launch, and not being able to ever view it again, or the missing animations on the mission briefing screens.
- The only “challenge” that Warcraft offered was in overcoming your inability to control your units – with this challenge removed, the game becomes a little boring.
The Verdict
Back in the day, video games were just better, and although it is a good remaster, Warcraft: Remastered shows that it is possible to go just a little bit too far back in time.