War craft I Playing Report

This is kind of dairy, it won’t like a report, and it will contain more about my feeling of the game War Craft. War Craft I is so classic that it’s not only a simple RTS, it’s kind of iconic signal and remarkable milestone for the whole game industry. For me it’s a large story, a story about Azeroth and the two regions on it, a story about the Blizzard.

For starting this report, I would like to write something about the manual. I want to ask a simple question to you: What would u first do after buying a new PC game? For me, I will start to destroy the package, take out the manual and spend a couple hours on it. I think the game introduction and the principle of the game will be all written in the manual and because of the good writing and great graphic showed in it, the manual is always fun to read. After you reading the manual you will feel to roughly understand the whole game, especially the back ground story. You can’t say the story in War Craft is really good like an epic, but it is still nice compiled and of course it is the start of War Craft II, War Craft III and World of War Craft. I have to say that since every new War Craft game released the background story became better and better.

Ok now let’s go back to the manual of War Craft. The manual I read is a digital version; I think it is a little different to other game manuals in that age of time, many of which is straightly read. In this manual you can decide your race first, which is divided in to Human and Orcs, this little setup impressed me a lot, for people who is about to play the game, it will make them into the game much quicker. Sometimes people will ask why Blizzard become the best game(not one of) produce company in the world in the past 10 years since now, and I believe that kind of elaborate detail is a exposure of their attitude of a game and their ambitions. After I chose the Human as my race the page directly goes to the titles for the humans. Of course for a manual there will be lots of introduction of the requirement of the system, trouble shooting that kind of things… yea, yea, yea, it’s important for the players. But for us, hard cores, we never read that useless information, let’s just skip it and go straightly to the story of this game (Humans Perspective).

In my opinion the most essential part of a game is the story. A good story leads to a successful game. The story of War Craft is a little bit old fashion in our time but at that time I think it is still good. What impressed me a lot is their character design. Every important character has their own name, from the king of Azeroth to a small villager they all have a remarkable name and all of the land names are well designed. You know, after playing the World of War Craft you will find that every story in it has a strong relationship with the original version- War Craft that makes the whole story become integrated. No matter how boring the story is I will read it and get to know what the game is about, that is my rule. The story from the Humans perspective is about some strange aliens- Orcs once come to their land and want to conquer them and what humans want to do is began to organize the army and beat the strange creature they never seen before. Compare to the story itself I’m more interested about the personality of the character in the story. It is really well design. For example, the child prince Llane who became the king later in the story always had some dark dreams in his childhood, it is said that the dark age is coming, some strange things well happen in the later years. Another person is the conjurer Medivh, a mysterious man, who is suspected as a main reason of the arrival of Orcs. After reading the story I still don’t know if he is a good person or not, he is really mysterious.

Unit, in RTS game unit is always an important element in the game. How they work individually and how they became powerful when they combined together is always discussed by the designers. I think the unit in War Craft is nice, especially the warlock, the necrolyte and the conjurer. It’s a new thing at that time. What you can do with these units is really different. For conjurer, you can summon elemental, summon scorpions. If you are using the warlock, you can even summon daemon. In my opinion this is a great innovation, in the later 10 years a lot of company just follow the principle of these units and create many more great magic characters. I think I can divide the unit in to three groups: melee unit, ranged unit and magic unit. In the ranged unite there is a weapon called catapult. When I’m playing the game I’m really surprised of the damage it produced, extremely powerful.

Buildings. The function of the buildings is all about producing your army and upgrades their abilities and some of them are foundation building which provide you the gold and food such as mine and farm. Without the buildings you can nothing and it means the game will game over very soon.

Now let’s go deeply inside the game and see why War Craft is a moderate critical and commercial success.

First of all, let’s see the graphic. When you see the two pictures below you will find out that the Graphic of War Craft had been improved a lot at that time. Actually the first picture is dune II, one of the most important RTS game in the history, which set the general rules that are still followed today—Mouse control, resource management, technology trees. Compare to the graphic of Dune II, War Craft had been made much more vivid. For example, the unit in the game such as raider, you can see every movement clearly. Other things like buildings and the map also show a very good graphic quality.

The music and sound is nice in the game. Once you go into the game the music

would never stop, and every time you click your unit and want them to do something or attack someone they would always reply you “your command” “yes my lord”. The first day after I finished play it for couple hours and go to sleep I even shouted in my dream “yes my lord”, how classic the sound is… every time the enemy is near to you or about to arrive at your village they would also give player a warning “your enemy arrived”. I think this makes the game much interesting when it combines the good graphic together and make the game consecutive and tense.

The control. Be honestly I hate the control in the game. It’s totally different in the game nowadays. Not much short cuts in the game. I think this is the only think that I really don’t like in the game… I think the move movement in the game is just useless. I use auto attack instead. It will give a quick reaction to hour units when they meet the enemies in the map.

Balance between the units and AI. Melee unit always has the great power when they close to their enemy and ranged unit gives a great damage when they are in the range. I have to say the AI in the game is kind of stupid but it is still classic at that time. Your enemy will always send some spy walk around the whole map, looking for your village once he found it he will go straightly in to your village and begin to attack anyone there without thinking even there are 10 melee units in front of him.

Mission, I think the mission of War Craft make it really different to other RTS games. the missions all have a very good introduction and some of them is quite interesting when you are playing. If you are using the Orcs, there is a mission about Black Hand’s daughter. The story is about the daughter run away with an outlaw and hide themselves in a very famous dungeon “dead mine”. The funny thing is the outlaws band was some rebellious pigs and what you need to do is kill them all beside Black Hand’s daughter. In Human, there is a mission about Medivh the person I mention before what they want you to do is go to his tower and kill him. I think the mission demonstrate the background story very well. At this point I know that Medivh is not only a conjurer but also a warlock .

Multi-player and customize game, Multi-player system is absolutely an innovation at that period of time. When everybody is play the game individually and enjoying the battle with some simple Ai, Blizzard already reckons the future. War Craft have a multiplayer option in the game, using the modem and Lan to combine real players together and fight with each other. This is the beginning of game competition nowadays and it is kind of milestone in the game industry. I don’t have a chance to test the multi player system but I believe it should be good and the player in the past will thought it very fresh and interesting. Another good thing is the customize game. In this mode u can choose any map that already setup in the game I think there are around 30 customize map in the game and also you can choose the unit you want to start. For instance, you can have four knight four conjurer and four farmers instead of just starting with two farmers in the mission battle. It give player more freedom two play this game and make the game replayable especially for some players who never want to finish the game, they have a good opportunity to test the whole building, unit system and the balance between the unit. Actually if you played War Craft III you will noticed that editing map system has been extremely powerful and you even can make your own game inside the game. the most famous one now is DOTA.

Playing the game:

The first mission of the human is kind of tutorial. What you need to do is get familiar with the control and build six farms. When I’m building the farms I found that you can’t build anything without the road, you must build any of your building near to the road otherwise the system will ban you to build. Another essential thing is you have to read through the mission introduction at the very beginning of the mission because you won’t be able to see it anymore during the mission. Because of skipping the introduction, I had to restart it again… When you finished the tasks the mission will automatically finished. When I’m playing the game, I get confuse about the control. It’s quite different than its series. If you want to control more than 1 of the unit you need to press ctrl+left button and there the maximum number of unit that you can control is 4. Actually I did a little bit more. I went through the whole map and attack every troop in the map. The funny thing is the AI, when your unit is killed by the Orcs, the next thing they do is go to your village no matter how far away they are. So I always make a trap and wait for them to come to my village and kill them. After finished the mission there will be a score board some records will be show there. You can see how many enemy you killed, and also your score for the whole mission.

The second mission is about defense. You build your farm, barrier as usual, and this time you can build another new building Lamb. With this building, you can upgrade you arrow and of course you got a new unit archer which is extremely powerful after upgrading their arrows. The Orcs will come to your village every 2, 3 minutes. Actually what you need to do is just produce some foot man and archer and defense their attack—it is pretty easy and once you have maybe two or three little groups with 2 foot man and 2 archer you can clean up the whole map to kill the rest of the Orcs, you don’t need to wait for them and it will help you finished the mission quickly. In this mission I found that the road is very important. It’s kind of strategy, you should build your road in the right place, otherwise the worker would not know how to go back to their town hall and when they are stuck by some place they will waste some time to relocate their position… and player should also be careful about the building position as well don’t put in front of the way that workers always work through. I think in this mission the game company just introduces player the combination of unites. Once you have a good group then it’s really powerful.

The third mission is asking you to destroy a Orcs village. It is time to do some serious damage to the Orcs now. In this mission we are able to produce the cleric which I think is not very powerful if you already have lots of money and wood. The cleric can attack the enemy by the fire ball and also heal other people who are hurt. However, their stamina is really low and another problem is they move too slow…you can’t catch up with your little party. So I think it is not very useful in the beginning maybe in the later mission it will became a main power of the battle. They have a magic bar and once you use the skill the bar will reduce quickly.

The fourth mission is a little bit different to the three before, you don’t have any farmers you don’t need to build. You only have a small party to complete the mission. In this mission you need to save your knight who is injured in the Dead mine controlled by some Orcs. I think this is the original version of the dungeon which will be used in lots of games in the future. It is different and somehow makes the whole game more interesting not only producing units and kill the enemies. As I mentioned before if you are choosing the Orcs as your region, what you need to do in this mission is to find your daughter and kill some pigs. I think that will be much more interesting. After I rescued the knight and came back to the place I started the mission, I find that there are some pointers there show you the way to finished the mission. I thought that was a really smart idea, and really surprised me.

OK, I got to stop enjoying the game now, because there are lots of other assignments waiting for me… I think my overall game playing is about 4 hours however I don’t have the time to test the multi game but I think it will be really interesting when you fighting with another player. In these 4 hours I knew how to play the game in the basic way, and I have to say after mission and mission War Craft continuous surprising me and I actually want to play more. Let’s get back to the topic:”why is War Craft a canon game?” in my view, I think it is because of his 1.unique back ground story which became very huge after releasing the War Craft II, War Craft III and World of War Craft. 2. The mission, if you don’t like the normal mission such as building and defending, you can still find some interesting one’s that you only need a small party to complete the mission and I think the mission is combined to the back ground story very well. 3. Sound and Music. You will never forget “your command. My lord”. 4. Multiplayer and customize map. I have to say it is a intending system which will be widely used in the future from then. Maybe we can’t see this system in an Intuitionistic way. But I still think this must be a milestone in the game industry especial the RTS games. The influence given to the game now is huge. Nowadays you can’t find any RTS game with out the multiplayer system. And customize map has became much more powerful than before.

Street Fighter II released in 1991 and yet follows several of the rules from its original from 1987. Once, when I was in around year 4 in primary school, I had played this game, but in the Super Street Fighter II version, the sub series of this game. At that time, it did not catch my attention at all. In my opinion, it was not that good, compared to another one on one fighting games such as “Garou Densetsu” or “Fatal Fury” in Europe, anyway, those one on one fighting games were likely to followed the layout and the way of Street Fighter. In this writing, my view and opinion might be stand off from what the assignment expected, but I would try to give a point of both advantage and disadvantage of this game.

Graphic & Layout

For the graphic of this game, of course, I can not say that it was really good, because I have played a lot of better graphic games recently. Although, if we step back to the past in 90’s, graphic for any games at that time were not really different. 2D of course, can not catch an attention from new gamers in these days. Including that I played it in emulator name “DOSBox”, and yet played in DOS mode, the window was small, the graphic was in a low resolution and pixelate. Anyway, at that time, this game was released for consoles then it was not looked bad as in DOS mode on computer.

Movement of all characters were quicker than reality, as it was a 2D game, of course not looks real but in my opinion, it was too quick. Although, if we think about an over natural power and it was a game, then reality is nothing.

In the game, while you are playing, you will see a health bar that show how much health the fighters have left and the fighter’s name under the bar. Under the middle between the two fighters health bar was a time count down. If you had played some others one on one fighting game, you would see that they had the same layout in fighting mode as you can say that this layout is the best for fighting game.

Gameplay

The player will fight against the other fighter in one on one close quarter combat in a series of best two out of three matches. The objective of each round is to beat the opponent up before the timer runs out. If both of the fighters knock each other out at the same time or the timer runs out with both fighters having an equal amount of health left on the health bars, then a “double KO” or “draw game” is declared and additional rounds will be played until sudden death. In the first Street Fighter II, a match could last up to ten rounds if there was no clear winner; this was reduced to four rounds in Champion Edition and onward. If there is no clear winner by the end of the final round, then either the computer-controlled fighter will win by default in a single player mode or both fighters will lose in a battle mode.

After every third match in the single player mode, the player will have a chance to gain a bonus points in a “bonus game”. The bonus games includes a car-breaking event similar to another bonus round featured in Final Fight, a barrel breaking bonus game where the barrels are dropped down from a conveyor belt above the player and a drum-breaking bonus game where drums are flammable and piled over each other.

Controlling

It might because of that I played it on computer and I could not use a joystick to play, then it was really hard to control the character perfectly. On computer, you have to make a critical hit on the buttons to make a special moves of any characters. Since when I was young, the character that I always use was “Dalsim”, because he was easy to make a special move and you could to make a good long range attack by just press forward and punch or kick buttons. The first time that I started to played the game for this assignment, I chose to played as “Ryu” and “Chun Li”, because of that I was not used to play the game, I had won just a few times and lose for more than ten times. There were a lot of one on one fighting games that use the same set of buttons to make a special move, because it was easy to remember and press.

Characters

In my opinion, the best part of this game was a character design. The lead character, “Ryu”, used Karate to fight, of course that made sense because this was a Japanese game and he was a Japanese. Although, if you were a western players, you could used the other character that really similar to “Ryu”, he was “Ken”, with the same move and everything looked the same, just hair style and cloths color that made them looked different. All of these characters were unique and stylish. Then, I will mention a little bit about those characters that I had used to played.

“Ryu”, Japanese fighter who had a not clear past and only one thing that was in his mind was “How to be a real fighter?”. Karate uniform and his name showed that he was a Japanese. The special moves that he used were famous such as “Hadoken” or “Shoryuken”. Only bad thing about this character was his special moves were easy to avoided.

“Ken”, American fighter who once was Ryu’s training partner and yet after he went back to USA, he came back to Japan again as Ryu’s only one friend and rival. His cloths, style and move were all the same as “Ryu” and those were the bad part of this character. Why they had to added this character into this game, if there were no any different between this one and another one.

“E. Honda”, Japanese Sumo fighter who was one of “Yokotsuna” or the best of Sumo fighter. After he retired from being a Sumo fighter, he attended to fight on the street. One of his special move was really easy to made, just pressed a punch button quickly many times, then he would attacked by a his palm like a machine gun.

“Dalsim”, Indian yoga master who was trying to find some good place for orphan children to live. His special moves were easy to made and control. I could remember that when I was young, some of my friends were like to used this character as well.

It is known to all, CIVILIZATION 2 is a well-known game. It acquires prominent reputation and has been salt approximately 3 million copies. That seems a myth. However I have tasted CIVILIZATION4, so I figure it is an old-fashion one. But it still has some factors I would like to talk about.

BACKGROUND
Civilization is designed by Douglas Caspian-Kaufman and Jeff Briggs which has been published by Micro Prose at 29th February 1996. It is a single player turn-based strategy game and Entertainment Software Rating Board accessed it suitable for everyone playing. Obviously, at that moment, burn a disk is quite easy, so the first platform for this game is computer, later it is ported to Sony PlayStation. The requirement for computer is 33 MHz, 486 CPU, 8 MB RAM and a CD-ROM. The input methods are Mouse and Keyboard. After the single player game had been published, Multiplayer Gold Edition has been released in 2006.

MicroProse is a famous video game company original founded in 1982 by Sid Meier and Bill Stealey. At initial phase, it focuses on flight, military simulation and strategy game for home company, such as F-15, Gunship, and Civilization. It becomes a corporation known as MICROPROSE SOFTWARE through allowing several game groups join in. Nowadays, the system of MICROPROSE SOFTWARE is comprehensive and systematic.



My Feeling
Positive
1. The setting is quite simply. You just dot the option then click OK.
2. This game is easy to be played. Major part of things you are to do is click mouse.
3. It let me feel I go back ancient time. Old-style design, building and hard-reading English would bring you some unusual feeling.
4. The sea adventure would help you explore your boundary. I assume it has been influenced by Mahan.
5. AI is not bad. Comparing with current game, that seems not clever, nonetheless, comparing with other simultaneous games, it is quite cool.

Negative
1. It do not jump a reminder, I could not know this turn is finished.
2. All units in this game are hard to be picked by mouse, I have to choose several times, and then it would be chose by me.
3. Moving the mini-map is very hard, I have to click cross aim on a tiny-map located in the right-up corner of interface.
4. A parameter is wrong absolutely. For instance, my rifle soldier is killed by an enemy’s archer; the only reason is I do not let my rifle soldiers have a rest.
5. The option is quite simple. Even I could not group my soldiers. That indicates if I thirty for ruining my enemy, I have to press orientation buttons dozens of times for control my troops.



Gameplay
Dot quite a few simple options which are for assisting you to set this game you adapt and then you can start a game you favored. Those options are menu-style, such as which civilization you want to pick, which monarch you like, what is the size of this map; soon you will click OK and create bran-new your own world where you would struggle for surviving and fight to your strong enemies. At the first stage, you only have one setter; this unit would help you build your first city. And the location for this city is quite important. Obviously, the world in this game simulates the reality. You can image that if you sat a city in desert, what would be going on? You murder this city. In this game your position is the greatest ruler of that civilization you chose. So, if you dream to build a prosperous empire, the location of your first city is extremely essential. The ideal environment is that the player should establish first city in flatland nearly river and surrounded by tons of resource. For long-term goal, first city should be constructed nearly by sea. With the expanding of your country, you need more land distinctly. But surface transport is much slower than marine traffic. If you hope your size of realm is larger than you enemies, you should be quick. When you choose a cool location for your first city and press B to establish it, amazing adventure is begin now.

There are three main tasks during playing game internal affairs, military and diplomacy. Double click to open your city; a lot of data would be showed and you are able to manage your domestic events. For example, to make people happy, the throne would build a temple or invest more money on luxury items. That would please your people and make your nation clam. At this situation, you would continue your domination. If you irritate your folks, they would stop produce anything, it would result of this country backward, and even they would betray you. So a wise lord would respect them.

To the next portion, producing some military units for defense is common sense at initial phase of this city. Because maintain army is costly, the sum of it at developing period should not be large. When this nation wants to enlarge its size, more troops are needed. That implies war comes.

Besides, diplomacy is significant evidently. Honestly specking during developing stage avoid fighting with other countries is supreme golden rule until enemy invade. Then through internal channel, heaps of troubles would be solved; nevertheless, got something, lose several others. One factor I would mention is all the treaties is unfair. Bear those and keep developing is the only path to success.

Furthermore, some features are interesting. This game is features entirely new concepts such as group military unit legion. Legion has higher attack and defense value than others, but it cost more money and time absolutely. Firepower and hit point is another one. But I found something ridiculous. For instance, once my rifle solider is killed by archer. In this game, many units’ abilities and strengths are changed, but I still could not understand why archaic solider are able to beat modern solider. The AI in this game is improved. For instance, engineer and setter would improve the surrounding areas automatically, but not longer ignore enemy distinct of control. One cool element in this game is entitled you to consult High Council for advice. It is a good path to make a decision. They would help organize internal affairs and diplomacy. That is quite convenient, but the final decision should be decided by you.

Nobody want to lose, so how to win. There are two solutions. Conquer every other civilization is simple way. Another challenging mode is makes spaceship and reaches Alpha Centauri before others. This game would end in 2020; if the time comes to 2020 and spaceship is not arrived Alpha Centauri the game would still end simply with the scores. Any civilization’s scores is higher than others’, it would win. In addition, even the time is 2020, every other civilization is conquered or spaceship reaches Alpha Centauri, the player can continue playing without marks, expect got further technologies.

How to acquire higher scores than others’? In short, be sensible. In this game a fantastic item is the comprehensive scoring system used to measure scores at the end of each game. The major part of marks comes from population. Each happy citizen contributes two points; each content individual bring 1 point; each unhappy folk worth zero. So if the population is large and maximum of them is happy you would obtain remarkable scores. What is more, each wonder add 20 points. Moreover, if spaceship arrived Alpha Centauri, also have points depended on how many persons still alive. Additionally, each peace turn gain 3 points (no war or conflict). Unfortunately, contamination is horrible; it decrease ten points per square. Eventually, a title would be accessed for player. A magnificent king would gain prominent reputation, reversely; a fool lord would obtain bad evaluation.

Influence
First thing first, for my part, clickable link and moveable windows are creative at the time. Although I have played CIVILIZATION 4, I still feel strongly that is fantastic. It is universally acknowledged that early computer game is hard to be play, especially controlling. When you play those games, you would find it is really hard to choose certain items, even you have to input some code to order them move. Clickable link lead player to control the roles in the game easily, just click your mouse, everything done and moveable windows change the watch manner. In former game, when you want to go to view other materials in the other level, you have to close current window and open the level you want to go. That is boring and redundant. Moveable window let player watch different data easily. Player just needs to move current window aside, then players would get what they want. Even it changes from a top-down view to an isometric representation is definitely convenient. In my view those are feat in game industry. Nowadays, those two factors become very common and popular.

Furthermore, the AI (artificial intelligence) is not bad. One thing I assume it is worthy to be commended is I called advice system. That allows players ask virtual high council. Although normally useless and insipid information would be popped up, that still make players feel cool.

In addition, there are two expansion packs; it inspires other producers to sell a game like this. They sell a game seems complete. If it sells well, they would release expansion pack.

Publish this game gain fame and fortune. As I known so far, this game has been salt around 3 million copies. In 2007 Civilization II was placed on IGN's (Imagine Games Network) 100 top video games of all time. All of those indicate that it is successful.

I could not deny that this game is longevity. Up to today, it is still some other same topic games’ original pattern. And this game has published next visions CIVILIZATION 3 and CIVILIZATION 4. And CIVILIZATION 5 would be released in near future I presume. I suppose it is a classical game.

hi, this is Po Shen...
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By Next 2 Generation

Welcome to my blog to view my canon game report. Heres the link:
http://1739john.blogspot.com/2010/04/super-mario-64-for-canon-game.html

By Next 2 Generation

Before holiday, I download  Mount Blade Warband from a crack website. At the begining, I thougt this game is not fun like tae's introduction. But during playing, I have been addition in the game. And also I find many exciting point about this game. At the same time,  I doubt is this game really produced by 2 person?