WARCRAFT 2: TIDES OF DARKNESS (1995)

Blizzard

Warcraft 2 stole an entire year of life. I wonder if that's grounds for a lawsuit? I remember calling up my friend Jason one day for a game of Doom 2, only to hear "Sorry dude, I'm playin' Warcraft 2". I held off on trying to buy a copy for reasons I can't remember. Until my other friend Josh came to school and told me to get it so we could play on this online gaming network called Kali. Well that was two different people recommending the same game, so why not? I got my copy of Warcraft 2 and was completely blown away.

I started with the single player, like I always try to do with the games I play. After playing both campaigns through (the humans was the harder in my opinion) I was still impressed and I wanted to play more. The thing that struck me was the game balance. It seemed perfect..almost too perfect. For every strategy, the opposing side had a possible counter strategy that always seemed to cancel everything out. It was almost like playing a game of chess, only with hundreds of little pieces!

When I first came onto the Kali network and played against my friend Josh. I was amazed at how much he had studied the game. He had the most effective way to build everything all planned out. He knew exactly what to assign each worker to do to become the best the fastest. Most of the games with him lasted 5 minutes, if that. He had an army ready to go before I had the barricks up. Then he let me in on the 'lumber bug' and the 'building order' that almost guaranteed victory. It all made more sense then. We teamed up and terrorized people all over the network for months, entered a couple tournies and did respectable. He was much better than I, but thats ok. I was better than most and that was good enough for me!

No, I don't regret playing it too much!