Get ready for the most controversial Bargain Ben yet; WarCraft II Battle.Net Edition.

I’ll start by saying that WarCraft has never really been my cup of tea.  I once got the WarCraft Battle Chest, containing WarCraft I, II, and an expansion.  Never played the first, played about half the singleplayer of the second, never touched the expansion.  A few years later a friend wanted me to play it with them, so I did.  Well, I had to go and buy a whole new copy of it, the Battle.Net Edition.  Played a bunch of multiplayer games and then it got lost in the collection.  When I saw early screens of WarCraft 3 I was impressed, but never bothered to play it.  I was involved in the beta for World of WarCraft, played that for a month or so, never saw the charm.

I’ll first state that the genre of WarCraft is not one I tread often.  Orcs, Elves, Knights, and all that other crap just isn’t my taste.

WarCraft II Battle.Net Edition took me a good hour or two just to get it installed.  Running Windows 7, I expect to have some compatibility issues, but this was my hardest install yet.  I couldn’t figure out how to take ingame screenshots, and Fraps wanted nothing to do with it.  I also wasn’t able to get it to run windowed, which made it fun fixing my desktop after every session.

Controls and function were not as good as I remembered.  There aren’t enough options in regards to customization, graphics or controls.  The particularmode of control that WarCraft uses has always been lesser, in my opinion, to that of the style found in the [Westwood era] Command & Conquer games.

Peons are almost useless.  At the start of a mission more is better, but once you have depleted most of your resources, you only need a few for repairs.  Repairs that are never really needed as the AI is slow and predictable.  Leaving a few of my Axethrowers around took care of any attempts.  Ships are often blocked by other ships, taking a choice to just sit RIGHT NEXT TO THE FREAKIN SHIPYARD THEY WERE SENT ATTACK!  And telling two Oil Tankers to work at the same Refinery is a joke.

Lets get to the hate.  I didn’t even bother to finish this game.  On about the forth or fifth mission Cabal threw a fit and crashed.  That’s enough for me.  You can bore me to death slowly, but leave Cabal out of it.  So yes, this all based on not having finished the game, ever.

Shabby controls, horrid voice work, no creativity between classes, and a pain of an install are all that’s left.  While there is a decent fan base still playing online games, and while WarCraft II was one of the pioneers of online RTS play, I would note the other pioneer to be well beyond.  If you want some good ol’ fashion RTS fun go play the original Command & Conquer, if you can get it to install.

Now I’m going to go uninstall it…

WarCraft II Battle.Net Edition receives a score of 7.