Warcraft: Orcs and Humans is based on the popular RTS genre which started with the production of Dune II: Battle for Arrakis. Warcraft OAS is the first of a series of thrilling adventurous games from Blizzard Entertainment which illustrate a well plotted story of a seemingly unending war between the two powerful races of Azerath. Choosing your side in battle as the brutal Orcs or the medieval Humans, you can play through over thirty missions (per campaign) of increasing difficulties. Build units of varying strength such as warlocks, archers, spearmen, clerics or necrolytes in an attempt to overrun, overpower or by any/all means obliterate the enemy.
One thing Blizzard Entertainment holds over virtually every other RTS producer is the complexity they acheive by adding on side missions that require you to survive dungeons, caves, and castles without replenishing units in order to either save or destroy one or more key characters to the storyline. Because of this, you get a nice variation from the usual build/harvest/kill/pillage monotony.
You achieve victory through sword and spear, rather than bombs and guns, which increases the cultural aspects of the game. And as an extra bonus, you can use arcane magic ranging from simple healing, and raising skeletons to invisibility and summoning daemons. But unlike in most C&C styled RTS, you have the difficult but very real option to destroy natural resources thus crippling the opposition.
Cheats
are available, as long as you're careful to only use what you need. Otherwise the fun of the game virtually disappears. It's also recommended not to try them until after you beat the campaign fist, as you learn more strategic thinking through losses than false victories. Once you beat it a few times on each side, the game can still stay interesting in the multiplayer mode where all the brilliance of the military mind becomes the only barrier between you and failure.
All in all, this is one of my favorite games of all time (I'm an RTS freak!). Hours of addictive fort-razing mayhem for the RTS lover in all of you, with great platforming, pretty good graphics, humorous character personalities (click on one unit a few times), and a powerful, often nearly impossible AI opponent.
