Monday 26 October 2020

The Past and Times of Yore: Warcraft, Orcs and Humans, where RTS all began

I've decided to do a return to the original format of my blog I'll somehow try to get it done around my playing but as I said in my previous post may not be as detailed as before. Also because of my Covid and my lousy internet upload speed I will not be posting any videos, I could post other videos from youtube but I'd rather just update the posts when I can with my own work.

Release date: 23rd November 1995
Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS)
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Platforms: MD-DOS, Classic Mac OS
Modes: Single-player, Multi-player

It was only a week or two ago when I saw that the Warcraft I&II bundle was on special on GOG (which is a great resource for games I might add) and I just couldn't say no. Yes it's arguable that these games should now be free but for $12 what the hey, whoever does the conversion of these games into a playable format does a great job and I have no trouble playing them. Warcraft: Orcs and Humans though is a special case, released in 1994 it's one of the oldest Real-Time-Strategy (RTS) games out there. In fact I was interested to know what could be considered the first, and after doing some research I found that the Sega Genesis game Herzog Zwei released in 1989 was regarded as the first, I had never heard of it, but then again I had never considered RTS games on console. The term Real Time Strategy was coined as a sub-genre of strategy video games in which the game does not progress incrementally in turns as many games such as Powermonger did. Back in the day I was a huge fan of RTS, and so was everyone else, what with the 1992-1998 golden age of seminal titles with greats such as Command & ConquerCommand and Conquer: Red Alert, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Age of Empires and Total Annihilation which introduced 3D units and terrain. All these were a huge hit of course then came Starcraft, so RTS as well as online multiplay well and truly took off worldwide and when Warcraft III came around well I had the RTS time of my life and I can honestly say I have not played a better one to this date. 

The Humans, clean, noble and righteous, what you'd expect really.

Nowadays unfortunately I just don't enjoy RTS as much as a I used to, I'm not exactly sure, it may be the stress, the structured building of bases and starting from scratch every game and all the damn micromanagement, or maybe it's just the fact that seeing my army routed and defeated just makes me much more sad then if I was playing as a single entity. The last two RTS I played were the Starcraft II Trilogy and Planetary Annihilation: TITANS which was a fan-made reboot for Total Annihilation. But that was just for nostalgic value really and to see the series through, I faced it a long time ago my tenure with RTS was over.

The Orcs: A very different look, rough, ugly and crude

But that is now, back then I was really into these games. Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (WC1) was Blizzard Entertainment's breakthrough into the RTS genre and a big success for the company. It introduced the Warcraft universe which tells the story of the Orcs invasion of Azeroth from their homeworld of Draenor, which to my delight was the subject of the first Warcraft Film (to a degree). WC1 had great graphics and voice acting and I loved the intro sequences for the missions where the text would scroll and the actor would vocally read out the mission details which was unique for it's time then then part of the map would pop out in 3D as you started. It was all very good but there was a problem as the first Warcraft game that actually I played was Warcraft II (WC2), it wasn't until I got the famous Warcraft: Battle Chest that included WC1 that I had a go of it, and to be honest although it was still a nice and polished game with a great story and presentation, after playing WC2 it just didn't cut the mustard which I'll admit can happen going from playing a sequel to playing an earlier game. 

3D Map! it was a cinematic but I still loved this bit.

WC1 suffered from a few drawbacks including: Only being able to select 4 units at one time and no ability to right click to attack, you had to either click on the ability or use the hotkey, units didn't path well and often didn't react when an enemy was near them. Even on the fastest speed it took a long time to build your base and get things organised to attack the enemy and often you couldn't play on the fastest speed as you needed to slow it down to organise units in a battle. Plus every unit on each side had the same voices and said the same lines when clicked on or when an ability was used. So after a few hours of "My Lord?" "Yes my Lord" "Yes!" "My Liege?" "Yes my Lord" "Yes!" "Your will Sire?" "Yes!" "Yes my Lord" I was about to throw my keyboard out the window, the Orcs although a bit funnier in their speech were the same. The other issue was apart from the spells used by the Clerics, Conjurors, Necrolytes and Warlocks, each unit on each side was pretty much identical to the other in starting stats and abilities. I must admit I did love playing with these spells being able to summon a whole bunch of monsters including, spiders, scorpions, Water Elementals and Demons was great fun and lets not forget raising the dead too.

Orc Necrolytes summon skeletons from both my dead comrades and theirs, it was difficult in a sense that the computer controled army can move any units they like whilw you are stuck to moving four at a time.

As I've watched various people play it on youtube I think everyone can agree it's a lot of hard work and chore to play you have to do a momentous amount of mousework unless you know the hotkeys off by heart. In my most recent playthrough I found the incredibly helpful (heh) Warcraft Mouse Helper which made things a bit easier by adding modern RTS game functions but regardless I just couldn't find the game fun, then and now. I found myself looking forward to the unit-only missions where you didn't have to build and defend a base as in my later years these are the RTS levels I prefer. 

One of the Human, Unit-Only missions, these were usually always in caves

Unfortunately I just couldn't drag myself through the whole two campaigns again, I even resorted to using the cheat codes again as I was losing badly and just couldn't be assed, the ability see all map one is great as it allows you to see how the developers laid the map out and any easter eggs included which is fun. But really as before this is more a nostalgia trip then anything. I also never found any to play multiplayer with, and I don't think I ever will, not for a game this old, the multiplayer is only 1v1 anyway.

Youtuber Yshsod playing the multiplayer with a friend.

Warcraft:Orcs and Humans was a great game for it's time but just doesn't hold up very well. It would need a complete overhaul to the magnitude of Brutal Doom to be playable by today's standards. Nevertheless the sound, the music the colourful units and artwork and fantasy setting made this game what it was and a great base for things to come and I would regard it as a must try for lovers of RTS or Warcraft in general.


JD


Things I liked:

Over artwork and design, colourful units

Sound, Music and Voice work

Fantasy setting and story


Things I didn't like:

Clunky Controls

Bad unit pathing

Can only select 4 units

Repetitive unit speech

Not much replayability

Game requires a lot of effort to play

 

Youtuber WTii with a full playthrough of the game, wow that was a lot of demons and water elementals.


We've come a long way

Wednesday 26 August 2020

Liero, The Unwanted Legend

Well hello there, it's been a while, I honestly didn't think I was going to make another post here due to changes in my work I had decided to leave my blog as I couldn't put in the effort I had before. I had just been sporadically updating my Youtube channel and now even less cause of covid. But my partner inspired me to continue writing and posting and I remember other friends and relatives commenting on how they saw and read my posts and how my blog was going and I wanted to thank everyone for that as it was inspiring to me. I must say the posts will not be anywhere near as long as before with in depth reviews and musing etc I just want to make small posts about things I'm doing and playing now. It will still be about games of course with videos and screenshots. I gotta say it's good to be back doing this again as I have missed it.

The year was 1998, I was in high school and it had computers and the internet, so what did we do? we played games of course. Yes back then flash games were the rage of course but also simple small downloadable games ones you could place on a USB drive and play anywhere without having to access the internet. I can remember Elastomania and Blobby Volley and Battle Painters to name a few, and of course there was Liero.

Liero is Finnish for earthworm and was inspired by the earlier game MoleZ, Liero provided inspiration for the later games Soldat and Noita. Liero was described a real-time version of the Worms games where two worms fought to the death using a choice of five weapons from a total of 40 in a two-dimensional map. The worm characters could dig through the dirt or destroy it with explosions to reach their opponent and gain extra mobility by using ninja ropes. So you could imagine there wasn't much in the way of narrative to a game like this.

A small preview of gameplay from Liero

I played this a lot, and during a creative writing session at school, I decided to write a story line for Liero, I called it LIERO , The Unwanted Legend as It wasn't really needed, or wanted, the game didn't need it but I thought it'd be fun to write. So I wrote most of it around 1999 and then it was left unfinished, until now, so without further I do, I give you Liero the unwanted legend:

Prologue

Liero is one of the most violent, chaotic and meaningless computer games I have ever seen. It consists of two worm-like creatures in underground tunnels each in bright colours and using ridiculously destructive weapons to blow each other apart. This may seem like a normal shoot-em-up game to some people with the amount of video game violence today but what makes this stand out is the mindless chaotic destructiveness with no plot or storyline whatsoever. Which does not mean the game is particularly bad, I myself like it a lot, But that’s what brings me to the point of this story, Yes unlike the game this story has a point to it.

I thought it would make an interesting scenario to try to create a detailed storyline to Liero, to create reason out of random violence and an explanation as to why this is happening and why Liero is what it is today.

Justin Durrant    


LIERO , The Unwanted Legend

CHAPTER 1 – The Imperfect Creators

When the Creators first came to the planet, it was young and rich in resources and full of oceans and underground tunnels and coated with an atmosphere which allowed lush plant life to grow . But other than this lush layer of grass and trees there was no life, no giant primitive beings, no scaly reptiles, no tiny insects, not even the slightest living microscopic organism. Creators knew that to leave such a perfect planet untouched, this was what they had been waiting for. The chance to create the perfect life-form.

The Creators were exited over the richness and complexity of the planet, the planet had everything needed, air, water, grass, trees and it’s relation to the sun brought interesting dark and light effects. As if it was dark on one side at one time and light on the other side at the other time. The Creators were efficient bringers of life, they quickly calculated the kind of life form that the planet could sustain and created seedlings of the one life form which they thought would be perfect to start off a whole chain of species on the newly discovered planet. The Creators laid these microscopic seedlings all over the planet, on the surface, undersea and in the underground tunnels. Over time the seedlings began to grow and to the delight of the Creators did not freeze or melt in the extreme conditions in some parts of the planet.

When the seedlings finally hatched what came out was an exact opposite to what the Creators expected. Instead of the white larvae of the proposed “perfect” life form, there were tiny colorless worms. The Creators were dismayed at the fact that these were not at all like what they had originally designed. They frantically hoped that if they failed to create the right species, that that species would not be able to survive in that environment and would die out quickly and they could start again. The Creators wanted to make sure that they had not wasted the planet with their embarrassing mistake.

But the Creators were successful in one way not the other, Each one of the tiny worms were perfectly suited to their surrounding environment and multiplied by the thousands, spreading across the planet with the highest population in their teeming underground tunnels. The Creators found that they had succeeded in making their creation be able to live and multiply in perfect harmony with the planet.

The Creators lurked in their colossal space-faring vessels pondering over what they could or should do with the ever-increasing useless mass of teeming worms that had shown no signs of evolution whatsoever. Knowing that if they tried to launch a second life form onto the planet it would instantly overrun by the worms no matter how fast it evolved, there was different opinions and views.  Some opted to try to launch a second batch of seedlings that would quickly spawn and ultra-being that would evolve and be strong enough to drive the worms to extinction, but this was almost impossible because of the sheer immensity of the worms population. Others thought that they should find a way to exterminate the worms without destroying the planet. Seeing as there was no way to get rid of the worms and start a new race, nor even save the planet the argument came to two final solutions.

One was to incinerate the planet and eliminate the race of worms altogether in hope that one day the planet will become what it once was. The other was insisted by particular Creators who were sympathetic or intrigued by the race of worms and wished to leave the planet and in time return in hope that the worms had changed beyond their original form. The Creators agreed that such a planet and the labor that went into creating the race should not be thrown away so casually, they agreed to leave the planet and search for a new untouched haven for another chance.


CHAPTER 2 – Growth, Evolution and Adaptation

Ironically not long after the Creators had left the planet’s solar system, the worms began to evolve dramatically, they grew bigger and fatter and eventually turned into what looked like a giant snake-worm. The most distinctive changes were the fact the worms no longer squirmed across the ground, they grew to an enormous size and reared up in an S-shape. They grew bigger, fatter, stronger and taller (up to 1 and a third metres). The other quite noticeable change was that the worms had developed arms and clumsy, fat but strong hands and fingers.

The worms adapted to the land and to the underground tunnels where most of them lived and even underground the planet was rich in resources as the worms had the ability to make a meal out of almost anything. But as the species evolved they started acquiring certain tastes, some craved large tasty flowerbeds other preferred watery lilies and lush ferns, and some ravenous minorities  had even started to get a taste for flesh eating small cave creatures and even other worms . This heightened intellect resulted in the worms quarreling over food, warmth, living space, even personal possessions such as large sticks or uniquely shaped rocks.

Years pass and the worms had virtually dug an underground city of tunnels and holes, and had uncovered water by drilling holes deep into the ground, they worms did quarrel from time to time but this was stemmed to the fact that they were still a primitive species with limited intellect. The worms seldom had anything to anger them they were all roughly the same height same shape and were the same pale white color from the darkness of the underground. But as the worms dug more and more this reasonable peaceful state could not go on forever and the inevitable was about to happen.

 

CHAPTER 3 – The Surface

In what was to be the most significant event in the life of the worms, the few that were at the highest point of the underground tunnels, felt warmth coming from the surface and small groups of them started digging upwards and upwards, this escalated into millions of worms shoveling out the roofs of the their tunnels toward the surface. After this happened it took barely a week for the first of the worms to reach the surface.

When the first worms broke through the surface of the planet they noticed at once that there was a bright glow coming from the edge of the horizon they reeled back at the harsh light of the sunrise as more and more worms erupted from the ground. Hours passed and the sun had reared up into the sky in the full light of noon the worms had barely adjusted their dark eyes to the sun when their skin made a dramatic change. As the sunlight beams down on the pale white hoards of worms their skin began to change shade into bright colors of the rainbow, some just turned a much brighter white other made a more dramatic change to pale red or yellow or even a dark blue, green or even black.

Weeks passed and the worms entire population had made it to the surface and as they explored the “new world” with new foods, plants, creatures and resources they began to build huts gain and new possessions and weapons, similar to what they had done in the underground but this time there was many distinct differences, on the surface the worms could use their vision to a greater extent and they could even climb tress and hunt other smaller creatures.

The worms explored the world their population ever expanding and gaining insight and influence and access to much more resources that they had previously, decades passed and the worm race evolved into the most populous and technologically advanced species on the planet making use of modern inventions, and weaponry. To counter their lack of limbs they used bungee style ropes to gain heigh and move quickly   There was no leadership within the worms, as they all managed to coexist peacefully.

 

CHAPTER 4 – The War for Resources and the return of the Creators

The Worm kingdom enjoyed years of peace but after the constant farming and desecration of the planets natural habitat, resources started to dwindle, the worms started to divide themselves into separate colonies by colour to safeguard their remaining resources. However this tenuous situation could only go for so long, soon various colonies began to attack each other on resource raids, leading to all out war between the colonies. The war went on for 500 years and terrible weapons were used on a global scale leading to devastated landscapes and millions of worms dead, the planet was eventually turned into a war-torn wasteland.

It was during this time that the creators decided to return to the world and saw with their horror at the consequences of allowing the worms to live, the worms had evolved so much that they had gained enough intelligence to be dangerous and that had led to them destroying their own planet. The creators had no choice but to incinerate the planet destroying the worms before they figured out how to travel the stars and infect other worlds. The entire population of the worms was destroyed as was whatever was left of their civilization. And so the creators left richer with knowledge of their failed creation.

However unbeknownst to the creators some worms had survived and fled underground to escape the scorched surface. But instead of rebuilding their society the remaining worms dig through the earth and hunt each other down with the weapons they have left, so ingrained is their will to survive is that they will fight each other until they are the victor.

Thus we have LIERO

JD


Oh the little joys