Revised Issues & Suggestions for War1R

Warcraft Remastered Battle Chest Trailer Screenshot. Taken from YouTube.

It's been over a month since Blizzard Entertainment has shadowdropped Warcraft 1: Remastered, Warcraft 2: Remastered and Patch 2.0 for Warcraft 3 during Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct. Since then, I tried my best to dedicate some of my free time to observe and take note of the general state of the first two releases, their updates and unaddressed issues. This approach mostly comes to the fact that more eyes are likely to be centered on Warcraft 3 with its fragmented community, but even then there're some things that I feel like have been missed out on by players and developers alike. It would have to wait for a good while though.

Nevertheless, right now I would like to talk about remaster of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and not just because it's the first game in Warcraft franchise. But because it's likely to be the most neglected one, which you can argue may be evident by all the recent updates both titles were getting: War2R managed to catch Patch 1.01 alongside multiple hotfixes, but War1R is yet to receive a proper patch of its own (only hotfixes). Warcraft RTS Team and developers from Blackbird Interactive (assuming they're still attached to the projects; hopefully, they are) are making some admirable small steps after the initial rushed release, but more needs to be done. Because these games deserve much more.

The purpose of this "article" is to revisit my list of issues & suggestions for War1R I posted on r/Warcraft3 & Blizzard's forum in more depth to the best of my abilities and even add something new to all that. Not only just to "do this myself" (video would be ideal, but that's not something I can do anytime soon; post's timing isn't good already with too many delays) and get it out of my system, but to publish a "comprehensive" feedback based on my outside observations for the developers in hopes that they're keeping track of all that people have to say outside of forum discussions, Reddit posts, YouTube videos and such.

Echoes from Blizzard's Past

Edited "Games" Page from Battle.net Launcher. Originally Made by Kacpa2.

Technically more than three years ago, Ilko's Hall got its proper start and it started with "Blast from Blizzard's Past" where I caught onto strange anomaly on Blizzard's website regarding its pre-Warcraft games. Originally I thought they were planning to hand them over to GOG, but a few days later Blizzard Arcade Collection was shadowdropped during BlizzConline. I still look back at this quirky "kind of prediction" fondly. Despite this, I guess I was hesitant to revisit this topic as time went on. To be fair, there wasn't much to cover and I'm not sure if I even mentioned anything new in some random post.

Anyway, that doesn't matter now! Because I'm about to pick things up right where I left them at that first "article". Since I completed the "main quest" of Ilko's Hall, it feels natural to complete this concluding circle by falling into sudden old school Blizzard rabbit hole yet again and there's quite a few things I have to cover. In order to let the proper atmosphere settle in, I also recommend you to check out both "A Tale of Warcraft Remasters that Almost Happened" & "Callback to Blizzard Classic 'Arcade'" before reading this one.

Questions of the Machine

A Vision(?) of Castle of the Damned.

It's no secret that the re-release of Quake 2 was a pleasant surprise to everyone. While I previously struggled to revisit that game, Nightdive Studios' offering was able to pull me back in not just with the achievements. The game felt more fun and engaging than it did before. Not that Quake 2 is terrible game, but it just wasn't able to grab my attention again as is. Part of that is typical sense of novelty accompanying this re-release (as it does with announcements and other things like that), but some changes like the removal of Machine Gun's recoil go a long way to mix things up. However, that's not exactly what I want to talk about.

Going through both Quake 2 64 and Call of the Machine were definitely the highlights in my good old achievement hunting. While the first offers some neat gameplay experience, new expansion created by Machine Games provides some interesting food for thought in case you're a silly lore dork like me. Similarly to Quake Champions, I think there're some small fragments that could be utilized in the future whenever the franchise get its grand return. To be specific, contents of this post is just me making things up based on my impressions on Call of the Machine.

Hidden Re-Release Race

SiN: Reloaded Screenshot. Taken from Steam.

Recent announcements from Nightdive Studios provided some interesting food for thoughts, which I think is enough to a reason to write down about the things it led me to. While others were eager to nag 3D Realms over the announced status of SiN: Reloaded, the reveals that followed have reminded me about some of my prior observations from this old school side of gaming industry that I think is worth to mumble about for a bit. You know, to free my mind as usual. It's been kind of a while since I've done this here.

Basically, I think it's another showcase of a big thing happening under everyone's noses. While re-releases, remasters and remakes/reboots were a stable part of video games for many years now, some events here and there point out towards an increase in competition among various parties within this somewhat limited field. In other words, some companies are currently running a marathon when it comes to revisiting and bringing back older titles.

Recent Tides of Warcraft 3

Warcraft 3: Reforged's "New Grunt" Model by Wanmin Gee. Taken from ArtStation.

It's been a while since I really thought about Warcraft franchise, no matter what game or other form of media we're talking about. Even though I stopped actively tracking out Blizzard's news for a long time now, some echoes regarding various games still reached me since many of my friends still keep an eye out and joke about some of that stuff. This includes Warcraft 3 as I have a few friends who still try to play the game on regular basis. I'm also still watching Grubby's videos, so that also helped.

Despite taking notes of some interesting development around tormented real-time strategy, I was very hesitant to actually brought it up in this blog since I wanted to have a prolonged break from these topics. However, completely cutting myself off from it seems counter-intuitive. Especially since all of my most successful Ilko's Hall "articles" are all directly related to Warcraft 3. I might not care about getting a massive amount of readers, but it's logical and not completely depressing to make sure your most popular post this year would have more than ten views.

So it's time for catch up. Look at these aforementioned details in order to see what it could mean for Warcraft 3. This time it should feel more definitive in comparison to "The 'rocPortraits' Mystery" that I initially conceived as a part of a series that would've followed further developments with those "Classic+" Portraits (I'll get to them later on though).

Plants vs. Zombies on The Lawn

Plants vs. Zombies Google Play Promo.

When I pick a title for these Hall Tales "articles", my choice is pretty random. I might just start thinking about specific game for whatever reason and then decide to unload my mind by redirecting it towards writing. This is a great way to do this type of thing, but something was bothering me. I think there might be more examples, but I'll mention my Dungeon Siege & Ken's Labyrinth's posts specifically: just as I was writing them, I discovered that I "barely" missed out on their anniversary.

I know that this might be a weird thing to be bothered with, but I can't help myself. So I wanted to "make up" for it by releasing something just at the right moment. Which resulted in this perfect opportunity to talk about original Plants vs. Zombies that was released on May 5th, 2009. 14 years ago! Even though it's technically a PC game first and foremost since it was first released for Windows & Mac, I think many people out there (myself included) are often viewing it as mobile title. The idea of talking about games for various platforms is appealing to me, so I'm rolling with it.

Rune's Lost Head

Rune Classic Screenshot. Taken from Steam.

A few months after Raven Software was purchased by Activision, a group of developers decided to leave and form their own company known as Human Head Studios. Their first release ended up being a game called Rune: an interesting third person action-adventure title based on Norse mythology. They definitely had a lot of experience with fantasy genre as all six original members of Human Head worked on so-called "Serpent Rider Trilogy": Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders, Hexen: Beyond Heretic & Hexen 2.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Shane Gurno, Human Head's artist and part of its founding group, talked about the interesting origins of the game. Even though they had ideas for the Rune as they thought about leaving Raven Software, at first Human Head had other project in mind. Their first release was initially going to be a sequel to Daikatana on Unreal Engine after they contacted John Romero, but that was never meant to be. Despite this, Epic Games allowed Human Head to keep using their engine while they were searching for the publisher. They still had to pay Epic for it, obviously.

For a new studio full of talented people, Human Head Studios seemed to have a perfect start with Rune. This is one of many games that peaked my interest in recent years, so I figured that it's finally time to take a proper look at it.

Ken's Innocent Labyrinth

Ken's Labyrinth Title Screen. Taken from MobyGames.

A lot of influential first-person shooters were released in 90s. While people would like talk about popular titles like Quake and Blood, I would like to dedicate this post to a lesser known game that ended up being more important to that time period and genre than you would think. The release of Wolfenstein 3D inspired many developers around the globe, including young Ken Silverman. CuteFloor's "The History of Ken Silverman's Build Engine" mentions that he decided to make his own engine after seeing his brother Alan play Wolfenstein 3D, and it took me some time to confirm it by opening a certain page on Ken's website that's still available in its retro glory.

Despite some impressive features at the time, Ken's Labyrinth doesn't get nearly as much attention as it deserves. While my silly "article" definitely won't change that, I'll use this opportunity to dive deeper into this curious little game's story and what it left behind in gaming industry, perhaps encouraging someone to actually play and leaving a note for myself to do so in the future as well since I'm following my shameful tradition of writing about video games I haven't personally touched for whatever reason.

Catacomb & Council

Catacomb Snatch and Crown & Council's Title Screens.
Taken from Catacomb Snatch Wiki and Steam.

Most people know about Scrolls/Caller's Bane & Cobalt as the only non-Minecraft releases from Mojang Studios and I've already tried to cover them in previous "articles". Not only there's also Cobalt WASD, but there's still a few games technically developed and released by Mojang developers. Perhaps they're not large enough for a dedicated post (although I think that can be debatable), I think it would still lead to something pretty neat and interesting.

These January posts were kicked off with Minicraft: a game that Markus "Notch" Persson developed for a game jam in December 2011 when Jens "Jeb" Bergensten already become the lead developer of Minecraft. We're coming full circle as Notch wasn't the only person in Mojang interested in game jams, which resulted in creation of more curious titles. A couple of them are stand out among the rest.

Cobalt & Its Slow-Mo Rolls

Cobalt Launch Trailer. Taken from YouTube.

While Mojang Studios worked on multiple versions of Minecraft & Scrolls/Caller's Bane, they've decided to take on another project. This one would be different as Mojang would serve only as co-developer and publisher of the game. Company's blocky success opened up many opportunities, including the ability to publisher games from other developers. In an interview to GamesIndustry, Daniel "Kappische" Kaplan talked about Mojang's plan to support fellow independent developers while expessing company's hope to "have something out this fall at least". That is, fall of 2011.

Cobalt was announced a few months later, but it would take a while before it gets a proper release. In fact, the story of this curious platformer created by Oxeye Game Studio turned out to be way longer and interesting than I anticipated. What you might consider a second obscure project from Mojang Studios actually had a major impact not only on the company, but even Minecraft itself. And that's probably not the only surprise that's instored for some of you.

Scrolling for Caller's Bane

Scrolls/Caller's Bane Official Launch Trailer Thumbnail. Taken from YouTube.

Not matter how much you enjoy something, you need to have a break from it and redirect your attention to something else. While Minecraft was still in development and getting closer to release, some people at Mojang Studios wanted to do something different. Something new. It doesn't seem like there was a problem with that as Scrolls, a game that's now known as Caller's Bane, was announced and then released.

Most people out there only know Mojang Studios for Minecraft, but there're were other games released by company that weren't related to their blocky hit. A few people will likely recall those titles and I intent on covering them similarly to Minicraft and other games I wrote about here. As all of them officially faded away, I think it would be interesting to see what Caller's Bane had to offer and where it is today while learning about the game.

Hidden Resilience of Minicraft

Minicraft's Title Screen. Taken from Minecraft Wiki.

You probably wasted some of your free time on at least one browser game. They're a good option whenever you're just too lazy to boot up a proper game or don't really have alternative since you're young and there's only one family computer or something along those lines. From Flash games on random websites to platforms like Newgrounds, there're many options to check out both old & new browser games to see what this side of industry has to offer nowadays.

This time, I would like to focus on one small game I initially stumbled upon in my spare time many years ago. While I didn't get far into it, this little game has a lot going on for it and you see it first hand after a little digging.

Remember the GameSpy

"GameSpyDown". Taken from GameSpy.

I had this thing going on with posts lately where I missed the anniversaries of games I wrote about, like Dungeon Siege and Wolfenstein 3D. While that might not be as much of a big deal as I make it out to be in jokingly manner, I wanted to somewhat cross correct myself by following one of my ideas. Since I actually thought of about writing an "article" about this particular topic for around a month now. But this anniversary isn't the one you might expect.

Five days later, on May 31st, would reach the 8th anniversary of GameSpy's shutdown. Even though the announcement for its site closure (still available online, which is neat; kind of, at least) and other stuff arrived at late February 2013, it was at the end of May when the popular and truly ironic online gaming service ceased its activity. While I can't really fathom how important GameSpy was to many people since I just wasn't there at the time, my lack of experience with it still makes me pretty sad because of that.

Mysterious Forms of the Serpent Riders

Murals for The Serpent Riders from Hexen 2: Portal of Praevus. Thanks, anon.

"The Serpent Riders" trilogy is great. While I still haven't beaten Hexen 2, I'm having fun running around as Paladin on my quest to get through famous puzzles and defeat Eidolon. I really loved original Heretic & Hexen, even though I'm yet to proper beat additional episodes from Shadow of the Serpent Riders or Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. I wanted to talk about something related to this franchise for quite some time and I've got a decent topic for that.

Many players like to remark how D'Sparil is the only "Serpent Rider" in this demonic family while Korax himself looks more like a serpent and Eidolon prefers classic demon look. How did this happened? That's the question I want to poke by taking a look at each Serpent Rider and some random stuff in order to see what potentially could've been. Perhaps there's more to this than I'm about to present, but I think it's more than enough to make a point with my weird logic.

Hidden Treasures of Wolfenstein 3D

Unsung Screenshot. Taken from ModDB.

A week ago we reached an important milestone when in comes to the history of first-person shooters: 30th Anniversary of Wolfenstein 3D. This game may not be an actual first title in its genre or even the franchise, but the third FPS by id Software played a key role in their later achievements. Which is why this classic definitely deserves more credit and popularity than it usually gets, but that's easy to see why a debut of Blazkowicz isn't talked about as much as DOOM and Quake.

Despite the charm that comes with the simplicity of Wolfenstein 3D, generally people rightfully note how this classic didn't break the ground as much as aforementioned future titles did. While I don't view this as a weakness of "grandfather of the first-person shooters", the truth is that there's not much interest in it. I've already talked about the franchise back in January and this time I would like to do something similar to an "article" where I've mentioned certain custom campaigns for Warcraft 3 by talking about some prominent total conversions (or whatever I should call the) for Wolfenstein 3D.

Late Tribute to Dungeon Siege

Dungeon Siege Promo Screenshot. Taken from MobyGames.

That's going to be an awkward start since I just realized that I missed out on a perfect point for this "article". Dungeon Siege is one of a few games I have in mind for these "scuffed perspective on titles I would like to eventually check out" and I decided to cover it after Abuse and Cannon Fodder series. Even though I was sadly oblivious to the fact that the first game hit its 20th anniversary back in April 5th, that honestly feels like a mistake on my part.

As it was the case with Amiga classic about "hill decoration", my first introduction to unique action role-playing game happened thanks to a YouTube video. This time it was an excellent chapter of Ross's Game Dungeon about the original title and kind of the franchise as a whole. I would like to go in a similar direction, but in smaller scale with derpy execution. If you haven't watch that video, I highly recommend you to do so.

Charming Rest of "Cannon Fodder" Games

Cannon Fodder (Amiga) Screenshot. Taken from MobyGames.

In my previous attempts to cover older games that's not particularly popular nowadays, I've remained strictly within MS-DOS & Windows territory when it comes to PC titles. Now I would like to change that by expanding my scope for one more family of computers. Thanks to one good friend of mine and my desire to further explore the wonderful world of retro games, I've finally witnessed the greatness of Amiga with its multimedia capabilities.

However, I didn't knew where to start until I recalled the Cannon Fodder series. Seeing Russian Geek's reviews of its games was probably the first time I took a proper look at Amiga titles, besides the third one. As before, I would go over the things that interested me in the 2/3 of Cannon Fodder series, why the last title of the series isn't included there and what could be the current status of this franchise.

Don't Forget the "Abuse" Game

Abuse Screenshot Promo. Taken from MobyGames.

Almost everyone probably had that moment when they couldn't recall a specific game. Either they've seen some gameplay of it, screenshots and overheard any kind of mention of it, but title's name got lost in their memory one way or the other (maybe they just didn't hear it in the first place). That was the case for me with Abuse: an old "run and gun" game from February 1996. Not only it has an interesting name, but as a whole that title seemed pretty curious to me.

So I've picked it as another "exhibit" for a post where I briefly talk about the game itself and its current status in the industry. Not only to show off Abuse to a few random readers, but so I can remember the game's name... Seriously, it was kind of hard to come up with a title for this "article". It was either something "too edgy" or "too save".

A Brief History of iQue Brand

Bland iQue Player Thumbnail. Based on Wikipedia's material.

Gaming industry is no stranger for copycats. Many individuals and groups in certain regions of the world dabbled on bringing specific consoles and games to their market in one way or the other. It could be done via official partnership with big company or not so official "borrowing" of the preferred system. There are many examples of that (probably more than I'm currently aware of), but I would like to start with one interesting brand I've somewhat interacted with personally back in "better times of my childhood".

Although that experience was limited to just one specific handheld, I would like to direct more focus on more unique exhibit of that peculiar company that managed to kind of stick around to this very day. Perhaps not in a way it operated before, but I will get to that.

"Eternity's End": Empty Inside

"Eternity's End" Key Art.

We have reached the end of this saddening path, it seems. Life goes on, for better or worse, and so does World of Warcraft with its "popular" Shadowlands expansion. Similarly to my Chains of Domination coverage, I plan to glaze over some of its key narrative points to simply state an obvious fact of how bad things really are. I'm holding on to this personal bargain to go all the way until the conclusion of all this, and soon it shall be fulfilled.

It's rather curious to see the public transformation in terms of how they view this chapter of Warcraft. The vast majority of people are negative when it comes to Shadowlands for many good reasons, even though here I mostly "bother" with story/lore side of things. Not that it would be new or surprising to you no matter how good you're informed whenever through my posts or other means. Well, I suppose we should get it over with. Don't we?