Since I’ve greatly enjoyed Warcraft 3, I look forward to writing about it for our site. However, while now a budget title and thus viable material for our attention, it’s still relatively young. So I thought we should do this properly and go right back to the first Warcraft, and play through them in order.

Except, here’s the problem: it sucks. It’s just a pain in the ass. Here’s why:
-you can only select up to four units at once
-no use of hotkeys to reselect groups
-there’s no drag-a-box selection
-to give orders you have to first select the action from the panel on the left, then click the target. There’s no automatic selector of “move\attack\harvest” based on what’s under the pointer.

This makes simply getting a dozen soldiers across the map and into battle a chore. Grab some, shuffle them along, grab another four. With the result that they reach the enemies piecemeal, a couple at a time, instead of all at once in a mighty rush. I suppose I could, with patience, get used to it and compensate. But, why bother? I gave up on the second mission.

It seems to me that that really decent and intuitive gameplay mechanics came about with Command and Conquer. The early fore-runners, Dune 2 and Warcraft were important events in gaming, but they’re just too clunky to be enjoyable today.

So should I hang up my retro-gamer hat in shame? Am I too pampered by slicker modern titles? I don’t think so, we just have to acknowledge that some oldies age better than others. For now, I’m playing Warcraft 2. Which is essentially the first game redone with more units, more attractive artwork and, importantly, greatly improved controls!