Warcraft III

(Image courtesy of Ugo.com)

Warcraft III is an RTS videogame that was developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment, and as its title shows, it is the third game in the famous Warcraft series. It has the option of either playing the single-player campaign, or playing multiplayer locally or online.

-Objectives-

Warcraft III has some big differences when compared to the first two games, especially when it comes to the campaign's storyline. There are now four playable races (Human, Orc, Undead, and Elf), compared to only Human and Orc in the first two games, and each race has their own story. Within each level, the objective is usually to destroy the enemy's base, although numerous (sometimes optional) sub-objectives may be given as well. These can range from making specific units to destroying certain enemies. The overall objective of each race's story is generally to reach a certain point, and then survive an intense battle in order to perform an action, whether it is defeating the enemy army, acquiring a powerful weapon, or simply waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

-Conflict-

The conflict within each story is that of the battle between the player and the opposing forces. Generally, the opposing forces are also a playable race (for instance, the Humans fight the Undead for most of their story), but it may also be a computer-only one (such as the demon characters which show up in several of the stories). The conflict each race faces is as different as the races themselves are, with the Humans trying to prevent the Undead plague, the Orcs trying to make a new home for themselves, and the Elves trying to protect the world from the trouble the Undead create within their story. The conflict is usually resolved by the end of each story, but the end of the stories usually sets up the conflict that arises in the next story that is unlocked for the player.

-Resources-

Of course, one cannot talk about an RTS game without discussing resources. There are two main resources in Warcraft III: gold and wood. Gold can be obtained by sending units to mines, while wood is gained by sending units to nearby trees. Gold and wood are used to buy buildings and upgrades. Buildings can then be used to create specific units, which usually have a gold cost and a food cost. Food is another resource, and it serves as a limit on the number of units a player can have. The amount of food one has can be increased to certain point by building certain buildings, and when a unit dies the food it cost is given back to the player.

The units each player controls also count as resources in a way. Each race has their own unique resources, though they may fill general roles (a gold gatherer, a basic attacking unit, a basic ranged unit, etc.), though in each race, certain roles overlap in different ways. For example, the Undead's basic attacking unit can also collect wood, but the Undead have a weaker gold gathering unit than the other races. Some units are more powerful than all the others, but the player can only one or two of them at max. These are called "Heroes", and they are generally story-related characters. Each race plays differently due to their units, both Hero and normal, as well as other quirks- the Undead, for example, can only build on "infected" land, which expands when they build on the border of what is currently infected.

-Players-

As mentioned earlier, Warcraft III can either be played alone, or with other players. Up to 16 players can be in a multiplayer match, with the type of gameplay being decided by the map chosen. While some maps feature the normal Warcraft III gameplay (where a player loses when all their buildings and units are completely destroyed), with all the players working against each other (or working against the other teams of players, if there are any), there are many custom maps that change the gameplay entirely. Some of these maps feature free-for-all games, like basic multiplayer, but others may have players teaming up on one specific player, or even all the players working together to beat an AI-controlled enemy. The appeal of different gametypes is why many players continue to play games in the Warcraft series, as well as Blizzard's other popular RTS series, Starcraft.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

(Image Courtesy of GamerSushi.com)

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is the newest videogame in the Kingdom Hearts series of action-adventure games. It was developed and published by Square-Enix, and was released for the PSP. It is primarily a single-player game, though it does have a limited multi-player mode.

Birth by Sleep is unusual in that it does not play exactly like any of the other games in the series that came before it, while still keeping the same basics behind its combat system. Instead of using menus navigated during battle to choose items, spells, and attacks like the original games in the series, or using "cards" that must be reloaded after they are used up like in the spin-off games, Birth by Sleep uses a mix of the two. Players always have the option to attack normally, but they have a limited number (that increases as the story progresses) of "commands" that can be equipped. These commands can be items, spells, attacks, or even combinations of several other moves, and the player must be careful to pick ones that will be useful for the situation they are in, because they cannot be changed when enemies are nearby. The player can select them using a single menu that is always open during play, but each individual command has a short period of time where they can't be used after each use. Items are the exception to this, for although they have no reload time, they are found in limited quantities and are permanently used up after each use. This system allows players to hunt for the commands they want to use without extensively limiting what they are able to do, making the game less frustrating for the player.

Birth by Sleep, like the other Kingdom Hearts games, features a long story. However, instead of having one story with only one main character, Birth by Sleep has 3 main characters whose paths intersect at various points. The player can play their stories in any order, but the final portion of the game will only become unlocked after all 3 are completed. The story is slightly simpler than the other Kingdom Hearts games, with only one group of monstrous enemies, the Unversed, being fought against with no true explanation of their motives, but the ways the 3 stories interconnect allows the players to see how each character impacts certain area after they leave them, for the characters do not always proceed through the areas in the same order. This is not the same as the "dynamic outcome" that some games feature, for what the player does is set by the game's story, but it is interesting to see nonetheless. The three characters, friends tasked with fighting the Unversed, each have their own strengths and weaknesses (something that is reflected in their play-styles as well), and therefore it is likely that a player will have at least one character that they connect with, even if they dislike the others.

When one considers what came before it, Birth by Sleep is a truly interesting game to play. When one considers how the series will continue after it, it can only be hoped that its developers continue to try new ideas to make the games more enjoyable for the players.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift

(image courtesy of 1UP.com)

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift is a videogame based around fights between multiple characters. It was developed by Arc System Works, and published in North America by Aksys Games. It was released for the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3.

BlazBlue, like most fighting games, has a variety of attacks that the characters can perform. Unlike many other games though, it does not distinguish betwene punches and kicks depending on which button you press. Instead, there are 3 different basic attack labeled A (light), B (medium), and C (strong), which will change entirely based on what direction (or lack thereof) is pressed in combination with the button. A combination of movements followed by a button press will activate special moves, and pressing the right combination of buttons together can provide a better defense, blow the enemy away from you, or even allow you to add additional moves to a combo. What really sets BlazBlue apart from other fighters though, is the fourth button: D. D moves, or drive moves, as the game refers to them, are very different depending on which of the game's twelve characters you're playing as. Their drive moves range from basic things like sapping health when attacks hit or shooting projectiles all the way to stranger things like controlling the wind or even moving a secondary character. Drive moves make playing each character unique, although that also means it's harder to learn how to use certain characters without doing some research.

As the second game in the BlazBlue series, Continuum Shift also fixes some of the balancing issues that were present the first game, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. The goal of any fighting game is to have a cast of characters that can face off against any other character without seeming under- or over-powered, and while Calamity Trigger was balanced relatively well, there were still a few characters who were obviously much better choices than the others. Continuum Shift's changes fixed many of those problems by lowering or boosting the powers of moves, and taking away, altering, or even adding others. While it's still not perfect, Continuum Shift's characters are certainly not as unbalanced as Calamity Trigger's were.

This balance is even more important than one might think, because Continuum Shift is doing something that many other fighting games have not dared to do: providing new characters, created after the game's initial developement ended, to be purchased by the players of the game. Without the existing sense of balance, it would be a foolish idea to try to introduce even more characters into the game, and Arc System Works is aware of that, to the point where they plan to release a patch after the final character is released that will balance the game even further. This is something that no other fighting game has done before, but other companies will certainly begin to do so in the future, as it's a great way to get players back into the game months after they've stopped playing. Whether it will actually succeed is something that will likely affect the future of fighting games, and if all goes well, it'll be for the better.