With more than 4.5 million in initial orders, Blizzard’s WarCraft III was this year’s most anticipated fantasy title. You’ll lead hundreds of warriors into battle, but don’t get too attached to your soldiers–to win, you must think of them as mere cannon fodder. The game, which unfolds in real time without any pauses to make critical decisions, is like SimCity filtered through Tolkien’s outsize imagination. You build barracks and stables to train your armies, while you make workers and peasants gather critical resources to drive your wartime economy. Yes, armchair warriors will love WarCraft III, but its target audience should be office micromanagers.
If Microsoft’s Dungeon Siege were a movie, it would be a Ridley Scott production, filled with drama and intense action that doesn’t let up for a second. You start out as a humble farmer in this isometric 3-D game, but rampaging forces of evil soon have you playing savior, controlling the usual band of unlikely heroes (brutes, thieves and wizards) like toy soldiers on a battlefield map. Most important, the Dungeon Siege world unfolds seamlessly, without a single “loading” screen breaking the action. One warning: in a game without distractions, you’ll play all night without realizing it.
Game makers have tried for years to capture the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons, but they couldn’t mimic the social interactions that made the role-playing game so popular. Development studio BioWare Corp. has finally brought the Dungeons & Dragons experience to life with Neverwinter Nights, possibly the richest fantasy PC experience ever created. In addition to a very challenging single-player adventure, you can also design your own gaming world–where you create unique obstacles and objectives, then pull the strings behind the scenes while other players wage the epic battle.
The battle of good versus evil never truly ends, not as long as game developers keep coming out with epic PC games like these.
