Warlock: Master of the Arcane

Genre: RTS, Strategy
Release Date: 08 May 2012
Platforms: PC
Score: 6/10
Similar Titles:  Battle for Middle Earth 2, Battle for Wesnoth

Warlock is an indie game. I started playing it on a whim, and it didn't catch my attention very long purely because I had other things to do. Whilst I never really expected this strategy title to invoke my passion for gaming, I certainly got my money's worth. Turn Based Strategy games have always been a fetish of mine, ever since Final Fantasy Tactics.

Warlock menu screen.

What you shall find upon booting up your copy of Warlock: Master of the Arcane, is basic mechanics, some customization, a plethora of units, and simple graphics. It meshes together brilliantly, causing the game to have quite some depth. Build your armies, develop some powerhouse cities, and crush all the other Warlocks on the map using powerful researched spells. It's easy enough to get started, a little intuition will take you a long way.

Anyone with a little strategy experience will pick up the pace immediately. Resources are managed with a simple gold, food, and mana system. Certain units consume resources differently. The general consensus dictates gold is used to buy new units and upgrade your strongholds, food is essentially an upkeep mechanic, and mana is used for your Warlock and his spells.

Campaign creation is surprisingly adjustable.

Starting a new campaign will allow you to pick World settings, customize your Warlock and pick a race. Editing the world scenario is a great feature. It's possible to change the world size, difficulty, continents, enemies and even tack on some extra maps. This means you can adjust how long and challenging you want the campaign to be.

You may select some abilities for your Warlock at the beginning of your game. There is a range to select from such as increased money or mana, powerful starter units for early game dominance, and some devastating spells to wipe out encroaching armies. As the game progresses you learn new magic so a wide amount of utility comes available.

This army crushed a fair few enemies to say the least.

Races aren't a prevalent part of Warlock. There are three to choose from. Human, Undead and Monsters. However, you can access all types of units by controlling the right places. Each race has some variety to what units you may spawn, but they are all quite similar to keep the game balanced.

The entire game is played on the world overview map. I cannot stress how easy this game is to drop into. It's like playing Mario or Rayman. The UI is easy to adapt into, the mouse-over hints provide all the information necessary. Units can move or attack with the click of the mouse; they duke it out automatically and the animations quickly show the victor.

The UI is informative.

After spending approximately a dozen hours on this game, I found it unbelievably easy. Maybe that's due to my experience with the genre. Warlock: Master of the Arcane is definitely a nifty little title. Certainly a valued asset in your gaming repertoire, grab it on sale if you don't feel like throwing money around.

Lord of the Rings: the Battle for Middle-Earth 2

Genre: RTS, RPG
Release Date: March 2nd, 2006
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360
Score: 6/10
Similar Titles: Warcraft III, Heroes of Might and Magic

Opening screen.

From the early attempts by Melbourne House to the sketchy transitions made by EA games, the Lord of the Rings franchise has had a turbulent gaming history. I'm a little ashamed to admit how many of these titles I've actually played; despite never being able to truly enjoy the books.

The Battle for Middle-Earth 2 (BFME) is a fairly well structured attempt to port the epic feel of the films into the RTS genre. Incorporating RPG elements in a similar fashion to Warcraft III, BFME seemed like the ideal game to satisfy my appetite. Whilst I did end up playing it for a long period of time, a lot of the content seemed very dull and badly implemented. I eventually found myself merely challenging the skirmish mode repeatedly, ramping up the difficulty and increasing the opponents as I improved my skills. Although the title has plenty of different campaigns and even a War of the Ring conquest battle, they were mostly pretty boring.

Dawn of War 2: Retribution

Genre: RTS, Strategy, Action
Release Date: March 1st 2011
Platforms: PC
Score: 7/10
Similar Titles: Command and Conquer, Warcraft 3, X-men: Legends

Gotta love the style of 40k.

Todays review isn't what you'd call a traditional RPG. Unlike the single player games I usually cover, Dawn of War is an RTS franchise. However, the second game in the series, Retribution plays like an RPG more than anything else. Relic entertainment have sacrificed a lot of what was good in Dawn of War, and replaced it with an arcadey playstyle similar to that penguin flash game where you just keep trying to fly further and further.

Loads of the badass weaponry from Warhammer are included.

Featuring multiple campaigns with the races from the Warhammer 40k universe, you can play as: Space Marines, Chaos, Eldar, Orks, Tyrannids, or the Imperial guard. Sadly the missions are exactly the same (a couple of differences) regardless of which army you choose.

Dawn of War II adopts a new combat system entirely, eradicating the construction of buildings from the game. Instead of making a base, you will capture strategic points across each map and use them to create units. Resources are collected primarily through destroying crates in the field to find them.

With no buildings to manage, focusing on tactics is essential.

The best thing implemented in the new engine is the champions of each race. During the first mission, you will be awarded four heroes, each with their own abilities, level up system, and gear slots. As they increase in power you will find yourself cruising around without backup, kicking ass and looting shizz. Despite this obvious flaw in the games balance, it's hella fun and that's fine with me.

Missions are straightforward, you will be able to either pick a side mission to gain gear and experience, or advance directly through the plot battles. Gear is thrown at you left and right, and it's pretty awesome being able to upgrade all your characters through their respective talent trees. Talents can be picked in either offence, defence, or utility. Most points will just give you attacks like grenade, but there is some really cool stuff out there (perma-invisibility or invulnerability).

Here's a video to demonstrate some gameplay:

It's pretty fun bossing it through each level, they look very pretty and are intimately designed. Overall, the lack of difficulty (harder modes are just tedious) kinda ruins the game. The Last Stand can be kinda fun for a while, but the game is severely lacking a skirmish mode. Playing online can be really fun, but after a couple of matches you'll really lose steam and enthusiasm.

Eldar attack in numbers, but are quite easy to break through.