Game by Bits Studios Reviewed by Superguy3000 superguy3000@juno.com Size: 32 Megabits Save: Saves up to 32 armies, your progress in both campaigns, and all the extras. Released: 2000 Works with: Game Boy Color exclusive! **************************************************************************** Opening Snide Remarks: When I first heard about this game, I didn't believe it. I mean, a real time strategy on GBC? That didn't seem possible. But apparently, thanks to Bits Studios, all Game Boy Color owners can have a real time strategy to play to their hearts' content. I have to be honest, the "research" for this review was very fun. Read on to hear what I thought of Bits Studios' Warlocked. **************************************************************************** Gameplay Descripion: "Darn good" pretty much sums it up, if you're into reading exceedingly short reviews. Myself, I like when the reviewer tells me a little about the game. Warlocked really plays like Starcraft or C&C, except with four units on each side. But that's plenty enough to make a good RTS. If I had to give a really good example of what Warlocked is like, I'd have to say Age of Empires for PC. In the bottom end of the technology scale in AoE, you can have only clubmen and archers with which to fight. In Warlocked, you can have Knights, Archers, and Dragons. Both games have guard towers--which, by the way, look disturbingly similar. Knight/Warrior: The Knight or Warrior will be your main hand-to-hand combat fighter. At a cost of 100 gold, though, you'll have to pay for that extra strength will cost you a little. Archer/Skeleton: The Archer or Skeleton works very well as an anti-knight force. If your opponent has mainly knights defending his/her base, shell 'em out! A hit from an arrow is obviously less damaging than being cut through the gut with a longsword. Archers cost 50 gold plus 10 fuel. Dragon: Dragons will join forces with you when you find an egg and take it back to your Main Hall. They have very good armor and spit fire, which can do some serious damage. As if that wasn't enough, they can fly over walls, making surprise attacks and retreats very easy. Every good thing has a drawback or too, though. With Dragons, it's that Dragons are few and far between. Grunt/Goblin: Grunts and Goblins are the SCVs of Warlocked. They will build structures, repair damaged structures, chop wood for fuel, and mine gold for, well, gold! Grunts can be built at the Main Hall for 50 fuel. Warlocked also features a full compliment of buildings, ranging from the Farm, which allows you to have more units, to the the Main Hall, which is like a Nexus from Starcraft, except with that medieval charm. Below is a summary of the buildings. Main Hall: The Main Hall should be placed at the center of your base, for reasons both defensive and of easy commodity gathering. Believe it or not, your Main Hall actually shoots arrows! Yeah, that peaceful-looking town is really a deadly war machine! Build Grunts and Goblins at your Main Hall, which appears at the beginning of all the missions in which you build a base. Farm: Farms are like Supply Depots from Starcraft, controlling the limit on the number of units you can have at any one time. Build several so you don't have to worry about an extra resource. Each Farm costs 100 gold and 20 fuel. Barracks/Brawl Pit: Well, I probably don't have to explain this one, but I will anyway. The Barracks will be the source of all military strength. All units are built at the Barracks, well at least the Knight and Archer. If you are being attacked, build two so you can keep cranking out units. This building costs 100 gold and 40 fuel. Guard Tower: As many RTS fans know, guard towers are great to put at the sides of pinchpoints. This particular guard tower can fire arrows that are as strong as any Archer's arrows, but the difference lies in the armor. Even with four knights, most would have trouble taking a guarded tower down, let alone four towers and a main hall, like one mission requires. The guard tower costs 100 gold and 40 fuel. Liked: Everything, especially the dragons. "Here little dragon, here little dragon, argghhhh!" Hated: Nothing, the lack of an unnecessarily large armory of units didn't bother me a bit. **************************************************************************** Graphics Description: Here, the word "pretty" sums it up, but it you like reading, then I suppose I must elaborate. The maps are probably the best-looking elements of the game, aside from the full-screen wizard portraits. Each mission (more than 24 in all, plus multiplayer maps) is fought out on a good-sized map full of trees, mines, scrolls, and, of course, enemies. The transition between trees, volcanoes, and terrain lightly bubbling with lava is so smooth, you'll even think games like Harvest Moon and Super Mario Land 2 are blocky! Seriously, though, the game has wonderful graphics. Each unit has animation for moving, attacking, and being generally bored. You'll see them waving at you, poking at enemies with swords, and axing buildings to repair them. The fire effects on damaged buildings and dragon breath are amazingly good, as well the way units "catch their breath" after being damaged. Heck, even the cards in the built-in poker game look great. All in all, the graphics are arguably better than Metal Gear Solid. I promise that will be the last MGS reference in this review. :) Maybe not! Liked: Starcraft-quality maps, bored unit animations. Hated: Nothing. **************************************************************************** Sound/Music Description: It has voice sampling! How could you not like voice sampling? Instead of hearing those decidedly low-tech beeps and whirs, you get to hear your units say things like "Yes, master?" and "Okay, master." Wizards who are in need of rescuing will say "Help" if your pointer hovers over them. The voice sampling added more to the game than can be said in a review, at least without a little tasteful language here and there. By the way, the game is completely devoid of "tasteful language," although at the beginning of one mission, four Grunts are massacred, leaving a great deal of blood on the walls. This was probably a last-minute attempt to make the game mature. Not that it needed it, nosiree. Warlocked is by no means a kids' game. That doesn't mean that kids can't play it, just that it isn't cutesy or anything. One drawback in the sound department is the dull music, but I'm sure it was meant to pump up the adrenaline of the player. It didn't work, but oh well. Liked: Voice sampling. Who can say no to a bunch of nights screaming, "Attack" in a primitive sort of way? Hated: Music, frankly, isn't very good. **************************************************************************** Play Control/Game Design: This, my friend, is the part of any RTS that can most easily be screwed up. Remember Army Men 1 & 2? Well, I do, and it wasn't pretty. It was so hard to get your units to just guard the base that I stopped playing the game the day I bought it. Luckily for us, Bits Studio did an excellent job on the controll system. You control a pointer thingy that changes into a different cursor when needed. If you place your cursor above a Barracks, it will turn into a stick figure. If the building is currently cranking out a unit, the cursor will turn into an hourglass. If you have a Grunt selected and you have your cursor on a tree, the cursor turns into an axe. Pressing A makes the Grunt start harvesting wood. The cursor turns into a pickaxe when put over a mine when a Grunt is selected and into a sword when a fighting unit is selected and the cursor is over an enemy unit. To make it easy, I have made a chart of controls so there is no doubt about the ease of the control system. Unit/Building Selected Action of buttons None A selects unit, Start pauses, Select brings up last selected unit group. Grunt A performs action appropriate for indicated map tile, such as mining or chopping wood. B opens the Build menu for selecting and building the desired structure. Select deselects unit, as it does for all units. All fighting units A fights indicated enemy, walks to indicated space. B does the same. Barracks A builds Knight, B builds Archer. Main Hall A trains a new Grunt. Any building A&B simultanelously destroy building. Grouping is done by dragging the cursor over a group of units. To assign teams, Hold Select and A or B, depending on whether you want to assign the units to Team A or B. To call up teams, select a unit from the team and then press the team button twice in quick succession. To do with game design, there is a truckload of extras built into Warlocked. So far in the missions--and this is just after two hours of play--I've found two slide puzzles and a poker game. While I truly despise slide puzzles, it was nice trying to unscramble these wizard pictures on my GBC. The poker game is really, really well designed. The cards have a Warlocked touch to them, with the suits being replaced by stars and guard towers and the face cards bearing the likenesses of characters from the game. For those who have never played poker before, each hand is explaned in the on-screen instructions. Aces are high and you can win money to support your custom-designed armies (which will be explained in the next paragraph. The army battling system is a nice but not very useful extra. Any leftover forces you have from missions can be added to armies, consisting of waves, consisting of five waves, which can be battled against friends' armies. The battle system is automatic, but you have a great deal of control over the outcome through your army planning. Heck, the battle system even has elemental weakness/strength system! Hmm, this sounds like a game I've played once or twice before, but I can't quite place it... Anyway, the army fighting thing is a nice addition to an already nice game. Oh, one more thing. The game has wizards, which can be collected through the missions. Apparently they can turn enemies into chickens and such, but I've never used one, so I wouldn't know. There are over 20 wizards! Liked: This is one fine control system. The poker game and army deal were nice, too. Hated: No complaints here! **************************************************************************** Improve: Add a heavy artillery unit, like a catapult. Make it slower than the other units, but able to do serious damage. Add a blackjack game and make both poker and blackjack playable via Game Link. Maybe make it futuristic, like the Warcraft/Starcraft transition! That would be cool. Don't cut the digitized speech, that was truly cool. RIYL: Command and Conquer games, Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires. **************************************************************************** Final Words: Buy Warcraft, I mean Warlocked! Don't buy that stinkin' Diablo game, buy a game that's only mildly demonic. That game is Warlocked. We probably won't see another RTS on GBC very soon, so buy Warlocked and thank yourself later. **************************************************************************** Score Gameplay: ***** Graphics: ***** Sound/Music: ***** Play Control/Game Design: ***** Personal Opinion: ***** Total: *x25 Final Score: 100% **************************************************************************** Currently Known Codes: Sorry, no codes for you, but I do have some resource URLs. IGN's review: http://pocket.ign.com/reviews/13959.html Nintendo's official thingy (it has a trailer): http://www.gameboy.com/warlocked/