Warlock - Master of the Arcane Message Board  

Put a pretty bow and fancy wrapping paper on an old gift and you still have an old gift. You get all exited for a few brief moments. You get dazzled by the glitz and glitter... but then there's no real hook. Ultimately, there's no sticky that holds you to the actual gift. In the end, your holding the gift and looking at the wrapping paper and wondering where the Sparkle went.

That's Warlock - Master of the Arcane.

It's rinse and repeat of an old concept with new graphics and a clunky and mind-numbing, click-heavy, counter-intuitive user interface.

Documentation is wispy thin. You are provided tutorial learning in lecture format in a dive in and discover what to do on your own by trial and error. You can read the lecture material while also being haranged by a quasi-scottish-like voice (it sounds like a drunk impersonation of Sean Connery).

Construction tree and implementation is obtuse. I say obtuse not that it is indecypherable, it is. Rather, it is scatter-brained in it's execution not necessarily it's design. This is simply the manifestation of producer-programmer-designer disconnect. And if, by chance, any of those individuals are the same? Then that individual is in dysfunction and may need therapy.

Queueing! O-M-G. Fail. "Give me a ping, Vasily. One ping only, please." MONKEYBRAINS! This alone is a deal breaker for this title.

Warlock is pretty. But that's all.

I believe Ino Co invested 90% of their talent into the pretty, 9.9% of their talent into the engine and 0.1% into game theory.

They had to rush this title out the door with Diablo 3 breathing down their necks. By month end, this title will be steeply discounted. I also doubt it will ever secure an immortal spot alongside StarRuler and Sins... but it is pretty.

There is substance. There is lore. With ample resources (and some powerhouse game theory and post-grad economics and decision science), this could become a franchise. But at present, I'd consider this a proof-of-concept or an advertising medium for venture capital.

While I'm critical of the game, it's a production quality release. It does, has, and will have it's fan-boi following. It is not my intention to smear their face paint and body butter. I paid my money and I'll enjoy my metafun with it as I disect it.

I have to thoroughly disagree. Playing the demo I've enjoyed it. It's been a while since I've enjoyed a turn-based strategy- Civilisation - and in turn Civilisations clones - drags everything out far too much and quickly becomes a bore. This, however, is fun.

It's curious, though, how often when someone likes a game which others don't, they're instantly thrown into the "fanboi following" category. Couldn't it just be that someone has different tastes than you?