Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness is a fantasy-themed real-time strategy (RTS) game published by Blizzard Entertainment and first released for DOS in 1995 and for Mac OS in 1996. The main game, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, earned enthusiastic reviews, won most of the major PC gaming awards in 1996, and sold over 2 million copies.
Later in 1996 Blizzard released an expansion pack Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal for DOS and Mac OS, and a compilation Warcraft II: The Dark Saga for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The Battle.net Edition, released in 1999, provided Blizzard's online gaming service, Battle.net, and replaced the MS-DOS version with a Windows one.
Players must collect resources, and produce buildings and units in order to defeat an opponent in combat on the ground, in the air and in some maps at sea. The more advanced combat units are produced at the same buildings as the basic units but also need the assistance of other buildings, or must be produced at buildings that have prerequisite buildings. The majority of the main screen shows the part of the territory on which the player is currently operating, and the minimap can select another location to appear in the larger display. The fog of war completely hides all territory which the player has not explored. Terrain is always visible once revealed, but enemy units remain visible only so long as they stay within a friendly unit's visual radius.
Of Darkness...
Of Darkness... is a debut studio album released on February 1991 by the Swedish band Therion and it contains songs written in the early years of the band, during the 1980s. The album is indicated by the band itself as an end of its first era.
The album was re-released on 27 November 2000 under Nuclear Blast label as a part of The Early Chapters of Revelation box-set. It contains remastered songs, as well as four bonus tracks.
Recording and production
After releasing the third demo record Time Shall Tell EP in 1990, Therion got attention from the British label Deaf Records, a subsidiary of Peaceville Records, and signed the band's first contract.Of Darkness... was recorded in Swedish studio Sunlight in Stockholm from August to September 1990 and released on February 1991. The initial line-up has not been changed since its last production. The album was produced by Tomas Skogsberg and the band itself.
Songs, lyrical themes and influences
Of Darkness... consists of songs Christofer Johnsson had written in the years of 1987–1989. Despite having newer songs, the band opted to save them for their next full release. The album can be seen as a progressive death metal album in that it contained mainly influences that were not standard to death metal at the time. The album was influenced especially by the Celtic Frost's thrash metal album Into the Pandemonium. Its sound was compared to Dismember (melody), Suffocation and Morpheus (rhythm), Entombed, Napalm Death, Repulsion, Bolt Thrower (guitars), Carcass and other extreme thrash metal and grindcore bands of those days.
