Editorials
‘Warcraft III: Reforged’ Rules if it’s Your First Time Playing ‘Warcraft III’
Warcraft III: Reforged is awesome… provided your sole context for engaging with it is Warcraft III: Reforged.
Blizzard’s remaster launched at the tail end of January and has received a relentlessly negative reception from fans in the weeks since launch. Exceptionally, though, in an era of constant, overblown Internet outrage, these angry fans have a point. Whereas controversies over Epic Games Store exclusives and Spider-Man puddle sizes deserve nothing more than an eye roll, the problems with Warcraft III: Reforged really are deep and fundamental.
Many of the complaints have focused on the remaster’s failure to live up to Blizzard’s initial promise of a “complete reimagining.” Blizzard walked this phrasing back prior to release, emphasizing that the team was attempting to hew closer to the source material than they had originally indicated. But, most players didn’t get the memo, and this completely remade cutscene that Blizzard showed off in November of 2018 which previewed a more holistic recreation, remained the expectation for many fans.
Additionally, the remaster introduced some matchmaking problems and other technical issues and removed features like ladders and clans which were present in the original game. Worst of all, though, Reforged replaced the original game. Fans that have loved Warcraft III for 15 years now no longer have access to the version they remember. Instead, they’ve been saddled with an, in many ways, inferior version.
My experience with Warcraft III: Reforged is slightly different. Since launch day I’ve put about 20 hours into its various single-player campaigns. I haven’t messed with multiplayer at all, because I know I’m bad at the game and don’t have any interest in getting destroyed. I may start building and battling against real competitors eventually, but, for now, I’ve been content to make my way through the story.
Basically, what I’m saying is: I am not the target audience for this game. I have no history with Warcraft as a series, other than getting really into Hearthstone for a few months. I have a small amount of experience with real-time strategy games, but have never really clicked with the genre. Before I hopped onto Battle.net and began Arthas’ campaign, I had no skin in this particular game.
And, what I’ve found is a fantastic game. Because, without the expectations that loving Warcraft III impose, Warcraft III: Reforged is an excellent version of Warcraft III. The tutorialization, which takes the form of a prelude to the orc campaign, is strong, and does a solid job of introducing the basics of movement, issuing unit commands and base-building. The mission design, which alternates between typical RTS fare and more RPG-like dungeon crawling, is continually engaging. And the narrative (specifically Arthas’ heel turn) boasts some genuine “oh shit!” moments.
And while the cutscenes and graphics didn’t get the complete visual overhaul that Blizzard had initially indicated, the game does look substantially better. Enemy units, which were blocky and polygonal in the original game, have a more artistic, detailed flair in Reforged. Environments and buildings, too, are significantly more intricate. While cutscenes don’t embrace the cinematic presentation that early looks at the remaster showed, they still look much better than the original.
In short, Warcraft III: Reforged is, perhaps, the opposite of what it should have been: a major disappointment for the series’ most devoted fans, and a fantastic introduction for anyone new to the RTS genre. But, in a time when few games that are bad at launch remain bad forever, I suspect Warcraft III: Reforged will, with enough investment on Blizzard’s part, eventually have something for longtime fans, too.
Editorials
Not Another ‘Scary Movie’: Revisiting Forgotten Parody ‘Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th’
After Scream (1996) made a killing at the box office, as well as won over critics and audiences, a lot of folks in the movie biz thought they could do the same thing (and yield similar results). That thing, of course, being a slasher. Most of these opportunists wound up being pretty straightforward; they were low on humor or commentary. Yet others, like Scary Movie (2000), saw the potential for spoofing Scream, and acted on that impulse with both haste and excitement.
A few months after the Wayans’ comedy first hit theaters, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th landed on the USA Network, as part of the channel’s “Shriek Week” programming. That straight-to-cable (then home video) destination is possibly why many people still don’t know about this one. Or they simply chose to forget. Whatever the reason, only one of these two horror parodies came out on top—and it’s certainly not the movie where Coolio channeled Prince, and Tom Arnold saved the day.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th previously went by the name of I Know What You Screamed Last Semester. That Trimark acquisition then settled on a wordier title, just so it could avoid the litigious wrath of Miramax Films. Folks may or may not remember that Columbia Pictures was sued over the “implied connection” between I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream. So, yeah, there was no way that this competing Scream parody wasn’t going to be kept on a tight rein.
A Heavy Reliance on Late ’90s TV References
Simon Rex, Julie Benz, Majandra Delfino, Harley Cross, Danny Strong, Tom Arnold and Tiffani-Amber Thiesen in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Naturally, there would be similarities between Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Scary Movie—their scripts are built on the backs of the same two movies. It goes without saying that the other big slasher of the 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, was as much of a target as Scream. However,the film pads itself with more TV references than Scary Movie did.
Half the cast coming off of (and in some cases, returning to) a WB show could be a reason why. Dawson’s Creek is particularly zeroed in on, based on how there’s a central character named “Dawson Deery“, and how the teen drama’s teacher-student affair plotline is satirized to the nth degree. As if there weren’t enough nods to television, Baywatch, VH1’s Pop Up Video, and even those cheesy Mentos commercials all serve as joke prompts.
Shriek director John Blanchard and writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms all hailed from television, so it’s understandable that they would stick close to home. The movie’s humor in general makes more sense, in light of learning that Blanchard worked on SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and MADtv. The writers, on the other hand, were each fairly green, with Bailey being the most experienced of the two; she wrote and produced the game show BattleBots. Nevertheless, they, plus Blanchard, churned out a passable, joke-a-minute movie. The whole thing is staggeringly of its time, but no one here was aiming for longevity.
Having seen enough of these kinds of movies, we know to expect jokes of the low-hanging fruit variety. That’s the parody’s whole prime directive. From the characters having names like “Screw Frombehind” and “Doughy Primesuspect”, to stereotyping that feels taboo nowadays, this is a movie from a different era of comedy. Its coarse, corny, and unapologetic sense of humor won’t sit well with everyone in these more enlightened times. In which case, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th can be treated as a time capsule.
Does Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th Humor Still Hold Up Today?
“You may already be a victim”—Someone receives a most peculiar threatening piece of mail in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Although Shriek doesn’t live up to its own claims of being so funny that you’ll die of laughter, its bawdier parts could still lead to some nervous laughter. For instance, after this movie’s parallel to Drew Barrymore’s Scream character is done in—not by the killer but by a bug zapper—the movie throws a newspaper next to the victim’s fresh corpse. The headline? “Popular slut killed! Football team mourns”.
We then move on to the wacky and inappropriate goings-on at Bulimia Falls High School, home of the Hurlers. At this nexus of constant absurdity, indecency, and surrealism, students are seen fornicating on the lawn, cheerleading squad applicants are advised to be comfortable with partial nudity, and terrorists openly prepare for an anthrax attack. It can be a tad jarring to watch, especially if you didn’t grow up witnessing this style of comedy firsthand. Hell, even if you did, you may still have a “what the hell were they thinking?” reaction.
It’s not just the aggressively edgy humor here that can make you chuckle—the slapstick, the sight gags, and the ribaldry all have a decent chance of landing. The movie’s own villain, whose hockey mask was instantly transformed into a crudely Ghostface-esque one after coming in contact with an open flame, commits more cheap laughs than kills. His and his victims’ chase sequences, most of which are cartoonish in nature, left this writer grinning. The Scooby-Doo fan in me also totally ate up that clever unmasking joke.
Final Thoughts on This Forgotten Horror Parody
Shriek If You Know What Did Last Friday the 13th
Now, the jury is still out on whether these comedies are to blame for the death of the first slasher revival. There is more to consider than some parodies. At the very least, the likes of Scary Movie didn’t exactly encourage big studios to put their money on a trend that was being derided to death (and not as profitable as the spoofs). These sorts of movies also felt unnecessary at the time, given how their principal inspiration is already a deconstruction of the genre. But like anything else that quickly becomes popular, mockery is unavoidable.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is indeed a movie nobody asked for, much less needed. As a sample of pre-millennium humor and cultural attitudes, it’s not always precise. But as I’ve laid out, your mileage may vary. Horror parodies typically don’t have the best track record, so managing one’s own expectations here is recommended.
Upon rewatching, I for one laughed a bit more than I did back then. Only this time, I responded to the jokes that my younger self didn’t notice or find all that amusing. So it just goes to show that the movies don’t change—we do.
Harley Cross and Majandra Delfino must unmask the killer a number of times in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th before learning their true identity.
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