Picked the title up last night and grinded some two hours. It was a delayed loss to the computer. I spent maybe 15 mins in the first two tutorials and got bored (the tutorial could seriously use some voice dictation), so dived into combat vs the ai.. As a first experience of the title, it has a lot more features to be desired. The design of the interface, voice talent, and gameplay seems like it may have been either in a rush for production, since it’s missing some elements to make it a gem until the vapor of HW3 appears, or just missing some key decision makers on the design of the game.
The first disappointment is that the actual gamespace is small. By this, I mean that when you’re fighting the enemy it can only occur at a celestial body and it generally takes place right at the ‘trade lane’. So the game space is very contained despite being set as epic space battles in a solar system…and later across multiple systems. The enemy ai seemed rather basic. It would send in a scout and then, if you have an outpost, it would b-line in an armada of frigate planetary bombers. You rebuild, and then a few minutes later another planetary bombardment was on the way with capital support ships. In between this, and every 7 minutes if you’re not bidding, a pirate invasion is on the way to your homeworld. Pirate envasion seemed rather bland and a distracting bid war to take away from your construction of a grand empire. The pirates would be in a hurry to assualt your planet, but they made a good habit of destroying your fleets and defensive structures first…. The pirate behavior was a little more practical than the faction ai and honestly it was way too strong for what you would expect as a pirate fleet in space….safety in numbers is one thing, but sending an assualt force the size of some factional empire is abit much.
Now continuing the ‘battle space’, the fights are very limited to a simple 2-D plane. Even the trade lanes were all on the horizontal plane only....Toss some asteroid clusters or planetary orbits with a slight tilt to their orbit...kinda like Pluto, to add some volume to this space. The ai does nothing to change it’s vectors as experienced in Homeworld. There seemed to be no advantage to even do so at this early stage of experimenting with the game.
It honestly reminded me of Conquest Frontier Wars from Ubisoft. And just like that title, your battles are as idle and boring as watching an elephant defecat. Seriously, it’s intriguing at first. But, as it progresses it becomes rather dull and unexciting. The vessels just sit in one position and go PEWPEW. There’s no movement unless you have support craft like fighters and bombers. It was a very flat and dull combat experience. There were no advantages, as experienced yet, to have craft cross their flanks for torpedo barrages, or maneveur for a height or rear advantage to target weaker armor spots. Frigates were not jockeying for position or performing combat flight patterns to make combat visually appealling and chaotic life-and-death struggle. Another nice feature would be, for those who like to micro-manage a battle and experience, provide an ability to target ship components – such as weapon systems, engines, implement warp scramblers, etc. There’s no electronic warfare this far in the future?
Other battle enhancements, considering the way computer technology and game development is progressing, would be to implement nebulas and asteroid belts to utlize for other tactical advantages for the player experience…..hiding a fleeting in these locations and the sheer beauty of moving your fleets through these natural encounters would add to the experience…. Kinda like old experiences in Wing Commander, Freelancer, Starlancer. By the way, where are the moons? I haven’t seen a single planet with a moon to build on for additional resources and empire development.
I felt little sympathy for my fleets being destroyed. I didn’t care to hear their few voices much anyway…poor talent shouldn’t survive. Oneof them sounded like a crackly young teenager and I had to make sure my Vent was off from a previous title I was playing. But expanding upon the communications of your fleet and empire development, something so suttle, would be to implement some communication chatter when you zoom in on your fleets or various contructions. Nothing intrusive, loud, or recognizable words spoken…but just some radio chatter and soft mechanical elements so it seems like you have some life on these creations....sure I know, no sound in space....but it would add some life to our poor sensory organs....do what you can to our eyes and ears to drag us in further and challenge the brain (later parts of the game certainly will do this as you work your strategy).
Resource managent did seem a slow. I spent a fair amount of my time navigating the bland interface to procure crystals to assist ship production and research. Taxing the populations seemed a rather easier initiative for my Empire compared to getting these peons working in the mines.
I admit that I’ll need more time to appreciate this title. I regret cant tribute more yet to this review due to time limits writing this up and actual duration being in the game. I will try more over the weekend, but for your first encounter....jump in multiplayer and learn from other smacktards.
