Ground Control

Genre: RTS (squad based)

Developer: Massive Entertainment

Publisher: Rebellion/Sierra

Released: 2000

Zolgar paid: Gifted on GOG.

Beaten: No, lost interest about 1/4th the way in.

Zolgar's rating: 6/10

Replayability: Moderate.

I wanted to like this game, I really did. It looks pretty awesome. Unfortunately it just failed to keep my interest. Mechanically it's a very sound game, with controls that are only slightly unintuitive, but customizable, and it seems to have a good story too.

So why couldn't I keep playing it? Simple, it stagnated so quickly for me that I felt like I was playing the same damn mission over and over. I am sure it gets better later, but I don't have a lot of free time, and have a backlog of nearly 100 games to play and review.

The game itself is fairly standard squad based RTS fare. I'm not typically a fan of squad based games (I prefer to build massive bases and crush my foes under a swarm of bodies >.>), but Ground Control does it very well. The squads feel more like the forces you get in a typical 'build your base' RTS, and it controls much the same way, too. It adds some nice things like squads having special abilities, and your command unit providing repairs/healing.

As well, the AI is good enough that you don't find yourself spending as much time micromanaging, more like just setting your preferences, and occasionally directing to specific targets.

The story makes me want to keep playing, too. Much akin to Star Craft, and other RTS of the era, you play a 'field commander', who gets orders from high-ranking douchebags who've never seen real combat, and in proper RTS fashion you switch sides partway through and start playing the “bad guys”.

It opens up with you playing Major Sarah Parker of the Crayven Corporation, in charge of a fairly small contingent of men, and expected to somehow pull miracles out of your backside on a hostile world, when you're not given the man power to do your job right.. why? Simple, it's just not a 'financially sound option' to give you the proper manpower.

Does a good job making you hate the Crayven Corporation right off the bat, heh.

You are facing off against the Order of the New Dawn (“Dawnies”), an organization that gets presented to you as religious zealots trying to gain the power to have their own 'little' Crusade. By 'little', of course, I mean galaxy-spanning.

Early on, you learn that the planet Crayven and the Dawnies are fighting over houses alien technology.. and by the sounds of things really bad alien technology which the Dawnies are trying to harness.

But, this is an RTS, it's not so simple as 'good guys' and 'bad guys'..

After the Crayven Corporation takes over the planet, and manages to push the Dawnies in to hiding, you switch over to controlling Deacon Jarred Stone, of the Order of the New Dawn, trying to take back the planet from Crayven, and stop THEM from harnessing the bad alien tech. Just gets more interesting from there, but I've said too much.

The way the story is told, it makes me really want to continue playing it and see the story progress.. unfortunately, the game itself.. just drags for me.

Another thing the game does really well, is it lets you customize your squads. You're not just given 'soldiers' and 'tanks', well.. OK, you kinda are, but you can first pick their over-all loadout, like whether you want your soldiers to be Marines, or Navy SEALS (not exactly, but you get the point), from there you can pick the focus of that squad, such as their special abilities, and if they want to be specced for speed, armor or damage (or a good balance). The same goes for the vehicles, too.

Eventually you get 'jets' too, but because "Crayven controls the sky." you're not able to requisition air support until further in to the game than I got. Doesn't make sense to me, seems that if Crayven controls the sky, then Air-to-Ground attacks would be in their best interest.

As well, your squads gain 'experience' based off the number of battles they go in to. I'm not overly sure how much this changes them, but it's a nice touch.

So now I'm sure you're thinking “You like the story, you like the units, and you say the gameplay is good.. so why did you give up on it?” or something like that. Well, this is a good point in time for me to go in to the detractors of the game.

First and foremost, it's slow, I mean like “start your units moving across the map and walk away to get a soda” type slow. Granted, I tended to run heavy armor tanks, but still. Combat is also slow, realism is great and all, but even on easy fights just drag on and on.

It's also slow to progress your unit options. By the time I gave up on it, I had just gotten my 2^nd soldier type opened, and my 5^th squad. I had 3 types of tanks, and 2 types of soldiers to choose from, that was it, and I'd been going with tanks and soldiers for every frelling mission so far.

The missions also just kind of blend together as 'more of the same'. “Defend this location from the Dawnies.” or “Take this location from the Dawnies.”

Without starting to get in to irritating levels of micromanagement, it's hard to get your squads in to good tactical positions. Sometimes it's hard to get them to go where you want when you go in to micromanagement mode.

If you're not playing it on easy, you deal with friendly fire. Which is a pain in the ass, because of how the units sometimes decide to go where ever they darn well please, but they lack the AI to adjust their position so they're not getting shot in the back by their allies, or not shooting their allies.

Oh yes, and it has the most titanic strike against it possible for me with a strategy game:

No skirmish mode. Sometimes I jut want to kill things without worrying about the storyline.

For me, those factors make the game honestly rather boring mechanically, despite all it's great potential. I'm not going to sit through a bunch of boring, repetitive and, predictable missions in order to watch the story progress, and hope that it decides to get better somewhere along the way.

I wish I could provide you with a run down of the difference, if any, between the Dawnies and Crayven. What I saw of the Dawnies playing against them though, it seems there isn't any.. but honestly? I couldn't stand to play the game long enough to find out, I tried. I was sitting there thinking “Maybe the game gets better with the Dawnies.. maybe it gets better..” ultimately though, like I said, I've got a backlog of nearly 100 games, I can only afford to give one game so much time in hopes of it getting better.

I would, however, really recommend picking it up if you find it for a good price, and giving it a try. Especially if you're more patient than I am, and enjoy squad-based strategy games.. and it might help if you don't have a titanic backlog of games you impulse purchased because “Oooh, it's on sale!”

Screemshots shamelessly stolen from various internet sources. If you see yours and would like it taken down, or like attribution, let me know.

TL:DR

“Epic potential, flawed implementation. An astoundingly boring masterpiece.”

Availability and price:
FilePlanet: Free (no expansion, requires personal information)

GOG:$5.99 (includes Dark Conspiracies expansion)

GamersGate: $5.99 (includes Dark Conspiracies expansion)

Amazon(physical): ~$13.50 (Expansion costs ~$45.)

Warlords BattleCry III

Genre: RPG/RTS hybrid

Developer: Infinity Interactive

Publisher: Enlight Studios

Released: 2004

Zolgar paid: $9.99

Beaten: No

Zolgar's rating: 8/10

Replayability: High

Did you ever play a game that you were like "This would be so awesome if you could just combine it with X game!"? Well, Warlords Battlecry III (WBC3) is at once both one of those games, and one that is often the X.

If you could combined WBC3 and Warhammer 40K: Dark Crusade, you would have the bestest, most awesome RPG/RTS hybrid ever. As it is, WBC3 is kind of like what you would get if you combined Warcraft III and Dark Crusade. If that means something to you, you probably already know if you're going to like this game or not. If it means nothing to you, read on!

WBC3 released at the height of the 'Hero-Driven RTS' run, and it was unfortunately competing with some really heavy hitters in the RTS genre. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War had just come out, Warcraft III's expansion was still fairly fresh, Age of Empires III was just about released, and that's just the heavy hitters.

To most people, myself included at the time, Warlords Battlecry III was just another game jumping on the RTS craze. Amazing what marketing and name recognition does for the industry, isn't it? In truth, it's probably the best RPG/RTS hybrid on the market, and it definitely was back in 2004.

Like any good RTS, you start off by choosing if you want to play the campaign, or a Skirmish. Either way you go, you're presented with selecting or making a hero first. When you make your hero, you will be blown away by the options. 16 races and 28 classes, which equates to 448 potential heroes! Four Hundred and Forty Eight! I'm sorry, there's such a thing as 'too many options'. And no, all (insert class) are not the same regardless of race. An Undead necromancer will be vastly different from an Orc Necromancer, for example.

Your hero playstyle will be determined by your race and class, letting you play the game how you want to. Want to tuck your hero in a corner and leave them there getting passive buffs from them? You can do that. Want to charge in to the fray and attack your opponents head on? You can do that. Want to stand with your army and support them? You can do that. Want to be a diplomatic merchant who doesn't care what's going on in the world and just has an army to protect him as he hunts down valuable stuff? You can even do that.

Unlike other games, the race of your hero doesn't determine the race of the army you're going to be playing.

If you go for a Skirmish, you choose your hero, and then you choose the race you're controlling, plus of course picking a map, special rules, etc.

If you're playing the campaign, while you start out playing the race of your hero, but as the campaign goes on you will be able to choose other races.

It's noteworthy that you can use the same hero, with the same progression in a Skirmish or campaign.

The campaign seems a classic Fantasy RTS campaign of "OMG DEAMONS!!!111one" when you fire it up, however it progresses much differently than that, and is a bit of a sandbox in where you go and what you do. The campaign itself does not change much by what race you're playing, a few missions will be different, and your diplomatic relations with X race will be different.

To understand the campaign's gameplay, you need to imagine an overworld map. There are points on the map we will call 'locations'. Each location will have 1 or more missions, and possibly merchants and mercenaries.

Some missions are 'optional side quests', giving magic items, changing diplomatic relationships, offering money, anything like that. Others, of course, exist to tell the main campaign story. In a given location, you are likely to find that the competition of one mission opens up another mission at that location. Occasionally you get a repeatable mission, allowing you to run it multiple times for extra XP/money.

There are two main kinds of missions, both give you a set amount of points (which can be boosted by your hero's stats) which can be used to bring regular units or units from your Retinue along:

"Hero missions" which you take your hero and a small band of soldiers to complete a task. Hello, I'm playing a frelling RTS, not Diablo. I wanna build shit.

"War missions" which are what we play RTS for. You know, building fortresses and smashing your enemies under your army.

WBC3 does an excellent job of giving us a true 'war' feeling, as opposed to so many modern RTS which feel more like a tactical assault. The hard unit cap is 250, most units take 1 maybe 2 points, and the highest is 5 I believe. While the unit cap is increased by buildings, it's not some worthless building that just adds +5 or something. Every building you build ups your army cap, even towers.

It also doesn't needlessly restrict the number of any building you can build, or arbitrarily make buildings cost more, the more of them you build.

Given the time to build up, you can create a massive force to sweep in and crush your foes without them standing a chance. The problem is, your foes are building the same force! The AI is actually intelligent enough to send small strikes against you, while amassing a larger force to crush your assault with.

It's also interesting that not only does your hero gain XP and level up.. so, too, do your units. Each kill grants your units XP, leading to them getting better, making healers much more valuable, especially when the mission ends. Units which have surpassed a certain level may become available to select as part of your retinue.

This is the part where for a normal RTS I would break down the differences between the races. I'm sorry, I don't love you guys enough to break down the similarities/differences between 16 races. Especially when not one of them is a complete re-skin.

Due to it's age, some of the races do share a few units or buildings, and of course with that many races, there's some that share playstyles. Every race however, has enough unique about it to make it not seem like you're playing a carbon copy of another race.

Until you start dealing with the air units. I swear, the developers got lazy when it came to the air units. Almost every race uses one of the same two air unit buildings, and some of the air units are barely even re-skinned. 16 races, all of them with fairly unique buildings, and even the races that have similarities (Dwarf and Dark Dwarf) have slightly different skins on all their buildings.. and then you get the air buildings. It's like they just stopped bloody caring.

Anyways, aside from the air units, every race has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Just for some examples: Fey have an extremely high demand for Crystal, and are fairly heavy on the use of all resources but if they hold out for a good amount of time they are epic. Undead use a hefty amount of crystal and iron, but have the ability to create a massive standing army and change it to what you need. Wood Elves have limited resource needs, but their builders can't increase resource production. Empire has a high demand for gold and with time and resource expenditure is actually able to surpass the 250 hard cap.

Simply put, there is a playstyle for you. With 16 races to play, and 28 classes for your hero, you are bound to find something that fits your playstyle. Unless your playstyle is a sampling of everything, at which point your head will probably explode.

TL:DR

"Orc Necromancer? Fey Paladin? Imperial Deamonslayer? Demon Warrior?Knightpriest?swarmdefilerbarbarianchief..... Graaaaah *head explode*"

Availability and price:

GOG: $9.99 (note: GOGs edition has the unofficial patch that fixes a lot of problems with the game.)
Amazon (physical): $7.91

Amazon (Digital): $19.99 (Seriously Amazon?)

Impulse: $9.99

Direct2Drive: $9.95

GamersGate: $9.99