PREVIEW : Age of Darkness: Final Stand (PC)
Build, gather, and fight in a desperate last stand against a never-ending onslaught of evil!
The darkness is an awful creature. Some believe it is an expression of human anxiety and dreams, while others believe it is a roving mass of cursed souls haunting us. The origin of darkness is unclear, but one thing is certain: we can hold it at bay with the power of light and fire.
Prepare for massive tidal waves of Nightmares. Using an internally created technology known as ‘SwarmTech,’ the game can render over 70,000 enemy units on the screen at once. These hostile troops claw their way up through the earth’s seething fractures to fortify ‘The Veil.’
To reclaim territory from ‘The Veil,’ activate a rich, complicated, dynamically created terrain. A living death fog that hides attackers and takes the life of your troops. It is not for the faint of heart to hold out against this dread.
Malices are random afflictions that are imposed on the player throughout each Death Night, unravelling even the best-laid preparations. If you survive a Death Night, you can choose from three randomly selected Blessings, enhancing the experience and providing your army with a much-needed edge.
With powerful and distinctive Heroes, lead the battle against the evils of the night. These Heroes, who receive particular skills as they level up, might be crucial in shifting the tide of a deadly battle. But be warned: the Nightmares have their Elite wandering champions who drop valuable resources when killed, providing an intense and ever-present threat to your growth.
Conceptually, I’m a fan of this growing PvE RTS genre, and while Age of Darkness has some of the same flaws that TaB had for me, it’s a competent and enjoyable game that I expect to get much better as development progresses.
Pros :
Heroes – Having a hero unit is a welcome addition to the genre, and while they don’t feel fully fleshed out yet, their fledgling notions feel robust, with plenty of possibility for an intriguing development. I’m interested in where the devs will go with the potential skill ceiling, as micro now feels very simple… which I’m fine with. There must be a balance struck between making the gamer feel like they have relevant things to do and requiring them to accomplish too many things at once. Currently, I believe it is more on the casual side of things, which is fine with me.
Lower intensity – Right now, it feels like a far less stressful experience than a standard TaB campaign, because you won’t lose a campaign because you missed a single zombie. Again, I’m interested to see where the developers take this in the future, but for now, it appears to be an experience that doesn’t require you to be hyper-caffeinated before you sit down to play.
Cons :
Vision mechanics – Currently, some mechanics allow you to move your vision (and thus the areas where mobs can spawn) across the entire map, which means there is very little stopping you from painting the map in light and removing virtually all tension by preventing all mob spawns except the extremely telegraphed raids. It’s good to be able to stretch the boundaries of areas you control, but once you reach the map’s border, you can create massive zones where mobs -cannot spawn- and you don’t have to commit any defence. When you combine this with the fact that the most important resource deposits are found on the map’s outer edges, you end up with simple strategies like cutting your way to the map’s edge as soon as possible and painting the entire map in light.
There are a few ways to remedy this (such as lowering the radius of these light-producing buildings the farther they are from your main structure, or enabling monsters to spawn on the map’s very edge regardless of light), and I don’t anticipate it to persist until 1.0 without some limits.
Balance: The balance is currently off. It’s not HORRIBLE, but it’s an instance where ‘choices’ actually boil down to one being a strictly ideal choice, rather than a sequence of choices allowing for alternative playstyles or strategies. I won’t reveal any of the subtle balance differences because part of the fun is discovering these differences for yourself, but Siege Units’ final class upgrade is a choice between Siege weapons exploding when they die, Siege weapons stunning when they hit, and an activity that grants them a brief burst of speed.
In the vast majority of cases, your siege units (flamethrowers, ballistas, and catapults) will be sitting behind a wall firing at the enemy, and if those walls break, you’re likely doomed… so the choice is between a hail-mary of the explosion mattering when your walls break and your siege units start to die, a burst of speed so they can reposition the hell out if the walls break, or an AoE. You won’t know unless you try it, but the stun feels -way- better than either of its opponents in the great majority of cases, and balance scenarios like this make me question the entire present balance while also being eager for what the devs come up with in the future.
REVIEW : Princess Maker Refine (PC)
