I, like many others, am patiently waiting for Tempest Rising since it looks like a nice shot at doing a revival for the RTS genre. But who is even making this game? I sat on the loo and decided to check out some info on the phone about the game as you do, and I quickly noticed that it has two different developers. Not a great start I would say, a game split between two devs – how does that even work design-wise? Is it collaboration through and through, or do one design, and the other one the technical?
In a rather surprising move, the team behind Jagged Alliance 3 got the original designer (Ian Currie) of the Jagged Alliance game onboard. Going by the video released concerning this, he sure says all the right things, and it got me more excited than I used to be for this game. However, it’s unfortunately not a recipe for success as seen before with games like Phoenix Point with Julian Gollop at the helm. To be honest, it all has become a bit of a meme, especially for us that took part in the RPG Kickstarter revival. Still cool, though, and another interesting thing is that the lead designer seems to play and like Jagged Alliance 2 if you go by the video. He mentions he plays and finishes it at least once per year, so hopefully, his love for the game translates over to the sequel.
Iron Marines is both a casual and a hardcore experience at the same time. Yes, I know, it sounds weird, but it really is. The presentation and everything around that screams welcome to casual Ville – stay a while for an easy time. However, if you play on “hard” (which I did) the experience is anything less. The developers behind the game are Ironhide Game Studio and are known for their awesome series of tower defense game series Kingdom Rush. This is their first venture into the RTS genre, and it’s not a bad first try, but it comes with some frustration. I had a good time in general, especially for only 5 bucks spent on it, but I think the last area of the campaign was a mistake. As it usually goes, later areas are harder and require more from you, and I got nothing against that. However, the devs made the game harder through frustration, that in my opinion ruins the fun of playing an RTS – to actually kill stuff. You see, instead of making the enemies harder, now each dead unit heals another, and it has the effect of being the worst case of HP bloat I have ever seen – particularly going from one campaign section to another… It was like night and day, and it drained all the fun I was having in one go.
I wouldn’t say game music is underrated exactly, but in my opinion, it’s often overlooked, so with this little blog post I will list some of my favorite tunes/songs from games I have played (in no special order).
Let’s start with Risen. One my favorite RPGs made by Piranha bytes.
The beach is one of the first tunes you hear in the game if my memory is correct, and it excellently sets the mood for the coming adventure with a little bit of added spookiness factor of the unknown mystery of venturing inland through the jungle.
Halo Wars was initially an Xbox 360-exclusive real-time strategy game, but for some years now it has been out for PC. While it’s an RTS in the classical sense, it is designed around being played with a controller, which could be considered one of the worst heresy when it comes to this genre. And I would agree if it was made for PC this way from the start, but as it is (and since I have played it on the 360 before) the controls work well considering. There is keyboard and mouse support for the PC version, but I’m set in my ways and used a controller this time around again. Before we start the review for real, I just want to clarify that this is one of my modern cozy go-to games when I want a relaxing RTS fix, so this review will be fairly biased in favor of it, even if I recognize it has faults. Halo Wars was made by Ensemble Studios, and it’s one of the last games they made, so while I love this title, it is a bittersweet feeling playing it.
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