Análises recentes de wayward

Company of Heroes 3 is the return of one of the giants of RTS gaming and while there are some issues with it, what it boils down to for me is that from a pure gameplay perspective, it is easily the most engaging and dynamic, and yes, fun Company of Heroes title.

Let's get some of the uncomfortable stuff out of the way first, with caveats:

Yes, the graphics and overall visual presentation have not evolved by leaps and bounds over the previous titles. I haven't done frame-by-frame animations analysis like some people have, but I am an avid screenshot photographer and as I look back over the screenshots I've taken, I find that I am a little underwhelmed by the set dressing of some of the maps, and some of the overall texture presentation and quality.

To me, the tanks and vehicles look great from a gameplay distance and that's what matters to me. The units are identifiable and most importantly have great abilities and game feel when using them. But a lot of the maps look more like a tabletop wargame's recreation of a place than an actual place, if that makes any sense.

At a distance, the towns and terrain look fine, but on many maps there is a bit of a sense of disconnectedness between the terrain and the buildings and terrain blockers and things that have been placed on it. Some maps are much better than others in this regard. But the best way that I can put it is that some of the maps look like a 3D terrain wargame board where people have placed model houses and other gameplay affecting pieces just so, rather than the maps giving a sense of actual place. I'm not sure if this is quite making sense, but I hope that I'm getting the point across...

I won't go much into sound quality or any of that, but it all seems serviceable to me, and I have no real complaints. I'm not a big audio guy and most of the rest of it is good enough that it doesn't detract from my gameplay experience.

It's the actual moment by moment gameplay that really shines to me. Unit abilities are less binary than they were in COH2, flame units feel powerful, unit abilities are varied and give you a sense of actually developing a strategy. It's all in a good state and likely to only get better with time.

The Battlegroups system is very well done. I love having the choice between multiple tech paths, each with different things to unlock. The faction customization systems in general are quite good, like USF tech veterancy ability choices.

It is **perhaps** not the best POSSIBLE game it could have been, but I think overall it is a very solid foundation on which to build and has launched in a much better state than COH2 did. I look forward to seeing where Relic go next with the game.

Read the full article here: https://waywardstrategy.com/2020/03/09/gladius-relics-of-war-a-tbs-after-my-own-heart/

First off: you will have to forgive me some of my bias here. Because, you see, I love the Necrons. I just have a real positive bias towards those teleporting, regenerating metal skeleton robots and that might color my perceptions of the game just a bit. Fortunately, that out of the way, the game is pretty darn good on its own merits. It’s certainly not for everyone, but as a combat-focused, Warhammer 40K-flavored TBS, it does a lot that is admirable (if sometimes a bit frustrating).

In a lot of ways, Gladius is similar to a 4x. You have cities that take up multiple tiles on the game map: each tile can house 1-3 structures. If you expand your city onto one of the various map objects (we’ll cover those in a bit), the object take up that whole tile and be unavailable for faction buildings.

Cities grow in population over time, if supplied with appropriate amounts of whatever your faction eats (some factions don’t use Food as a resource, like Necrons, who consume Ore). And each building requires a population unit in order to function properly: too many buildings and not enough population, things start getting inefficient quickly. Anyway, the city/building interface is in some ways similar to Total War or how some space-faring 4x games handle planetary populations. It’s a game of icons and requirements.

There’s not too much to managing your cities, so if you’re looking for detailed economic simulations you should look elsewhere. Cities are mainly there as a limiting factor to how large an army you can train, field, and control at any one time: each troop you field has an upkeep cost, so more troops than you can afford to keep active will start draining your income and cause issues down the line.

The game is mostly focused on fighting.

Earlier, I said the game is kind of like a 4x. This is true. But in terms of ‘exploiting’ there’s really only one option and that option is ‘exterminating’ your opponents. There’s no diplomacy in Gladius. You train up an army and fight over territory and wipe your opponents off the map. It’s brutally straightforward.

Now again, this might not be for anyone. But personally, diplomacy options in games like Total War don’t really feel that good to me: they’re blunt instruments anyway. So foregoing them works well for me. I’m not a diplomacy guy in strategy games, and I don’t miss it in Gladius.

Each unit is a single ‘game piece’ of approximately 1-10 squad members. Each squad member impacts the overall HP of the squad and overall damage output of the squad. As squads lose HP they lose members: this is not like Company of Heroes, where it’s possible to have a squad with all 4 soldiers, each with 10% health. If a squad in Gladius has 4 models and takes 25% of its HP in damage, it will lose a model. Conversely, if it gains that health back the model will pop back up.

No 2 squads can occupy the same tile. Again, these are analogous to physical pieces on a board game. This isn’t like some grand strategy games where armies are a single piece on the game board/map that represent the combined strength of all of the units within them. Each squad is a thing and occupies space on the map.

It’s probably a personal preference thing more than a mechanical issue, but it can get a little annoying to move and order and juggle all of the units you usually end up with in the late game, especially since the game doesn’t like you to execute a new order until the last one has already resolved. Queued orders such as movement can be resolved simultaneously, but that is only sporadically a time-saver. It’s a bit of a compromise but not honestly a huge pain, though occasionally it does irritate me slightly.

I need a place to put this, and here is as good a spot as any: maps in Gladius are straight up fraught with danger. Giant robots, roving bands of marauders, mutant Enslavers that steal your troops from you. I actually started having more fun with the game when I changed the amount of neutral spawns on the map. They can be devastating if you run into them at a bad time, and its often hard to avoid them (especially with how the game treats unknown territory as blocked).

Proxy Studios, the game’s developer, have put a lot of work into describing EVERYTHING in the game. As is standard for this type of game there’s an in-game encyclopedia with lore, stats, and pictures for most of the terrain, features, creatures, units, and factions in the game, and it’s all a click away. As someone who’s mostly used to RTS, where this sort of thing is about 30 years away from being standard anymore (Age of Empires had this sort of thing for instance).

Want to know more about the Enslavers? You’re golden. Need details on what a Grox Pasture will do for your war effort? It’s all there, with a little flavor text blurb to boot. It’s a little touch but I appreciate the effort.

All told that makes Gladius a pretty persistent entry into my game rotation. It does have some issues which I addressed above, but its combat and the gestalt of its design has kept me coming back. I can’t promise that everyone will appreciate it in the way that I have: you might want to be able to have your Tau initiate diplomacy with the Space Marines, maybe? Or ordering 30 units around the late-game map might put you off, or whatever. But I’ve definitely found some staying power in Proxy’s 40K TBS, and I’ve happily bought all of its DLC to provide more reasons to keep coming back.

Full review here: https://waywardstrategy.com/2020/09/14/heavy-metal-an-iron-harvest-overview/

When it was first announced, I bought into the Kickstarter at a level high enough to be eligible for physical rewards. I didn't know who Mr_werewolf was at the time, and hadn't played Scythe... I was, however, very interested in the premise and impressed by the art and more than willing to take the gamble. For me, at least, that gamble ended up paying off in a big way.

Iron Harvest is a squad combat game. It's tactically focused, with low unit counts and a focus on map control for resourcing instead of worker management. In Iron Harvest, players start with a single command center building and 2 infantry squads (this is of course different in the campaign). Players have access to only 2 structures, and they are unable to field more than one of each of these structures at a time. Each structure can be upgraded to a Tier 2 (T2) version of that building to unlock higher level units from that structure.

As might be expected from a game of this type, units are able to take cover behind sandbags and fences for a defensive bonus, they are able to garrison inside of structures on the map, and have 1-button retreat and reinforce commands that enable them to get out of combat and get back to fighting trim at the player's base quickly and easily.

Combat is one of the hallmarks of the game. I would describe it as relatively slow and tactical. Damage tends to happen slowly enough to allow a player to retreat in-danger squads in plenty of time. There are some cases where this is less true, as when a Light MG squad is targeting basic infantry, or when some of the heavier mechs are on the field.

Players typically have plenty of time to react to things like grenades being thrown, or squads being flanked, et cetera, while there is still a sense that the player must keep watch over their units and not dawdle when reacting to threats. I think it strikes a nice balance with how long things take to die and the level of player control (micro) involved in keeping them alive and allowing player skill to carry combat.

To risk a slight comparison to COH2 and DOW2, combat in Iron Harvest (at the time of this writing at least, since balance may change dramatically over the coming months) feels a bit more 'blob' focused than those games. Masses of units don't have as many good early game counters, since in Iron Harvest, artillery squads, flamethrowers, heavy machine guns (HMGs), and many other tools that are useful for handling large groups of infantry tend to come out in the midgame or early-midgame, making it possible to gain an early advantage by simply outnumbering your opponent with basic infantry. To be fair, however, this is also possibly a factor of how new the game is, and a more mature meta may soon evolve that shows the weakness of such tactics. Time will tell on this one.

There are some tolerable differences between each faction. I'm a sucker for faction diversity and there's definitely less than you see in COH2 - each faction has buildings with more or less identical functions, and infantry for each faction are pretty samey: each basic infantry squad is pretty different, with the Rusviet Vanguards having shotguns, Saxony Stormtroopers having rapid-fire weapons, and Polanian Riflemen having long-ranged rifles. Otherwise, there are pretty minor differences between infantry, besides which ones each faction has access to. For instance, only Rusviet have flamethrower infantry, and Polania have LMGs, and Saxony have Medics.

Mechs are definitely the coolest thing about Iron Harvest. Being divorced from the reality of actual World War 1 or 2 combat units, you see vehicles as diverse as a bipedal sniper walker, a wheeled rocket launcher, a tank with spider legs, a hexagonal walker that shoots rolling bombs, and a giant walker that uses large sickle blades to hack apart enemy infantry and mechs.

Of course, there are some mechs that are more situational (the Serp, the sickle mech I mentioned above, in particular is in a bit of a precarious place right now in terms of balance and utility) but that's fine by me. Most of the game's balance issues are pretty obvious at the moment and the roughest edges shouldn't take too terribly long to balance out.

At the beginning of a multiplayer match, the player is asked to choose their faction and the hero they'll be fielding. Once that's locked in, the teams are dumped over to the Reserves system to pick a set of units that they'll be able to call into battle later on. Each player gets 6 'coins' with which to buy units to slot into either their Reserves 1 slot or their Reserves 2 slot: Reserve 2 tends to give access to heavier mechs, where Reserve 1 is mostly infantry, support weapons, exo-suits and the occasional light mech. With Reserves, players have access to some infantry they otherwise wouldn't be able to use, such as Medics for the Rusviet or Flamers for Polania.

Overall I feel Reserves compares favorably to the Commanders system from COH2 - in some ways, it feels like a better take on the Elites system from DOWIII. It gives players the ability to choose their approach to the game via hero and call-in units, and allows even mirror matches to play out very differently on each side. I think there's some danger of over-optimizing in terms of Reserves, but I think it's at the core a flexible and interesting system. I hope KING Art are able to expand on it over time.

Heroes (like sniper Anna Kos and her bear Wotjek, above) are called into the field via the Reserves system. Some heroes cost 1 of your 6 total Reserves coins, some cost 2. Some are available only in Reserves 1, some only in Reserves 2. Et cetera. I think there's a lot of room to get other custom units, heroes, and squads available in this system (though currently that isn't the case). Regardless, I think it's got a lot of promise even if the developer sees fit to not expand it, and simply refines it a bit over time.

But so far, I've been very surprised by the quality of the story in Iron Harvest. I find myself rooting for Polanian sharpshooter Anna Kos and her family. The gameplay itself is pretty standard for RTS campaigns, but the story is definitely on the better side of things. I might write another article about the campaign specifically once I finish it, but for now I felt compelled to comment on the overall quality of what I've experienced so far.

In an objective way it can be a harsh comparison for Iron Harvest to endure. While the mechs and heroes in IH are more diverse than COH2 can offer, infantry combat is FAR deeper in COH2, with smoke, varying kinds of mine, varying kinds of weapon on infantry, minesweepers, wirecutters, delayed charges, OKW cars that can suppress infantry, et cetera. Smoke especially as a counter system for MG crews, and the increased diversity of grenade and weapon types, are nods in Company of Heroes 2's favor.

And yet, strangely enough, for me, I'm really digging Iron Harvest right now. I've heard people say that playing IH makes them want to play COH2, and that, at this point, hasn't been the case for me so far. The heroes, item pickups, mech variety... maybe it's that. Maybe it's the novelty? I'm not sure. Something feels more immediate about Iron Harvest to me, less fiddly in a way? In some ways it almost plays more like DOW2 than a Company of Heroes game, with its focus on hero units and players' ability to contest anywhere on the map equally without worrying about territory connectivity. And yet, damage in IH is more forgiving than either of those games in a way.

I guess, ultimately, mileage might vary. Iron Harvest will prove too similar to COH2 or DOW2 to some, too different to others. I (and many other fans of the game) have been having fun with it on its own merits, and I think will continue to do so as the game matures over the coming weeks and months.

https://waywardstrategy.com/2020/02/28/ancestors-legacy-well-considered-brutality/

Before I’d ever played Ancestor’s Legacy, I’d heard it described as ‘medieval Company of Heroes’. I find this description to be a little inaccurate. There are some similarities, such as squad-based units and a wealth of active abilities including analogs for mine-laying, but it doesn’t really capture the whole flavor of the game. For me, Ancestor’s Legacy (my hands keep typing Ancestory and it’s absolutely murdering me) is the bastard child of Total War’s tactical battles and Company of Heroes.

When it comes down to it, there’s a specific feeling involved in fighting in Total War. Giant squads stand in a blob and plink away at at each other, slowly winnowing down their numbers as specialists wreak havoc in specific areas of the battlefield. This is very different to how positional combat is in Company of Heroes, and the speed at which squads and tanks can melt away under fire. In Company of Heroes, cover is king and things can do down fast and hard in a way they don’t really in Total War (at least, in my experience. But I’m a relative novice to Total War games and have only started to gain an appreciation for them in recent years).

In Ancestor’s Legacy, you have a bit of both. Basic fighters entangle in melee and tend to just… sit there, beating on each other. Combat ‘lock’s a troop in, meaning there’s little maneuvering possible once a squad has engaged.

The initial hit where squads meet is highly important, as many infantry abilities tend to happen on approach: charges, flanking (an important status effect that can REALLY speed up how quickly a squad dies), axe-throwing, that sort of thing all tend to happen right at the initial encounter. A pinch of COH and a dash of Total War. It takes a bit of getting used to, and status effects can be frustratingly unclear, but once I got used to it, I started appreciating the system a lot more.

I could go on about combat for a long time. During battle, things slow down a bit, but the fun and skill in setting up that initial engagement is highly entertaining. Throwing axes while charging, setting up ambushes, traps… that’s just the start of it. Because if you’re smart, you can game the system.

Ancestor’s Legacy features a dual-stage retreat function unique to the game. The first press of retreat, the unit disengages from combat and runs about a screens-length back toward the player’s base. If you retreat AGAIN, you get the standard, Relic-inspired full retreat. That alone adds a lot of depth to combat, especially when you factor in how important engaging (or in this case, re-engaging) can be to battle. There’s a lot of counterplay to clashing, and a lot of it comes from dictating the terms of each engagement.

In a lot of ways, it feels mechanically and functionally akin to unit maneuvering in Warcraft 3: running a squad out of melee then ducking them back in to maintain their DPS and allow another target to start soaking up damage. But in Ancestor’s Legacy, there’s the benefit of having a consistent system for getting the most out of squads, as well as the advantage of being able to re-engage and use those on-approach abilities again.

Overall, combat gets great marks for me. It’s deep and has a lot of nuance, fun edges to play around with to get the advantage over your opponent. You just have to be patient and push through till you’re presented with all the pieces (speaking about the campaign here).

Another thing: the tactical aspect of the game are remarkably clear. This was a breath of fresh air for me after feeling like I’m flailing to understand the ‘under the hood’ systems in games like Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 or Steel Division 2. Once you’re inside of the game’s logic there’s not really anything that’s hidden or obscured, and it’s possible to just focus on getting the most out of your squads. Even the tradeoffs for armor (armored squads move slower, leaving them more vulnerable to ranged units and to take additional attrition while on approach to the enemy) and upgrades are very clear and understandable.

One last note: The unit veterancy system is very well done. Units can choose a specialization as they level with clearly defined pros and cons. Extra speed, extra defense, extra attack. It’s a lot more interactive and feels more meaningful than veterancy systems in C&C3 or Company of Heroes (personally. There’s good cases both ways: in COH2, it’s really clear how a squad of a given veterancy level will behave in combat. This leaves it a bit more ambiguous to the players).

This classic tactics games remains one of my favorites to come back to. I played this as a kid, and now have a version on my phone and on my PC. This is a remake of the original with a worse AI and different user interface, but it remains a fun tactical romp of territorial control

It's a fun little strategy-lite game. There's limited power scaling unlike in similar mobile titles.

To me, Tindalos’ games, the ones I’ve played anyway, have seemed to suffer from this same general issue. They’ve got some good ideas, but their execution hasn’t really carried the game all the way.

From my perspective, however, Tindalos has clearly been quickly learning with each game they’ve made in terms of polish, depth, and the overall quality of their design and implementation. While I personally missed the first Battlefleet Gothic: Armada game, I jumped into the second with both feet. Like a scrub, I decided to preorder the game in order to play its beta.

I’ve come away mostly happy that I shelled out the preorder bucks, but I keep wondering if part of that is the game just scratching a really niche itch that’s specific to my personal brand of insanity...

So first off, I have to say that BfG: Armada 2 really impresses me visually. People on the game’s Steam community forums and what-have-you have made much ado about the scale of the ships (inaccurate!) and visual design (lack of detail!) but, as someone who’s used to playing games like Warcraft 3 and Tooth and Tail, it looks more than pretty enough for me.

Something that did take a little getting used to was space battles on a 2d plane. This is one of those things that I think is either just going to work for people or bother them. Seeing as its based on a tabletop game, I accept the restriction, and even stopped thinking about it after a while. It’s a bit weird when compared to the full 3d majesty of Homeworld, but to me it’s sensible based on the source material.

What I think my issue with the game comes down to is that on the surface it doesn’t do stellar job communicating to the player all of the things that it needs to communicate. Perhaps it’s just jumping into the game with limited single player experience and clarity will come with time spent playing vs other players and the campaign, but whether fighting the AI or another player, I’m often left scratching my head as to why I’ve won or lost. Or rather, how to have played differently in a way that would have changed the outcome of the battle.

Many of the systems are managed and monitored by icons and healthbars, and it’s much harder to keep track of crew or morale in-the-moment than it is to look after the physical status of your ships. This makes crew and morale attacks kind of insidious – ditto the loss of weapons, which is mostly apparent via status icons. It’s something I feel like I’m starting to grok, but it’s taken me kind of a long time to become intuitively cognizant of each unit’s and ability’s threat profile and how to approach dealing with it. And I haven’t seen but a small % of all of the game’s factions, let alone a variety of ship combinations.

It’s admittedly a tricky problem that I don’t have the werewithal to propose a solution for at this time. The key to winning a match of Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 should come down to who chooses the best angles of approach, is the best with ship orientation and positioning, the best at timing and lining up ambushes and ability use (e.g. ‘skillshots’ and timing and target prioritization).

And that’s what it is when it’s at its best. There’s a lot there to parse and learn and grow into, which is good news for Tindalos. What’s bad news, at least in my book, is the density of game systems and rules, in conjunction with the constrained fleet size that makes preparing a wide variety of effective approaches to space combat difficult if not impossible in cases. There’s also a long learning curve, with 12 factions to learn both to play as and against.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 sets itself a major challenge, and it comes close to delivering fully on its premise. But, like the Uncanny Valley, in some cases ‘almost’ can incongruously be a painful irritant, as a piece of media causes its audience to become highly cognizant of the gaps and imperfections.

Anyway, there’s a lot I enjoy about the game, and a lot that I find frustrating, and as I play I find more in the former category than the latter.

Full review here: https://waywardstrategy.com/2019/01/23/stormy-seas-a-conflicted-first-look-at-battlefleet-gothic-armada-2/

I have played AirMech on and off since its earliest days, and I've loved it since the beginning. I’ve seen features come and go, the UI undergo massive evolutions. I have played skirmishes and some of the single player content released for that game. Through it all, I’ve remained impressed with Carbon’s dedication to improving the game, experimenting with new features, and just generally iterating on their core vision (the VR AirMech experience is quite fun, even if I can’t see myself playing it for a tremendous amount of time – the controls can be a bit cumbersome, and I find virtual reality a bit disorienting in large doses).

So, of course, I was excited to see that Carbon was coming out with an AirMech ARPG, a supposedly Diablo-style single player experience that would bring people into its universe that might otherwise have passed on it due to the multiplayer-centric core game. I wondered how they might have altered the model to turn their action RTS into something that felt more like Torchlight.

As it turns out, it’s still basically the same messy, fast, fun game. The controls are the same, the production and control of units are (mostly) the same. Bases are handled the same way: in fact, the games are so similar, players’ accounts are synced between the two: unlocked/purchased AirMechs, pilots, unit types, cosmetics, and gear are shared across both titles. Gear is a relic of an older version of AirMech: I don’t think it’s present in Strike, the current incarnation of the competitive game.

THE BASICS
At their core, both AirMech Strike and AirMech Wastelands are real-time strategy games, albeit non-traditional ones. In the style that’s come to be associated with ARPGs and MOBAs, the player in AirMech Wastelands directly controls their titular unit (the AirMech) via W, A, S, D movement and attacks enemies via mouse clicks that cause the ‘mech to fire in the direction of the mouse cursor.

Players can also build and issue orders to semi-autonomous units via keyboard controls. This isn’t StarCraft where you’re twitch-microing individual marines away from banelings: the only things you have direct control over is your giant flying, transforming robot. But managing your units is a major part of the game, and shouldn’t be discounted. AirMech Wastelands might be calling itself an RPG for marketing, but its soul is that of the action-RTS that this series is known for.

The series has been around for a while, but for those unfamiliar or new to the concept, allow me to explain it briefly. The player controls what is essentially an aircraft, that flies around the map. In this mode, it can transport the above-mention units around the map, and attack air targets. With the press of a button, the aircraft ‘unpacks’ into a (usually) bipedal, humanoid walker mech. These mechs are broken up into ‘classes’ similar to what you might be familiar with in an ARPG like Diablo, or like you’d see in a MOBA. From the Paladin, which has auras and throws a hammer at enemies, to the Saucer, which can teleport, mind control enemies, and has a death ray, to the Bomber (which, needless to say, can drop bombs on enemies while in air mode) each class has unique features and abilities both in air mode and ground mode.

One of my personal favorites is the Saucer, which is a highly Energy-dependent specialist. The Osprey, which is mostly focused on managing its army, is another I’m fond of.

SEGMENTS OF THE GAME
The core game is split into multiple discrete, but interrelated parts: First, there are single player or co-op missions. These range from single player bullet-hell style shoot em ups, to traditional AirMech matches. There are maps where you have to defend and hold bases while a timer ticks down; there are a horde mode and a number of ‘challenge’ maps.

These missions are represented as pins or locations on a massive overworld, which is the second major part of the game, where your ‘mech flies around from place to place, directed by the progression of the plot but allowing you to replay old levels, side-track into optional content, or even visit shops where you can purchase gear, unit types, and upgrades.

Something quite cool about the overworld map is that you can see other players’ mechs flying around, going into missions, et cetera. There’s global chat, synced with that of the other main AirMech game, where you can coordinate with other players to do co-op content. It’s a really nice touch, seeing other players interacting with the game. It makes it feel more alive.

In previous versions of AirMech (which is now called AirMech Strike), you could install various upgrades into your AirMechs – some of them were class specific, and some were generic. They’d provide incremental increases or decreases to things like unit build time, carry capacity, movement or transformation speed, et cetera. This brings me to the 3rd major aspect of the game: the various stores, menus, and loadouts that you’re asked to manage and interact with.

This is, unfortunately, the weakest aspect of the game in my opinion.

I love the idea of managing loadouts: tweaking your walker’s gear to optimize your play style is up my alley. That, I have no particular problem with (though I found the UI to be mildly buggy and sometimes obtuse – where do I go to pick my currently active AirMech, again? Where do I go to design unit loadouts?). These things can be taught, but the occasional mental stuttering that the game causes can be frustrating.

My problem lies more in the realm of the game store. While AirMech Strike is free to play, with a $20USD package that serves to unlock the game’s core content, AirMech Wastelands is an up-front purchase, and the game’s stocked store can be a bit confrontational when you dip into it to browse around.

I have personally purchased Diamonds from Carbon, and have used them to unlock content, but the feeling of pressure to do so sits oddly in a premium game. Gear (some of which unlocks abilities in this game) is level-locked, and levels are purchased via coins. Gear is itself purchased via coins, which leads to the temptation to continue to pay into the game to increase the rate at which you gain access to content. Fine by me in a free-to-play game, but a weird bit of cognitive dissonance in something you’ve shelled out for up front.

BOTTOM LINE
I have enjoyed AirMech’s core formula from its earliest days: I view it as a refreshing change of pace for RTS, fun and fast and twitchy, but still requiring finesse and strategy and unit management. And AirMech Wastelands continues in that same tradition, bringing a huge variety of well-designed single player and co-operative content into the picture. But some players are going to find that store a little frustrating, and the inconsistent UI – seriously, the first time you want to leave a store or back out of a mission, you’ll feel it – are marks against this otherwise enjoyable Action-RTS

This is a portion of a larger review... if you want to read the whole thing, I put a link at the bottom.

Deserts of Kharak’s strongest element is assuredly its campaign. The campaign is hauntingly atmospheric, full of starkly vast spaces and lonely stretches of desert, and challenging. I’ll touch on this more in my next section. The multiplayer, at least in the game’s launch state, falls short of the promise of the game’s mechanics.

One of the strongest and most interesting elements of the game is the Carrier’s mobility. However, in both the campaign and the multiplayer, this seems oddly de-emphasized. It is as if the developers were being cautious, or were unsure of how to design around this unique feature. In the campaign, the Carrier is often left up on a plateau or stuck down in the dunes, while its armies swarm around the map completing objectives and fighting Gaalsien battlegroups. Similarly, in multiplayer, I seldom found myself moving the Carrier much, if at all, especially when playing Gaalsien.

The layout of most multiplayer matches incorporates a somewhat traditional RTS setup, with roughly a third or so of each map sectioned off into a “base sector” or “home turf” for each player, and it is in these that most or all resources on the map are found. The central and contested map area tends to feature the mach objectives: 3 automatically respawning relics Artifacts that must be collected by a player’s Baserunner and deposited at their drop-off zone. The first player to retrieve 5 of these Artifacts (or who destroys their opponent’s Carrier) is the winner.

In practice, this setup actually works fairly well for the most part, aside from the negligible mobility requirements for the Carrier (which to me are a crying shame). Conceptually, I have some deep issues with this setup.

First of all, despite the attention to detail the rest of the game receives, drop-off areas are just an arbitrarily-placed ring of pylons on the map. There’s no real asset or logically-driven factor behind the placement of these zones: the only goal was apparently to have such a zone and to place it in an area of the map roughly equidistant to each player’s start location. In terms of map design, it’s functional but scarcely supportable. Any existing game asset: structures, dropships, some sort of supply cache etc, would make this design more sensible within the game’s context. I certainly hope that future map designs take into account the story they’re telling. What are they delivering their artifacts to?

Also, the Artifacts themselves automatically self-extract at regular intervals. Sensible, to be sure, but again a bit uninspired. Perhaps such a design was tested and turned down, but I can’t help but want my Baserunner to have to manually extract each Artifact, and to defend it while the artifact is extracted, and then defend it (as is currently the case in multiplayer) en route to the drop-off zone. Such a system should seem to feel, to me, more satisfying mechanically as well as in the context of the story. Should they release modding tools for the game, I plan to test such a system myself.

The pacing of multiplayer feels appropriate to me, with matches tending to last around 10 minutes if the players are matched well, the player constantly expanding their force and building new units, the choices the player is making being meaningful: tech to air, or focus on railguns, or power through to cruisers? Scouting is difficult, thanks to Carriers coming equipped with weapons of not inconsiderable firepower.

Actually, I have found that Carriers are well situated within the context of the game. They’re able to take out small groups of units early on, but midgame armies give them pause, and can wear them down over time. Late-game units pose a serious threat, and if Carriers take them out, it would be with considerable damage to their hulls. So, the Carrier ends up being a powerful supporting unit without devolving into a MOBA-style hero (which would be a tragedy).

With access to the full unit lists of both factions, I’ve become more-or-less at peace with the unit design in Deserts of Kharak. Unit abilities are a welcome addition, such as the Gaalsien Missle Cruiser’s ground-targeted area of effect attack, which damages friendly units as well as foes, and is a counter to enemy light attack vehicles only if it manages to hit them. Rail Guns still feel odd to me as an alternative to artillery weapons, but as I mention in my preview, they work well with the game’s line of sight system so I can appreciate the choice.

Air units feel quite powerful, but I believe that a recent patch (released shortly before the publication of this article) implemented a balance fix to air units. Additionally, in opposition to my earlier statement, air units can, in fact, be individually controlled, though their default area attack command is a simple way to get some mileage out of them. They are best handled through the sensors manager, by the way.

On the topic of air units, the game’s counter system escalates greatly with the addition of Air, and Cruisers, each of which require a deep commitment from the opposing player in order to properly counter. Cruisers have many times the hull integrity of smaller craft, making them require a significant anti-armor investment from opponents, and air units move fast and hit hard, requiring (again) significant preparation from opponents to properly counter.

http://waywardstrategist.com/2016/02/02/in-the-dunes-the-carriers-deserts-of-kharak-non-review/

Battle Battalions is first and foremost a game about territory and teamwork. Each player’s forces confine them to a role within the match, broken up roughly along 3 main categories, or classes: Tanks, Light Vehicles and Infantry. Each individual Battalion (players can only bring 1 Battalion into battle at a time) is comprised of roughly 1-18 individual units of the same type (players can unlock the ability to mix and match multiple units within a battalion), with a variety of passive attributes. For instance, infantry units tend to be able to access more areas of the map than Light Vehicles or Tanks, though some Light Vehicles have the ability to enter Infantry-only areas. Light Vehicles are a broad category, tending to be faster but easier to kill than tanks. There are a wide variety of armor and weapons types that units may have, and many opportunities for counter-play exist within the system.

At the core, players must coordinate their physical location on game’s map to take and hold the points of interest while scaring off or eliminating enemy Battalions. And I don’t use ‘eliminating’ lightly – players are entirely unable to replenish units in a match: if you launch into a match with 4 heavy tanks, you can never get more and if one dies, it’s gone for the rest of the match! This makes any combat situation fraught with tension, as it’s quite possible to be entirely wiped out in a bad encounter, or slowly whittled down by enterprising opponents whose Battalions are designed to take out your own.

Is Battle Battalions worth a try? Well, as they say, there’s no accounting for taste. I’ve been a long-time supporter of Petroglyph’s vision, especially with this formula, pioneered by End of Nations. Battle Battalions is a frenetic, fun and zany 5v5 tactical brawler. It’s cartoony and its attempts to create a squad-based tactics game are brave, laudable and for the most part well realized. It is the result of years of iteration and listening to player feedback, and it shows.

The store is a slight stumbling block, but the game itself is addictive and fun both for the individual and the organized team. It remains to be seen what market there is for such a game, but Petroglyph believes enough in this concept to have tried it four times in sequence, and I’m intruiged enough to join them for this ride yet again. I do hope that they continue to grow this game by adding new unit types, map types and advanced features like destructible terrain objects (e.g. bridges) and will be engaging Petroglyph to continue to iterate and innovate to prove to the world that this team-tactics format has lasting value.

Thanks for your time, and I hope to encounter you as an ally on the battlefield.