=== PC Game Review -- Infested Planet - RTS Tower Defense - 10/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?
Today I bring you Infested Planet by Rocket Bear Games.

Released: March 6, 2014
Price: $17.49 CAD
Genre: RTS / Tower Defense

This game has a good number of very positive reviews on Steam... and for good reason; I was pleasantly surprised by this title. I don't normally go out looking for games which include the tag "Tower Defense" in them because quite honestly, I usually find them to be incredibly boring and dull; in my opinion, most Tower Defense games get old very quickly usually because there isn't enough to do as the game progresses or because the game eventually comes down to figuring out how to optimally build for the scenario to get the 3 stars available on each level. It's difficult to describe just how nice it is to find a game of this type where that finally isn't such a big problem.

Gameplay:
Infested Planet comes with a nice campaign that introduces all the new mechanics of the game one at a time from new units, to new buildings, to new powers. This picture below shows the campaign progress which branches into different mission types.

Additionally there are some weekly challenges which can be done for a score to get a rank matched up against other players around the world. These challenges also have different mission types such as exterminating the map as quickly as possible for the highest score, or surviving as long as possible.

Much of the gameplay revolves around the squad units available with each mission. From left to right (starting on the right of the building in the picture and going counter-clockwise) you'll see the different unit types: Minigun, Officer, Scout, Flame, Sniper, Shotgun, Rifle. You can imagine by the name what each is capable of doing and what they're likely best at, but they all have their different uses in different situations; I found that many of the missions can be completed with a combination of Officers, Rifles, and Shotguns.

So, at first glace one might wonder how this is a tower defense game if you're using a squad of troops? Well, the gameplay has much to do with capturing and defending resources and bases. As seen below, there are hives which spawn alien creatures which must be defended against, destroyed, and captured. Each base point unlocks more points which can be spent on more marines (Rifles by default) and base defenses. Each marine has an increasing cost as more are hired and each one can have more points spent on equipment packs (such as a shotgun or a flamer) which changes their unit types.

As more points are captured the difficulty tends to increase as well. Yes, more points are unlocked for a more powerful squad or more powerful base defenses, but the other hives across the map may respond by mutating for a different unit type of their own (such as a ranged unit or one that explodes) or may start spawning MORE units to fight back against.

Enemies across the map have defenses of their own either to defend their hives or to defend resource crates which can be brought back to any base location for additional usable points.

Graphics:

The art-style here as you've seen is very familiar to the flash-based games of the past mixed with what I consider to be a hand-painted look. I can confirm it runs quite well and looks very nice on the eyes; nothing is too bright or dark or hard on the eyes and all actions respond very well to the inputs. 

Replayability:

I wouldn't normally think of a tower defense game to be very replayable... only because once you've completed a scenario there isn't much use in playing it again unless there's some type of achievement to be unlocked or a higher score to be achieved. Luckily there are weekly challenges available which give at least a weekly reason to reopen the game and compete against other players.

Also available are a couple DLCs - Trickster's Arsenal and Planetary Campaign. I haven't had the luxury of being able to play either of these myself, but given the opportunity, I would gladly open Infested Planet once again to try out the new content. Planetary Campaign seems to include a new procedural campaign creating a different experience each time. This is super interesting to me and might just be the reason I put more money into Infested Planet by Rocket Bear Games even though it was released a couple years ago.

SUMMARY:

I love RTS games and the real-time strategy portion of Infested Planet is very nicely done along with the Tower Defense aspect of it. I am in fact so happy with how it meshes together that... especially because I'm not normally a fan of tower defense games... I'm happy to give Infested Planet 10/10. This is probably a game I'll be coming back to in the future once I get my hands on the available expansions and you can bet if that happens that you'll see it on my livestream over on Twitch.

~ DaemonVirus

=== PC Game Review -- Ancestor's Legacy - Real-Time Strategy - 8.5 / 10 ===

Hello everyone, welcome to my review of Ancestor's Legacy, a real-time strategy game for the PC. I was lucky enough to get this game free for the weekend during a time when I actually had enough time to put into it to gain a proper opinion of it.

The first thing I would like to mention, is oh my god, the artwork is absolutely STUNNING. There's something about hand-drawn artwork that really catches my eye in games; that's not to say that artwork is what makes or breaks game, but rather good artwork in a game is the icing on the cake. Yeah, it's weird that I would start with something that isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things... but artwork like this really isn't seen often enough in my opinion.

So let's get into the meat of things: The first thing we're greeted with when starting the game is a pretty sweet fight scene that makes you think you might be playing some sort of third-person fighting game, weirdly there's like no context to this which is a bit confusing right off the bat. Then it transitions into a bit of a tutorial on how to command units and how to start playing the game.

So at this point, we've seen a guy killing people, gotten a bit of introductory gameplay, and we're thrown into some more beautiful artwork with a nice narrated voiceover telling us the story of what's going on and why it's happening.

Now we get into another tutorial scenario where we learn more about the mechanics of the game. So what's this game all about? Ancestor's Legacy is all about squad management; we're not dealing with massive groups of units doing tons of different things all at once. With a maximum squad limit of 10 squads, we're maybe fighting over two, POSSIBLY three different locations at one time.

The gameplay relies heavily on a combination of unit counters and terrain management. All foot-squads have the ability to make two different types of traps; either a trap which slows enemies down and makes them unable to run away, or a trap which instantly kills some of the units. Much of the gameplay revolves around managing what looks like fields of wheat or tall grass where the players are unable to see into unless they have at least one squad inside the field. Some squads have the ability to spot traps at the cost of not auto-attacking, though in my experience the traps are only effective in certain situations which realistically are NOT in the early part of the game.

When not fighting around fields and trees and traps, there is a struggle to be had over what I would call "village points" which are points which must be captured which then earn resources as the game goes on. These points are quite important in the early- to mid-game, though I could see how they would fall off in the later game if there's a buildup of resources and not much fighting because both forces don't engage to the point of death. Without more time in the game it's a bit hard to say really.

From what I was able to experience, the single player campaigns are well done and well driven... but after only a short time, I started to feel like the whole experience was quite slow. I'm sure there are many more fun scenarios to play with much more things going on, but honestly I found myself getting very bored of the campaign mode due to how slow it was waiting for units to move across the map, especially during the end-game where you know you've won the scenario but it's now a matter of actually finishing off the enemy units.

It was at this point that I decided I would make my overall judgement on the game based on the multiplayer aspect as that would obviously have to be the part of the game which would need to hold up over time to make it work the purchase. As fun as single player games are, why wouldn't a person want to test their mettle against another human player to see if they have what it takes to out-smart and out-maneuver a real live opponent? Now I didn't exactly have the experience to get myself into a bunch of live multiplayer games (though realistically, I do play a lot of RTS games.... so I don't know why I would be uncomfortable with dying and learning to play a game like this...), so I decided to test my excellent prowess against a poor soon-to-die computer AI opponent... this was an awful idea.

If you watch the livestream footage of me playing this game, you'll get a very good idea of how I was feeling throughout my experience. One one hand, I did enjoy the competitive skirmish multiplayer sort of thing... but on the other hand, I have strong feelings against it.

I first decided I would play as the Slavs who are supposed to have strong archers including horse archers, which sounded like a pretty fun time to me; my opponents I would set to the Saxons who I had been playing against in the campaign mode, so I figured it would be a bit of a familiar experience that I wouldn't be playing against all sorts of new units that I hadn't seen before. I also decided each side would start with a hero... unfortunately after bashing my head against my opponent for probably at least two hours I finally had to give up based on... the Slavs, who only start with basic swordsmen in the early game are much too weak against the Saxons who start with access to slingers as one of their first units.

As it turns out, having a ranged attack is quite important in the early portion of the game because on the low amount of resources available in the early-game, constructing traps is much too expensive as an attempt to fight back against the enemy. Let me explain it this way: One group of swordsmen get pelted by the ranged slingers until they get in range, the slingers then run away unobstructed because there's no ability to keep them in place. As the Slavs, if you make another group of swords men... you'll then find yourself in a two squads of swordsmen against two squads of slingers, which as you may guess, means you're getting hit from afar even more than before; once again, if the swordsmen engage the slingers, the slingers run away with little more than a scratch. Alright, so that didn't work, instead I would try making the trap which would cause the enemy squad to be unable to run away; in the early portion of the game, this means either the enemy squad STILL gets to run away because one group of swordsmen isn't enough to kill the opponent fast enough before they regain their ability to run away.... or they miss the trap altogether. Oh... and then there's the problem that you're also now one squad of swordsmen against TWO squads of slingers, meaning one group can run away while the other happily throws their rocks at your group futilely trying to chase them down.

Okay, so let's try a different strategy: I then decided to try starting out with one group of swordsmen to assist the hero capturing the first village, then going straight into horse archers! This was probably the closest strategy to really being effective, but once again the Slavs fell behind in power because of the extra resources required to even get into a fighting position. No matter how hard I tried or what I did... going after different villages first, trying to avoid the enemy, trying to harass them... it all turned out the same; the Saxons pulled ahead each and every time in every scenario I attempted.

Could it be that I'm just playing the faction wrong? I tested this theory by switching factions with the computer AI and continuing to play on the same map. This time I played as the Saxons and had my enemy as the Slavs; yeah... the game lasted a little bit longer with the computer playing the Slavs than when I was playing them, but the sad reality is that at no point did I actually feel threatened by them. The Saxon faction didn't just feel overpowered in this matchup because I was playing the wrong way, it was in fact because the Slav faction just has such a weak start in comparison that they really aren't all that threatening at any point.

Verdict

Gameplay: I'm still torn on how I feel about Ancestor's Legacy, but I do think there's a lot of potential to it which is why it's still on my wishlist to keep an eye on and see how it progresses.

Sound: Sound design in this game is great. There are lots of good sounds for each unit including voices, movement, and fighting. The bit of single player experience I got was fully voiced over for the story bits which made it very nice to listen to.

Replayability: The campaign felt slow to me and got very boring quickly. I would work through it if I had the time, but probably not all in one go. The multiplayer (vs AI) experience was a much more fun game mode, though I did find (after MUCH experimenting), that I had quite a large concern that the different factions may not be well-balanced.

Bonus: A little bonus in this game that isn't found in other games is the ability to go into a third-person sort of view where you can see very well designed fights with each unit in the squad doing their own thing. This is a much higher level of detail than what I have normally found in other RTS titles which some people may find to be quite an enjoyable addition.

SCORE: I've given this a lot of thought and I am in fact giving Ancestor's Legacy a score of 8.5 / 10 due to being a very well-designed game. I do have my worries about it which is why it's not getting the highest score, but it does have a lot of promise which could be easily patched into balance with future updates.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

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=== Dark Reign - Game Review, Real Time Strategy - 10/10 ===

     Today I'm here to review Dark Reign: The Future Of War. This game is an oldie made back in the good old days of 1997. This game was one of the first RTS games which came out at around the same time as Command & Conquer and Warcraft II. Considering the age of this game, I'm not reviewing it completely as though it is a new game considering the age of the game; but even considering how the game has held up over the years, I think it's going pretty great.

     Many RTS games these days tend to have at least two types of resources to work with. One basic resource and one advanced resources with which to make stronger things or research new things with. Some have even more types of resources; Dark Reign has one... and a half. The most important resource in this game is water; the story goes that most of the water has been poisoned and now fresh spring water is a valuable resource. So you collect enough water until it gets launched off-world in exchange for credits which you use to spend on things. Easy enough, right?

     Now, why would I say there's a half of another resource? I say that because you also have to power your buildings using a resource known as Taelon. That sounds pretty important.... but if you have enough credits, then you can keep building new power plants to power your things without filling them up with Taelon because every power plant is already half full when it's completed.

     The campaign in this game I think is done wonderfully. There are 12 levels in total and you can play each one in control of either of the two factions in the game. That means there are technically 24 levels in total... but if you only want to play each level from one side, you only have to complete 12 of them to get to the final level in which you  play a "third" faction which has access to all units from both sides in the game.

     The two factions in the game as seen above, are the Freedom Guard, and the Imperium. As this is an early RTS game, the two sides really aren't very different. They have nearly the same tech tree with some differences in units, but for the most part, everything is quite similar even when you get down to the units available to each side. I could take some points off for this, but as it is quite early in the timeline of RTS games, this isn't a huge concern for me. The game seems pretty well balanced and I can see how it could be quite competitive as a result.

     So from me, Dark Reign will get a 10/10. If you haven't played this game but are a huge fan of the Real Time Strategy genre, then you have to pick this up from GOG and give it a try. This was and still is one of my favourite games of all time. Yeah, maybe I'm giving it a higher score than it deserves, but this truly is a wonderful game and you really should give it a try.

~ Kyle Welykholowa