Review: Warzone 2100.

by WyldKard on June 6, 1999

Until now, real-time strategy games have become rather bland. Not that they’re not fun anymore, but the same things have been tried again and again, and its rare that a company releases a game that actually adds to the genre, rather than imitate it. When Red Alert came out, it blew C&C fans away, but it didn’t really add that much to the genre. When StarCraft hit the shelves, gamers flocked to it, though an objective analysis of the game will bring about the same conclusion: though the game was a good one, it didn’t really improve on the games that came before it all that much. In fact, in nearly every game in the genre, the same pitfalls keep coming back. Eidos Interactive, however, known for their Tomb Raider series, has stepped into a new light with Warzone’s release. Courtesy of Pumpkin Studios, the game’s designer, the best bits from many of Warzone’s predecessors were borrowed, while a whole array of new toys has been added to the arsenal.

It was almost a week between when I first saw Warzone being played and when I actually held a copy in my hands. My first impressions of the game were somewhat mixed. Though the game looked gorgeous, a couple concerns popped into my head. First off, the whole 3D idea was great, but in the past, I’ve found that moving the camera to see around chasms, trees, etc, was quite annoying, especially on a keyboard interface. This was a major turn off for me in Myth, which I might have otherwise enjoyed wholeheartedly. Secondly, the game looked pretty complex, and since I wasn’t able to play the game when I first saw it, the only explanations as to how gameplay worked came from discussing it with one of the players engrossed in a multiplayer skirmish. Even these concerns, however, weren’t enough to keep me from buying the game. After some consideration, I bought Warzone hoping for the best, and after a littleplay, found myself happily content.

The installation of the game was without note, and the introduction of the game wasn’t overly spectacular either. Of course, to me that doesn’t mean all that much. Though a more developed storyline might have hyped me up more for the single player campaign, I was content with what was given. After all, it wasn’t the storyline that attracted me to the game; it was the potential of the interface that intrigued me.

Unlike other games in the genre, Warzone has a nice tutorial built into the game, consisting of a walkthrough on building, and a very easy hunt’n destroy mission. I was very thankful for these, since they eased me into the game quite nicely, and addressed my first concern almost immediately. I found that the manipulation of the 3D landscape was much easier than I expected, and though keyboard controls for the camera exist, rotating the camera or changing its angle was just a matter of right-clicking the landscape and moving the mouse. Occasionally you adjust the camera view and find that your cursor is against one of the monitor walls, and though it slows things down a tad, it’s really no big deal.

My second concern wasn’t fully explored in Warzone until I played the game some more. The single player campaign seemed pretty straightforward in regards to what could be built, and only in the multiplayer game was the full depth of the game’s possibilities realized. When I played Total Annihilation after it came out, I was turned off by two things: the game’s atmosphere, and the complexity of the game. Neither of these things came back to haunt me in Warzone, and despite the fact that what you can build is based off of hierarchcal branches (X must exist to create Y), the order was pretty logical. Even so, a reference card included with the game would have been nice, perhaps having a tree of things that can be built on one side, and keyboard shortcuts on another. Without it, I found myself leafing through the booklet to find the keyboard section more than once.

My original concerns addressed, I found Warzone to be a very enjoyable experience, both in the single player campaigns, and in the multiplayers games. The interface was overall pretty simple, as all building commands, reference notes, etc. are accessible via icons on the bottom left of the screen. It’s what these icons let you do, however, that take Warzone beyond other games in the genre. As if the 3D view weren’t enough, Pumpkin Studio’s decided to let the player designate not only what units could be built, but what they were built of. Instead of having pre-configured units available for creation, the player has to design each unit they want built themselves. Though it may sound tough, the process is really quite simple. In the single-player campaign, destroying enemy installations or finding artifacts strewn about the landscape allows you to research new technologies, while in the multiplayer games, players can begin researching anything they want to, starting from the top of the hierarchy tree. Once items have been researched, they become available to you, as you will then be able to build new structures. Additionally, you will be able to design new units, and depending on what technologies you have researched, you’ll be able to choose from different types of unit bodies, transportation methods, and turrets. The latter can consist of both weapons and tools, and when all the categories are at your disposal, you can create a wide range of unit types. And, perhaps most beautiful of all, you can name the unit designs as you wish, or accept the generic vehicle description as the unit type.

All of this, added to the strengths that Warzone has pulled from other games, makes the game an enjoyable addition to one’s gaming collection. An infinite amount of units can be grouped (the lack of which was a huge annoyance in StarCraft), and actual strategy needs to be employed when attacking. Huge tank rushes don’t pay off, and depending on the construction of a unit, it will be stronger in some areas than others. Aerial units can also be created, and though Warzone doesn’t have any focus on sea-based units, hovercrafts can be built that allow one to travel both on land, and on water. Among the non-weapon turrets one will find repair modules, scanners, and command arrays, all of which add to Warzone’s rich depth. The latter actually allow units to be assigned to commanders, so that strategical strikes can be made and fire can be directed on specific units, structures, etc. Without them, Warzone’s powerful AI comes into play, which is perhaps the best AI yet seen in a real-time strategy game. Not only do units make room for units trying to get through narrow passages, but repair units will automatically seek out damaged units, and your vehicles are capable of retreating while still firing backwards at their enemies, making real use of the capability of turrets, the way it ought to be. What’s more, if you’re sending units in for an attack, and some members of the group aren’t in reach of the target, they won’t just sit there, but target another nearby enemy, making full use of your army’s capabilities.

Perhaps one of the coolest things that Warzone offers is something that’s annoyed me for quite some time with games in the real-time strategy line. After building up a powerful base to your liking, and after building up an army of great magnitude, you find yourself obliterating the enemy and then having to start from stratch in the next mission. The boys over at Pumpkin Studio’s have changed this repetitive pattern, however, and have made the single player campiagn in such a way that you maintain your original base throughout the game. With as much to research in the game as there is, you find your army growing more and more technological in every mission, and when away from base, you can call in transports to pick up units from your production factories. This means that you never have to worry about rebuilding your main base, and despite building defensive structures and secondary bases of operation, you don’t need to start from scratch over and over again. It’s like a real, simulated war, where your legion doesn’t disappear whenever you receive a new assignment.

The only major problems I found with the game were in the multiplayer mode. Despite downloading the 1.03 patch from the Net, I ran into a couple of multiplayer problems. For one, despite saying so in the manual, one can’t enter a skirmish game without having a computer player. There are two other modes of play for multiplay, campaign and team, though only skirmish allows one to have up to 8 players, instead of a meager four. Also, campaign multiplay doesn’t work as it’s supposed to either, or at least, how it seems it should. While the description for camplaign play says that you have to find artifacts before you can research new technologies (just like in the single play game), everything is still open for research. Hopefully, these will be fixed with the upcoming 1.04 patch. Though not detrimental, these variances in gameplay sure would be nice, and despite the need-at-least-one-computer-player flaw, it seems almost pointless to play anything other than a skirmish game.

Also annoying was the fact that your only options were to have either alliances on or off during multiplay. Whenever we wanted to play a team game againts a number of unallied computer opponents, the computer opponents ended allying. Some way to restrict computer players from doing so might be nice to have.

Another minor problem we encountered was that users who did not have the IPX protocol installed couldn’t access the IPX menu. Sure, it makes sense, but you’d expect that pressing the IPX label would at least do something. Even just an error box would pop up, so you know that you forgot to reinstall the IPX protocol when you reformatted last. In the fast-paced world of compter gaming, you can’t expect gamers to remember everything.

The most annoying flaw I’ve found, though, was the fact that we couldn’t seem to get skirmish games working over IPX at all. Whenever we tried, some people were booted from the game, and an error sometimes popped up claiming that people were using different files, when in fact everyone was playing from a clean install with the same patch version. The errors went so far as to claim some people were cheating, and the only way to get get around this problem was to play via TCP/IP.

Pumpkin Studio’s hasn’t fallen off the map just yet, and they seem pretty dedicated to fixing the bugs out there. Next week, the version 1.04 patch will hit the web, and hopefully fix some of the problems mentioned. Even without the patch, though, Warzone is a major contender for the best real-time strategy out thus far. If you’re looking for a spectacular storyline with developed characters like in C&C, Warzone may not make your cut, but if that’s only secondary to gameplay, Warzone may just be your bag, baby. It’s certainly gotten me hooked, and I can’t wait to get another screamin’ multiplay session in. 3D freak or not, Warzone 2100′s got a bigger bag of tricks than the next game in the genre, and I’ll certainly be measuring future real-time strategy games up to this one.

Wild, Wild Rumpus Rating: 8.2 outta 10

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