Writing Update

It’s time for another exciting writing update! Since the start of the year I’ve been focusing on bringing various projects to order. If you’ve followed my previous updates you’ll know I started work on a new project late last year (DOTJ). But I was also attempting to work through a fairly substantial edit of another project (TLDK) at the same time.

In addition to this, I had a couple of other projects (HS & WFTD) I wanted to do some work on. But trying to jump from one project to the next wasn’t really getting me anywhere and I was achieving very little. So at the start of this year, I decided to tackle one project at a time and try to get all of my existing projects in order, allowing me to focus entirely on DOTJ.

Throughout January I completed another edit of my e-books. Nothing substantial, just a few formatting tweaks. I also did a free promotion on a couple of them and will likely do another soon. Following this, I began and completed a light edit of HS. Then in February I began and completed a light edit of WFTD.

I was now free to focus on TLDK, which I knew would require a more heavy edit. And that’s what I’m currently working on but hope to have completed within a week or two. It’s been quite refreshing working on TLDK again. I haven’t touched the project for some time, and I feel like I’ve been able to make some considerable improvements.

TLDK is actually the first book of a trilogy, and I already have a draft of its sequel (TSOTS) but I won’t take another look at that just yet. No, once this edit of TLDK is wrapped up, I’ll be focusing entirely on DOTJ. With the rest of my work in fairly good order, it’ll be good to get stuck into something new. I’d love to have a first draft completed by say, the end May, but we’ll see how it goes.

Suburban Killbot: Top 10 Favourite Games

I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time, but it was always hard trying to figure out what to include or even how to approach it. Should this be a list of what I consider to be the ‘best’ 10 games I’ve ever played, or simply the most ‘important’ in terms of how they influenced my love for the medium? I opted more towards the latter than the former, as I must admit I’ve included some titles I probably wouldn’t enjoy half as much now as I did at the time of their release. 

So here it is, my Top 10 Favourite Games –

                              1) System Shock 2                 2) Panzer Dragoon Saga

                                     (PC / 1999)                          (Sega Saturn / 1998)

                             3) Shogun: Total War                    4) Mass Effect
                                     (PC / 2000)                        (X-Box 360 / 2007)

                      5) Death Tank Zwei                                    6) Shenmue
                     (Sega Saturn / 1996)                            (Sega Dreamcast / 2000)

                   7) The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind              8) Populous
                                   (PC / 2002)                      (Sega Mega Drive / 1990)

                                9) Dragon Force                   10) Wizard of Wor
                             (Sega Saturn / 1997)             (Commodore 64 / 1983)

Once I’d figured out how I was going to approach this list, picking the games to appear wasn’t actually too difficult, although putting them into some sort of order was a little tricky. I’ve already covered a few of these games on the blog, and the intention is to review or cover the rest over the course of this year if I can find the time.

Now Playing: Far Cry 4

I can’t remember the last time I was this bored or angry playing a video game. And I really shouldn’t be. Far Cry 4 has a lush open world map, solid and entertaining combat, a hefty amount of content in the form of various missions and objectives, and a narrative full of unique, quirky and fun characters. So why, when playing FC4, was I mostly either bored or irritated? I suppose it’s because FC4 feels very by the numbers. It’s not so much Far Cry 4 as Far Cry 3.5.

Like its predecessor, FC4 is a perfectly competent, open world first person shooter. You play as Ajay Ghale, who may be less of a prat than the protagonist of FC3, but is sadly just as bland. The game is set in the fictional country of Kyrat, and at the heart of the story is a civil war between the Golden Path rebels and the Royal Army of Pagan Min. As far as the narrative aspects go, FC4 is interesting enough, but that’s mostly thanks to the oddball characters who populate the story rather than the overall plot.

Unlike FC3, FC4 has something of a branching mission/plot structure, whereby you get to choose between two characters each with their own set of missions and overall objectives. This sounds great, but in reality it doesn’t make much difference to the overall experience. In terms of major deviations from the FC3 formula, the ‘mission choice’ system is the only new mechanic of note. Aside from that, it’s pretty much business as usual.

 

You traverse a large open map, climbing radio towers to reveal and unlock new locations and missions. These include races, hunting challenges, assassinations and hostage rescues. You can also capture enemy outposts either by stealth or force. Everything you do rewards experience, money and skill points. You have two separate skill trees, one relating to combat, the other to health and crafting.

Yes, crafting. Because like FC3, you’ll collect animal skins to craft new holsters, ammo pouches and…wallets. Yes, the upgradable wallet returns! Thankfully, I found it fairly easy to upgrade most of this nonsense fairly early on in the game. It’s like the developers felt the need to include it (it’s part of the formula!), but realised it was just a waste of the player’s time, so they made it a lot easier to knock the upgrades out.

So far, so familiar. The world of FC4 is large, very pretty and certainly enjoyable to explore, although due to its mountainous nature, it can be a chore to traverse, especially if you don’t have an air vehicle at hand. There’s a new addition of an ‘auto-drive’ feature which is nice, but feels more like an acknowledgement that it’s pretty f**king tedious driving from A to B. Speaking of the auto-drive, it’s reliable in the sense that it will get you to your destination, but it’s also quite amusing how it will happily run over any unfortunate civilians on the way.

There’s new animals to murder in FC4, although once you’ve upgraded all your stuff, there’s not much reason to bother with them. You can use bait to lure wild animals to attack enemies, but the system is so wonky I rarely bothered with it. Half the time the animal would get shot before it even did any damage, or it would ignore the enemies and charge straight at me.

This also occurred when I’d try to free an animal from a cage. Even when doing so from stealth, the animal would often come straight at me, revealing my position. One time I climbed onto a roof to avoid a tiger, only to turn around and realise the animal had teleported onto the roof with me. Either that or the tiger knew how to climb a very tall ladder.

 

Oh, and I couldn’t not mention the animals without talking about the bloody eagles which randomly swoop down and claw at your face for no apparent reason. I started having flashbacks to the cliff racers from Morrowind. It’s an annoying ‘feature’, especially when it happens inside a building in the middle of a fight. Whoever thought this was a good idea needs to be slapped with a dead fish.

And this seems like an appropriate moment to explain why FC4 irritated me so much. It’s not one thing, more lots of little things. I was irritated at receiving radio messages during cut-scenes when other characters were speaking, meaning I couldn’t understand either. I was irritated every time the ‘mission zone’ alert popped up because I’d dare stray a little too far from my objective. In an open world game. I must have told the game to f**k off more than once because of this.

I was very irritated by how only some ledges could be climbed but not others, or only from a very specific angle, and for no apparent reason. I was also incredibly irritated by the wing-suit, which had a wonderful habit of triggering even when I was simply hopping down from a box, resulting in an instant death as I crashed to the floor. Like FC3, FC4 also has the problem of assigning ‘pick up’ and ‘search’ to the same key, resulting in you continually tossing away your weapon when looting dead enemies.

Another issue, although not gameplay related, is technical performance, which is best described as ‘inconsistent’. I actually had the same problem with FC4 as I did with Black Flag. Upon loading the game one day, I’d get a stable 60FPS. Yet the next day, my framerate would be all over the place on identical settings. The games I’ve had this happen on have all been Ubisoft games, so I doubt it’s a coincidence.

Okay, let’s take a breath and try to talk about some positive aspects of FC3. I mean 4. The combat is fun. It has a nice flow to it and a decent selection of weapons, all of which can be customised to a degree. They feel like they pack a suitable punch, and explosions hit with an appropriate level of force. Stealth is still a little too easy, but certainly enjoyable if you like to plan an attack and take down an outpost without raising an alarm (although it’s usually quicker to just run in and shoot everyone).

As I’ve already mentioned, I liked the characters and the world/setting as a whole, it’s just a shame there’s nothing particularly interesting to do in it. But you can ride elephants! That’s new. Uh…and there’s new collectibles to find, I guess? Honestly, it’s hard to think of anything FC4 does that makes it stand apart from its predecessor. There’s some new climbing mechanics which I liked. The new environments look nice. Yeah. But that’s the real problem isn’t it? Despite the number slapped on the box, Far Cry 4 isn’t much more than Far Cry 3 in a new location with a fresh lick of paint.

 

Which means that although it gets all the things right that FC3 did, it also gets all the same things wrong. Because like FC3, FC4 is ultimately a rather shallow and repetitive experience. Outside of a few unique and engaging story based missions, there’s nothing here to get particularly excited about. You’ve seen and done this all before. It’s fun in short bursts, but only in short bursts. Whenever I tried to play for longer, I grew either very bored or very irritated by it all.

Because although there’s certainly a lot of content on offer, like FC3, it’s mostly meaningless, repetitive content and really not worth your time. That said, if you liked FC3 you can be fairly certain you’ll like FC4. Because it’s pretty much the same bloody game. And maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on it for that. Why f**k with a formula that worked out so well the last time? And if you liked that formula, maybe that will be enough for you.

But for me, FC4 plays it far too safe. It doesn’t attempt to do anything new or interesting outside of a few minor additions. It doesn’t attempt to innovate, or introduce new features or dynamics to the gameplay. It’s by the numbers. It’s a game built to a formula I grew tired of before I was even half way through the previous game. But does that make FC4 a bad game?

No. FC4 isn’t a bad game. But it is very bland. Very safe. Very boring. Maybe if I hadn’t played FC3 I’d have enjoyed it a lot more. But I did play FC3, and now I feel like I’ve played it again, only this time with the addition of a lot of irritating bugs and features that don’t quite work. And although, I must admit, there were times I genuinely had some fun with it, a lot of the time I just wanted to punch it in its stupid face.

5/10

The Division (BETA)

Set in a New York on the brink of anarchy following the release of a deadly virus, The Division is a mixture of third person shooting and RPG mechanics. You play as a special operative or ‘agent’ who has been ‘activated’ and sent into the quarantine zone to assist local law and military forces to re-establish some semblance of order and control.

I can’t say much more about the narrative/character aspects of The Division, because the beta only included a single campaign mission. This isn’t entirely surprising, but as a result, it’s hard to make any kind of judgement about its story driven campaign. In fact, I’d say it’s hard to form any solid judgements on any aspect of The Division based on this beta, due to how limited the content was. Hell, I think I completed all the available content within about two hours.

You begin by creating your agent, although the beta only offered a couple of basic defaults, so how extensive the customisation options are remains to be seen. Your character doesn’t have a name, voice or personality. They’re of the ‘mute weirdo’ variety who people speak at but not to. Although you can always ‘speak’ for your character if you want, I suppose, making sarky remarks in conversations. It’s always fun when every other character is so bloody serious.

 

The Division is an RPG, which means you’ll level up by completing missions and killing things, although I don’t know how many levels the full game will ship with. You have a skill tree, with the choice of equipping two main abilities. But once again, it’s hard to talk much about the skill and progression system of The Division, because so much of it was locked in the beta. It wasn’t even possible to view certain character skill/talent screens to see what would be available.

It kind of left me wondering what the point of this beta was. It was a ‘closed’ beta, but the way they were handing out keys, it may as well have been open. I suppose it may have served as a useful technical / server test, but with such limited content in terms of character progression and skills, I doubt it was useful in terms of testing balance. I suspect the whole thing was just to drum up some pre-release hype.

Your character can equip three weapons – a primary, a secondary and a pistol. This is in addition to various grenade types and some special ammo types. Weapons are graded on the typical colour based system of rarity / power. They can also be modified in terms of stats and appearance. Your gear can also be improved, and there’s even a selection of cosmetic items to personalise your character.

There’s a crafting system in The Division, but this was also locked out so I can’t comment on exactly what it is or how it works. There was also an ‘intel’ section which I assume acts as a library to all the various audio logs and information you gather on your travels. I assume, because this was also locked out. Yeah.

 

When you first step foot in the game, your first objective is to travel to your primary base which is currently in a bit of a mess. This spins off into three core missions to start getting the base up and running again, although only one of these missions was available to play.

It involves entering a stadium to rescue a doctor. The interesting thing about The Division is that it’s a game you can play solo or in co-op. I was concerned how viable it would be to play the game solo, but thankfully, it appears to balance the content accordingly, not only to player numbers, but also to level. I played this mission twice, first on Normal and then on Hard. I don’t know how the difficulty will scale for a solo player later in the campaign, but it felt fairly balanced here.

Beyond this core mission, there was a few side missions to undertake in the beta, but nothing particularly exciting. There were also various bonus objectives to clear an area of enemies, or to rescue hostages. I don’t know if these were ‘set’ missions, or missions which would repeat over time. They felt more like the latter.

These missions reward points you can spend to upgrade your main base which will then alter visually to represent the addition of new staff and equipment. The beta was only limited to a single wing (medical) and two upgrades though, but I thought the system looked pretty neat.

In terms of gameplay, it behaves as you’d expect a third person cover shooter. You can vault over cover, perform a combat roll, blind shoot, use grenades etc. It’s fairly standard stuff. The movement system can feel a little unresponsive at first, but you soon become accustomed to it. The shooting is fairly satisfying, with a nice punch and recoil.

 

Of course, being an RPG, all your enemies have a level and a health bar. Which means, depending on your level compared to theirs, and if they’re an ‘elite’ enemy or not, you’ll find yourself in situations where you’re repeatedly shooting a guy point blank in the face with a shotgun and he won’t instantly die.

It’s a little weird, but it’s not quite as silly as it sounds. Most enemies do go down within a few hits, especially if you get a head shot. Some ‘elite’ enemies can be a bit of a bullet sponge, but that’s just the nature of the game. It didn’t really bother me.

I’ve not yet touched upon the multiplayer aspect of The Division. There are ‘public’ areas in the game and the instant transition between these is great. The MP, beyond the co-op of the campaign, is all about the ‘Dark Zone’. It’s a free for all area of the city where players can team up or go ‘rogue’.

It has its own level system and unique gear, but gear acquired in the DZ can also be transferred to the main campaign. It’s quite neat how it all ties together, but once again, the beta was limited in terms of what was on offer in the DZ. There are NPCs to kill and loot, but any gear you acquire in the DZ isn’t safe until you extract it by air. And until then, it’s up for grabs by any player who fancies their chances.

This is going ‘rogue’, although doing so will then make you a target for everyone else in the area. It’s an interesting system, but the DZ wasn’t particularly interesting to play in. NPC spawn times were very long, meaning you’d often be running about for significant periods without ever encountering an enemy.

And beyond doing that, what else is there to actually do in the DZ? Based on what I saw in the beta, there’s very little reason to bother with it other than the fun of teaming up with/murdering other people. Maybe the full game will feature specific missions or events or something. I hope so, because at the moment there’s nothing really to do in there beside grind for gear in order to grind for more gear.

 

Visually, The Division looked a bit shit when I started it up. But I can’t fault the game for its PC options, as it’s a pretty extensive menu allowing you to tweak the graphics to an impressive degree. Once I’d fiddled with those options for a bit, I got the game looking pretty damn good. It varies depending on the location, time of day and weather, but at times, The Division looks f**king gorgeous.

Of course, all this pretty can come at a price in terms of performance. Using a custom mix of High/Ultra settings, I ran the game at about 40-50 FPS. I could get a fairly stable 60 if I knocked down some options, but I found 40-50 acceptable enough, and I was willing to pay the trade off to have the game looking so nice.

There’s a really nice attention to detail throughout the environments, although I do have concerns about just how large the game map is. The beta was maybe just under one quarter of the full release map, but it was a fairly small area. That said, there were a lot of interior and underground areas to explore, some of which may only unlock for various missions.

My only other major concern is how substantial the story driven campaign is. How many missions? How many hours? Also, how much variety in mission types? Or will every major mission be a ‘go to X, fight waves of enemies, hit checkpoint, fight boss, return to base’ kind of thing?

Overall, despite my irritation at how much was locked out and my concerns regarding length and variety, I must admit that I enjoyed what was on offer in this very limited slice of The Division. I went into the game with fairly low expectations, but it surprised me in a good way. I doubt I’ll be picking this up on release, but it’s certainly something I’ll consider in the future.

Total War: Warhammer - Regional Occupation

There’s been some controversy regarding information released on the new regional occupation system of the upcoming Total War: Warhammer. You can read the official developer post about it here. But as a long term fan of this series, I thought I’d share my own thoughts -

The game I’m most interested in playing this year has to be Total War: Warhammer. I’ve been a fan of the Total War series since the release of the original Shogun, but as much as I’ve enjoyed the historical based titles, I’ve always wanted to see the release of a fantasy based variation.

But I’m more than just interested in this upcoming title for its fantasy world and characters. I’m also interested to see how this game can shake up the franchise and provide a unique and fresh Total War experience.

Because in many ways, I’ve grown rather weary of what many view as the ‘traditional’ nature of Total War. It’s probably why I’ve enjoyed the smaller, yet more focused experiences of expansion titles such as Napoleon, Fall of the Samurai and Attila, to the larger, more expansive core titles.

These titles may not have offered the scope or variety of Empire, Shogun 2 or Rome 2, but they all introduced new dynamics and features to the campaign which, for me at least, provided a more engaging experience.

For me, the Total War ‘formula’ was only about the combination of turn based and real time strategy. The ability to see the translation of the campaign map to the battle map. I never viewed the ability to conquer every region upon the map as a core component to the series because in the 15 years I’ve been paying these games, I’ve never actually done so!

I’d imagine many fans of this series would agree that Total War has always had issues with long term campaign engagement. In other words, the beginning of a campaign is always more interesting than the end. Attempts to combat this issue in the past have been met with mixed results – the Realm Divide of Shogun 2, the Civil War of Rome 2, or the Hun invasion of Attila.

The problem is simple – 50 to 100 turns into a typical Total War campaign, a player is often so powerful and wealthy that conquering the rest of the map is inevitable – victory all but guaranteed. The loss of an army or region is but a minor set-back. There remains little to no risk to the player or their empire, and the chance of failure – the chance to lose – is all but non-existent. Which is why I’ve never conquered the entire campaign map in any of the Total War titles. Because beyond a certain point, there’s no more challenge to your expansion.

The problem is simple enough, so is the solution, equally simple? If the player is growing too powerful, too quickly, then why not restrict how powerful the player can grow? Why not place limitations upon the player to prevent them from ever reaching that tipping point where a campaign ceases to be an engaging challenge, and instead becomes an inevitable chore?

It doesn’t seem like such a radical notion, but in terms of Total War, it’s quite a fundamental departure from the traditional campaign formula of the series. And that’s why, with the announcement of regional occupation restrictions in Total War: Warhammer, it’s caused quite the stir within the community.

In the development post, there’s various discussions about how the team came to this decision, including discussion regarding Warhammer lore. I won’t discuss Warhammer lore here because as I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past, I know practically sod all about the licence. I’m looking at this purely from the perspective of campaign gameplay.

In other words, I really couldn’t give a f**k if it’s consistent with Warhammer lore or not. My only interest is this – will this new system solve the issue of long term campaign engagement? Will this provide a unique and fresh Total War experience? I honestly can’t say. Nobody can, not without playing it. But we can sure have a swell time debating the matter!

As I normally do, I’ll adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach to this new system. I don’t believe doing something different is doing something wrong. Certainly there’s truth in the old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke’, but I feel it’s time for Total War to take a risk and fundamentally shake up its core gameplay. That said, this wouldn’t be the first time Total War has done so.

In many ways it’s not a surprise that Total War: Warhammer is changing aspects to the Total War ‘formula’ because the series has done so, to one degree or another, with nearly every major release. The transition from the 2D campaign of Shogun 1 to the 3D campaign of Rome 1 was a fundamental shift in how Total War was played, and was also considered quite controversial at the time by many players.

The introduction of gun line warfare in Empire was a major shift in how a player would approach the real time battles. Shogun 2 introduced more major changes, particularly with region development. In previous titles, settlements could be constructed as the player saw fit, but Shogun 2 introduced restrictions on what could be built and where, in addition to limiting building slots per region.

At the time, this change, much like the recent announcement of occupation restrictions, was met with controversy, a concern that the developers were ‘taking away’ options from the player. I’m sure many still feel this way. But personally, I loved the transition to a restricted building system, because it fixed another issue I had with previous games in the series.

In Rome 1, for example, it was possible to turn nearly every settlement into an economic and military powerhouse. Losing a region had little to no impact on your economy or ability to train new forces. But in Shogun 2, the restrictions in place forced the player to consider very carefully how each settlement should be constructed. Should it focus on economy or military? And losing a region, such as a region with a valuable resource, was far more of a concern, even as the campaign progressed.

It’s a great example of how artificial restrictions placed upon the player resulted in far more strategically important choices. And restrictions on regional occupation feels like a natural progression of this system. In the development post, Game Director Ian Roxburgh argues - ‘Simply painting the map your colour is not always a route to victory, and is arguably the least strategically interesting.’ And I agree, as this has proven true throughout the entire series.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the recent Age of Charlemagne DLC was the introduction of new victory conditions tied to imperium, rather than simply taking ‘X number of regions’. With the addition of new technology and building chains to support this system, it was possible to approach and complete a campaign in a variety of ways, not necessarily through war and war alone.

Obviously, war will play a key role in Total War: Warhammer, but with the introduction of unique characters, quest chains and likely race specific victory conditions, I’m hopeful that we’ll have a far more dynamic and strategically interesting campaign than simply ‘take X number of regions to win’.

Continuing our discussion of how the Total War series has evolved, Rome 2 provides another great shift, with the introduction of the regional province system, a new army recruitment system, army legacy and campaign ‘stances’, battle map capture points, and an entirely new (if somewhat broken) political system. It also introduced a controversial new system of its own – agent and army limitations. But like the settlement building restrictions of Shogun 2, I’d argue this new system didn’t ‘limit’ the experience, but instead forced the player into making more important strategic choices regarding when and where to strike.

Total War: Attila refined, expanded and improved upon many of these systems whilst also introducing new dynamics of its own, particularly the ‘horde’ and ‘raze’ mechanics. There were many who were wary of the horde system but it proved to introduce an entirely new way to play and approach a Total War campaign. And when playing as the Huns, you couldn’t conquer any regions, yet such a restriction introduced a unique and fresh gameplay experience. The ‘raze’ system, though not particularly well balanced upon release, also introduced a new dynamic and strategic option to the campaign.

The point I suppose I’m trying to make is that beyond the combination of turn based and real time strategy, there’s never been a consistent or core ‘formula’ to the Total War series. Nearly every game has, for good or for ill, changed, chopped, cut and added features in an attempt to provide a unique experience.

And I must give it credit for that, even if the changes it’s made haven’t always been to my personal tastes. It takes balls for a developer to take risks with an established formula, particularly in a series as long running as Total War. And yet, that’s what the developers have done with nearly every major release. It’s a risk, because as much as change and innovation is desired, it is also feared.

But fearing change can also lead to stagnation, to the repetition of a tired formula and the loss of interest in a series. I think it’s a great testament to the series when, at the time of writing, there are five Total War games in the Top Games list on Steam by current player count. It’s why, when you ask what people’s favourite Total War game is, that you’ll get such a mix of responses stretching to every title in the series.

Because each entry in the series is unique in its own way, due the changes to its formula. And Total War: Warhammer is set to continue this trend. I can’t say I’m in favour of, or approve of the changes in this upcoming title until I’ve played it for myself, but I am in favour of change, because I feel that change, on the whole, has benefited the series rather than harmed it.

And that’s why I’m willing to keep an open mind about the new region occupation system. Do I share concerns regarding replayability? Regarding the possibility of a more ‘rail road’ experience? Of course! But I’m also interested to see if this system does provide a fresh Total War experience. I feel that many of the controversial ‘restrictions’ that have been incorporated into the series down the years have enhanced the campaign rather than detracted from it. And I hope this new system does the same.

How? Well, previously, despite alternative options, occupying a region was always the best long term choice. There was no downside to doing so – you gain new land, a new source of income and a new foothold from which you can expand your empire. As a result, campaigns often followed a repetitive pattern of expand, conquer, replenish and repeat.

The new system of regional restrictions may change this in two positive ways. The first, as I’ve already discussed, is that it will serve to limit player power and prevent the player from ever growing so powerful that mid to end game conquest is no more than a tedious and inevitable chore.

The second, is that the new system will force the player into making different strategic decisions regarding particular regions. Even with multiple options available in previous games, occupying a region was always the best long term option. By taking that option away, the player will be forced to consider the alternatives.

This system will also undoubtedly influence how you advance into certain territory. Without being able to capture a string of settlements on the way, your armies will be all the more vulnerable the further they advance from your borders. The player won’t have the safety net of retreating to a friendly nearby settlement. They’ll have to consider very carefully how far they’re willing to push their forces into hostile territory.

Of course now, I’m simply speculating. I don’t really know how this new system will work in practice. But I see potential here, so I’m keeping an open mind. I want mid to late game campaigns to remain fresh, exciting and challenging. And maybe this new system will provide that. All we can do now is wait and see.

Now Playing: Deserts of Kharak

Deserts of Kharak began life as a ‘spiritual prequel’ to the Homeworld series by the name of Hardware: Shipbreakers. It was a game I intended to keep an eye on, at least until Gearbox bought the rights to the Homeworld licence and news about Hardware fell dark. But a year or so later, Hardware reappeared, retitled as Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak.

Which is great! Because it’s a new, now ‘official’ Homeworld game. A new Homeworld game. That’s something I thought I’d never get to say. I’ve seen some people say it can’t be a ‘proper’ Homeworld game because it’s not set in space. But we’ll ignore those people because they’re dumb. Space or not, Deserts of Kharak is a Homeworld game. And I really couldn’t be happier.

So what makes a Homeworld game so special? For me, it’s all about the story and the tone. Homeworld was always about a journey. A great quest. And that’s what DoK is all about. It’s a prequel to the original game, telling the story of a dying world and a final, desperate mission to save its people. All the HW games had this wonderfully haunting theme of desolation and survival, which is something DoK captures perfectly.

The story is told across a thirteen mission single player campaign. It was the campaign of DoK that I was most interested in. I know there are many people who love the HW games for their skirmish/MP aspects as much, if not more than, the story driven campaigns, but for me, the campaigns were what made me fall in love with the series. And getting to return to this universe, with such a rich history and lore, is fantastic.

Deserts of Kharak also captures that classic Homeworld vibe through its visuals and sound. The look and design of the units is perfect, with a lovely attention to detail, especially in terms of unit animations. But it’s the audio where DoK really shines. The soundtrack is fantastic, and the VA work is of a high quality.

The unit chatter is great, with fun little conversations playing out between combat. I’ve said before how I feel it’s important for an RTS to have ‘personality’ for its units, connecting them to the player. This is something DoK does very well, if not in some ways better than the original Homeworld games. Also good is the battle/unit sounds, with satisfying weapon, engine and explosion effects. All the audio work in DoK is superb.

Although set entirely in a desert, the maps of the campaign are fairly diverse and mix things up quite nicely, with missions set in canyons, during storms, at night etc. Although some texture work can be a little low quality here and there, graphically, DoK is a great looking game. And as for technical performance, overall, it’s pretty good, although there are odd times when the FPS noticeably drops for no obvious reason.

The campaign was a lot of fun, and certainly something I’ll be playing through again. That said, I do have a few issues with it. The first is simply that it’s rather short. Even playing on the hardest ‘classic’ difficulty, I breezed through the campaign in about 8 hours, and that was even when I was taking my time. The final mission is also a little lacklustre, followed by a rather abrupt cinematic.

Speaking of difficulty, I also never needed to restart a mission because the campaign, honestly, isn’t particularly challenging. A part of this issue is due to the way mission triggers are too obviously signposted, allowing you to prepare for the next ‘stage’ of a mission for as long as you’d like.

My only other issue with the campaign is how it never really mixes up your enemies. There’s no missions where you have to combat a new threat. It’s always you versus the same bad guys. There’s no ‘third’ faction for you to contend with, even for a single mission, and this does harm the campaign in terms of variety.

The UI of DoK is very Homeworld, with a tactical sensor overlay and a movement disc to highlight terrain height. Because terrain plays a key role in DoK. As an RTS, DoK is a very solid and enjoyable title. It doesn’t stray too far from the formula you’d expect, but it does add a few neat little dynamics to its gameplay. The first, as I’ve mentioned, is terrain, with high ground providing a useful bonus. Line of sight is equally important, as units can’t hit what they can’t see.

The unit roster is quite small, which may disappoint some, but every unit fulfils a very specific role and many have multiple special abilities. Units also rank up and carry between missions, meaning it’s important to try to keep them alive. I love the mobile ‘mothership’ which serves as a giant, sand crawling aircraft carrier. That said, it could really use more aircraft landing pads, because once you have several squadrons on the go, it’s a nightmare bringing them all in to dock.

As you would expect in an RTS, you’ll be harvesting resources, building units and researching upgrades to smash your enemy. It’s not the most complex game in terms of strategy, even with the addition of the line of sight and terrain systems – ultimately it’s still a game of hitting your enemy with superior numbers.

Overall though, despite my few issues with it and its relatively short length, I really liked the campaign a lot. The developers have done a fantastic job of transitioning the Homeworld experience from space down onto the ground, and I have to give them credit for that. But what does DoK offer beyond its good, but somewhat limited campaign? Sadly, not very much.

There’s a skirmish mode, as you’d expect, but it provides barely any customisation options in terms of match set ups. It’s a fun mode, nonetheless, but it’s also a mode which really highlights the flaws in the game AI. The campaign disguises these flaws quite effectively but in skirmish, with the AI on equal footing to the player, it’s way too easy to beat. That’s not to say the AI can’t surprise you, but it’s something they really need to improve. To make skirmish even more limited is the lack of maps. There’s only five. But they have said more maps will be released for free, which is nice.

Skirmish mode is really meant to be the warm up for the MP though. Unfortunately, from what few games I’ve played of the MP, DoK is the type of RTS I can’t say I really enjoy playing online. It’s very much of the ‘spam and rush’ type gameplay, where it’s all about employing an ‘efficient’ build order and then hitting your opponent as quickly as possible.

This makes games, especially the 1v1 mode, very dull to play, because people just end up repeating the same tactics every match. In fact, there’s already a popular rush strategy which I’ve encountered in nearly every 1v1 I’ve fought. I can’t blame people for using it. It’s fast, efficient and it works, but boy does it make playing 1v1 a tedious experience.

I know some people enjoy this style of play, and I really don’t have an issue with rush style strategies, but there needs to be a balance. A certain risk/reward. That balance doesn’t exist right now, so if you don’t roll with the most popular strategy, you’re kind of screwing yourself. And I hate feeling forced into playing in a very specific way. That really kills the experience for me.

I was hoping the ‘artifact retrieval’ game would introduce a different dynamic to the MP. The idea is to retrieve more artifacts than your opponent within the time limit. It’s a really good concept for a mode, with the potential for a lot of back and forth power struggles across the map. In concept. In reality, the mode is totally f**ked.

Because despite the objective, you can still win the game simply by destroying the enemy carrier. And so, people just ignore the artifacts and spam and rush. If they actually tied victory conditions to the artifact retrieval count, then I think you’d have something quite enjoyable and fun, a mode that required more thought and long term strategy. But as it exists right now, you can just ignore the artifacts and rush your opponent’s carrier to win, making the entire mode utterly pointless.

Of course, playing MP, at least at the time of writing, is a bloody nightmare anyway. It seems to be region locked, so trying to find a game takes forever, particularly in the team modes. It might be that the rush strategies of 1v1 aren’t quite so prevalent in the 2v2 or 3v3 matches, but I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never been able to find a game using the auto-match system.

I have played a few team games by joining public matches, but even these are thin on the ground, with only one or two on the go at a time. They really need to remove whatever restrictions they have in place on the auto-match system or the MP for DoK is going to be dead before it’s even begun.

Another annoyance, which applies to both SP and MP is the zoom range. I’d love to be able to zoom out more without relying on the sensor view. Also, it’s not possible to rebind keys and I can’t stress how much this f**king irritated me. I got used to the default keys over time, but I really wanted to set up my own configuration, especially for camera controls and unit hot keys.

I should probably wrap this up. Deserts of Kharak is worthy of the Homeworld name. It’s a great prequel and hopefully a step towards a new, space set, Homeworld 3. The campaign, despite a few issues, is very good. But the skirmish and MP modes are pretty weak and shoddy to say the least, although both of these may improve over time if properly supported.

If you’re like me, and you just want a new Homeworld campaign set in this rich and fascinating universe, then I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with Deserts of Kharak. But if you’re expecting more from it than that then I probably wouldn’t recommend it, not in its current state or price. That said, it’s a new Homeworld game. A new Homeworld game. And that’s good enough for me.

7/10