PC: Soliders and Swords HD

As a result of all the steam sales and continued progress through games this year I figured I would start writing reviews of titles on a regular basis. There are some criteria of course which I'll go over in another post but for now I'll jump right into it.

Background:

Originally this game was released on June 8th 2009 on the Wii and Playstation 3 as WiiWare and PSN respectively. The developers, Ronimo Games, was found in 2008 and has a staff of about 7 people. Prior to this title there was only one title released on the Wii called 'De Blob' which based on the review scores (if you trust those anymore) turned out to be a reasonable good game. As for the title to be discussed it was recently released on PC and MAC on December 2nd 2010.

Focus Audience:

Primarily for at least playing the game I would recommend it to the RTS fan who just wants a quick fix or anyone who's played "Battle of Puppets" or its various clones on Iphone. Though if your going for achievements I would probably recommend this to the light hearted masocore fan as some of the achievements can be daunting yet doable.

Plot:

When starting the game (along with on the title screen) you are introduced to 3 races/factions which are competing/waring against each other: Vikings, Aztecs, and Chinese. Sense the game is played in a sequential style campaign I won't go into the details of Aztecs and Chinese. As for the Vikings they are basically on a mission to seek vengeance against a certain pirate. Once the plot starts rolling your introduced to the other races/factions as well in which you must 'deal with'.

Gameplay:

The style itself is a 2d RTS which was the first time I had seen/heard of such a thing. Like all RTSs you have your resource pools (in this case gold and mana/bubbly water) and are able to construct units to gather you more gold. Each races has its own ways of gathering additional mana resources for example the Vikings can research into quicker mana regen while the Aztecs and Chinese use other methods. As you gather gold you can then reference the 'tech tree' to research which battle units you want to build and what part of the tree you wish to go down to obtain more advance technologies and units. When you produce a unit it'll come out your main base similar to a side scrolling platformer style.

Eventually your units will meet the other enemy units and they'll clash in battle. Based on what units are produced and which are in conflict then the winning side will push closer to the enemy base (the goal being taking down the enemies main base). Of course its not as simple as clicking units to produce and clash in the middle but proper management of mana is key to obtain an optimal push forward. This is a nutshell is the game.

Game Play Modes:

There's 4 modes of play Campign, Survival, Boulder Mode , Berserk Run, and Multiplayer.

Campign - This portion of the game is effective at introducing the player to each of the races, there story lines and why there pitted against one another and pros and cons of choosing said race. The story itself I'll give it credit as its extremely silly though i would say they don't exactly tie in very well with each other. If anything some of the plots clash but as simple as the game is I can't be too hyper critical about it.

Survival - Basic war of attrition consisted of building units and defending against wave after wave of the enemy. I haven't played it to any great deal but plan to do so in the future.

Boulder Mode - You get a Boulder you dodge your own units and try to run over the enemy, the mode goes on a bit longer than I care for but seeing how only .3% of the steam population has finished it this is right up a Masocore's street.

Berserker Run - You watch a viking go out on his adventure to reach....honestly I'm not sure where but basically you get one viking and use mana to keep him alive as long as possible. It does have a plot surprisingly but I'll leave it to those who wish to play to find out.

Multiplayer - I plan to nail out a few more achievements before giving it ago.

Pros:

-Overall the game feels pretty solid and enjoyed playing through the campign. Its definitely one of those games where you can give it about 25-50% of your attention and go do something else.
-The achievements are on pseudo masocore level so they'll keep the perfectionist busy.
-For the Steam version it implemented an online leaderboard along with the ability to play against friends online which I heard wasn't on the Wii/PSN version.

Cons:
-If your not a perfectionist for achievements the game can be get a bit dry after a few game plays. The campign can be a bit short and if not followed to a key some of the missions can become obnoxious (i.e: Last Chinese mission).
-I wouldn't drop retail value on this game ($10.00) would wait for a sale or get it on the cheap (I'd say its worth a max of $5.00).
-Games been out for a month and no real product updates (tiny nuisance) due to the ability not to choose maps in single player mode, no cleaning up of leader boards (clearly some cheaters), and additional hotkeys for units would be great.

Final Thoughts:

Overall I think the game was well worth the $2.50 I dropped on it on steam as I still want to clear as many of the achievements listed as possible. After that point I don't really see a whole lot for the game to offer unless the online community and alive and thriving which I'll need to test. For some steam games the community can be lacking at times (for example Sol Survivor or Puzzle Quest) but hopefully this one is kicking. If your looking for something a bit deeper I wouldn't recommend this to the individual who's looking for a completely fleshed out game that they can sink there teeth into for years to come.

That's all for now thanks for reading :)