As you may know by now, I love talking about games. Especially games that impressed me somehow. However, I want to mix it up a bit. I want to take a look at the past, present and future and talk about one game per part but not necessarily of the same genre and not necessarily one that is considered "good". This was already the plan from the beginning, but I got sidetracked a bit. Also, on a side note, I've never done anything like this before and by this I mean "running" a "blog". I've always been playing with the idea of starting one, though, but never really took any real action in it. I guess it's never too late to try.
After I posted about The RTS, I realized I've played a lot of them. One game in particular was going in the right direction on some of its features. When I ask around now if anyone knows or has played that game, I mostly get a negative answer. I found it to be one of the classics.
"Metal Fatigue" was released about 16 years ago. It was a RTS-game about giant robots called "Combots" waging war against each other. The idea was implemented really well. You needed to train special pilot units to pilot the combots and the combots themselves could be outfitted with different parts. There were also vehicles like tanks and bombers, but the most epic part was fighting with those combots.
There were 2 resources in the game: Meta-joules and Personnel. Meta-joules were the basic "building blocks" of everything you could create, while personnel was needed to pilot your combots or vehicles. The combots themselves, consisted of a pair of legs, 2 different arms, a torso and a head. There were also alien technologies scattered around the map and if your combot was wielding a sword, it would have a better chance at cutting off enemy combot parts. When a combot would be destroyed, the pilots ejected and you had to safely get them back to your base. They gained ranks as they fought so they were pretty valuable.
Another cool feature of the game was that you could also wage war underground. You could go there by building elevators, but were limited to only ground vehicles and not combots. The biggest resource pools could be found underground, so it was a constant battle on 2 fronts where you had to plan how, where and when you would assault and where you would hold your defensive lines.
One of the games I have been following up to its release this year, is called Stellaris. Stellaris is a game all about Exploration, Expansion, Exploitation and Extermination, otherwise known as a 4X-strategy game. In Stellaris you take control of a - custom made - civilization that has just finished building its first Faster Than Light-travel system and has launched a science vessel into space to explore the galaxy.
You can fully customize your race from the way they look, to the appearance of the cities they live in, the climate they can survive and prosper in all the way to their ethics and beliefs. All races you can create, only differ in appearance, traits and those ethics though. The thing that sets you apart from other civilizations, is the research you invest points in. As your empire expands and as time progresses, you will gain access to more technology. That little science vessel you send out at the beginning of a playthrough, will find anomalies you can invest research into, unlocking more research cards that are drawn out of a pool of cards every time another research finishes. There are 3 branches of research: Physics, Society and Engineering. Each of those branches will lead to specific events that happen during the playthrough.
I very much like the randomness of everything, even though you can plan which path you will take. The developers are still actively developing new features for the game and are also working hard on expanding on the existing ones.
The harvestable resources in the game are: Energy Credits, Minerals, Reserach points (divided into the 3 branches) and special resources that can unlock by researching the ability to track and harvest some of them. Those can be a "special" power source for "special" power plants that will increase the energy gain much more than a normal power plant would. The resources can be harvested by either building mining stations around asteroids and planets or by colonizing new planets and build the infrastructure on the planet surface. Off course, you would need Population or Pops in short to man them.
If you like Sins of a Solar Empire or Homeworld mixed with a little bit of Civilization but with Real-time gameplay, I can only advise you grab this gem of a game.
Driftland: the magic revival reminds me a little bit of the old Netstorm: Islands at War, mixed with a bit of Majesty. It's still currently in development by the Poland based developer Star Drifters. Driftland will be an RTS-game that features a procedurally generated world map and no micromanagement of units. Instead, you place objectives on the map and your army will do the rest.
You, the player, will take control over a mage who has just been elected as a ruler of a tribe and it is your mission to 4X your way from your starting island and merge the floating bits and pieces of the world together again. Being powered by Unreal Engine 4, means that the graphics will most definitely be a sight for sore eyes.
There are not a lot more details known about the game yet, but it should give you a small indication of what it will be like. According to their website, it is due for release the 3rd quarter of 2017.
Tell me, which games are you most excited about and why? I'm also always interested in expanding my humble library, so feel free to comment a playing tip as well. It doesn't matter which genre though. I'm playing everything casually :)
Any way, thank you very much for reading, peeps! Take care!
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