Stormrise Review, Go Go Power Armour!
April 2, 2009 - 
Game: Stormrise
System: Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC
Publisher: SEGA
Developer: The Creative Assembly
Players: 1
Online Players: 2 – 4
Genre: Real-time strategy
Release Date(s): March 27, 2009
Stormrise is an extremely hard game to describe. It has the art style of an Activision shooter, the gameplay of Halo Wars scaled down to be even simpler (supposedly), and the confusion of a two year-old undertaking a master’s degree in astrophysics. You’d think it wasn’t rocket science to create a console RTS, but it seems that time and time again, developers keep proving that theory so very, very wrong.
The story which provides a rather rickety basis for the game’s series of events revolves around a post-apocalyptic war between two major factions on Earth. While this is a tried and tested method of “wiping the slate clean” in terms of the narrative barriers separating developers wanting to set the scene on Earth and their actual goal, which certainly wasn’t originality. Essentially, you’re faced with the “humans who hid”, and the angry mutants who couldn’t.
The game itself is staggeringly bewildering, as it has decided that the right analogue stick’s pompous position as a tried and tested camera control mechanism is a farce, and has replaced it with a selection tool: “whip-select”. Ignoring the obvious incoming trademark of said selection tool, it remains remarkably simple in concept: whip the right stick around, and aim the beam of light said process generates in order to highlight a unit icon, and transfer your point of view and available options to the unit.
The problem that the combination of this system and the loss of a solid camera control function generates is that more often than not, you’ll find yourself either relocating to the other side of the map, instead of a few metres away. With the amount of combat going on at any one time, due to the colossal amounts of units you’re able to field in Stormrise, this presents something of an obstacle to smooth RTS gameplay.
The units themselves in both the human and Sai (read: mutant) armies are extremely low on health, in most cases. More often than not, you’ll find yourself fresh out of units, after just creating a hundred or more, simply due to an odd “cross-fire” rule that means any unit fired upon from two angles instantly takes far more damage than they normally would. The developers have clearly aimed to insert tactical gameplay into Stormrise to remove the “zerg rush” strategy, but have failed in their over-zealous attempts simply due to applying too many rules to the battlefield.
However, the game is surprisingly well-detailed and impressively rendered, with the ability to have well over several hundred fully fleshed out soldiers sprinting across a pock-marked cityscape without even a hint of frame-rate decrease. The units themselves are fairly logical in their design: sniper units are soldier models, with sniper rifles. While this seems lazy, it clearly shows that Creative Assembly have thought clearly about melodramatically different costumes intended for different units, and given it a rest.
While playing through the campaign, you’ll be introduced to various hero characters and villains. Whilst they seem formidable, especially the human protagonist in his fifty-foot mechanized battle armour (they call it “power armour”, but the phrase is so tired it’s worth replacing). However, put him in front of a single squad of enemy units at full strength, and more often than not, he’ll die in minutes. He needs a colossal amount of looking after, and if you let any of your named units die on the battlefield, be prepared to restart from a save point, or if you’re used to a more streamlined save system, the entire battle.
Whilst this seems logical and fair, the difficulty curve is a vertical wall while you’re learning the controls. Don’t be surprised if you fail a mission several times simply because you assumed five angry but wholly unarmed mutants take out your leader because whip-select threw your camera five miles away during his struggle for victory: it happens, but as you get more comfortable with grouping and the right stick’s new purpose in life, you’ll find it easier to organize your troops and have them retreat when necessary.
But stick with your leader, as he’s my personal favourite. While all the other characters are busy plotting easily-spotted double-crosses, and ramming male bravado and questionable female dialogue down each other’s throats, your man in steel is sitting there, asking all the questions you want him to ask. “Why are we here?” “Where am I going?” “In fact, who are you?” There’s none of the horrid “aha, Mr. Evil, my old nemesis” you’ll find so often in a protagonist’s dialogue, alluding to a back-story that will never actually reveal itself to the player. Your man here is a smart fellow and it helps to feel sane in the midst of so many contrived characters.
If you’re a tad tired of the campaign – and with its cardboard cut-out characters I can’t really blame you – try out the multiplayer. Essentially the same game, but minus a story and plus one to three other people, though with the size of the multiplayer maps, it seems you’ll want four players to add some crowding to your historic clashes of man and mutant.
Creative Assembly, the brains behind both Viking and the title I’m discussing at the moment, are clearly attempting to branch out into other genres, but after a title that received extremely mixed reviews, I think they should have spent a lot more time working on one genre instead of instantly leaping to the next prior to finding their developmental feet. The console RTS is a risky genre, and you’ll end up with something that’s either shockingly unworthy of the phrase “gone gold”, or something brilliant, like the recent Halo Wars from Ensemble Studios.
It’s not a game that breaks any boundaries: the campaign is so treacherously difficult due to the “capture this, warp in a load of troops, then lose them because your camera decided to skip back to the start of the map” farce you’ll have to overcome. But it’s a nice game to look at, and the story, while predictable, is at least trying something new by getting rid of Orcs, spaceships and Thomas Clancy, and going with their own original material. A Marmite title, to say the least, but one worth of a look.
Presentation: 6.0
A confusing interface and frustratingly small font sizes make the menus often hard to read, but the aesthetics are smooth and efficient enough.
Visuals: 7.0
The game looks as an apocalyptic cityscape should look – dark, gritty and moody. The models are a nice touch too, but while fully rendered, would be more at home on the previous generation.
Gameplay: 5.0
The whip-select system is rushed and unintuitive, and you’ll often find its habit for selecting the wrong unit will leave you in a deserted area of the map, which rains on the passable campaign.
Sound: 4.0
Nothing memorable about the nu-metal chug of the game’s soundtrack, and the weapons sound like a child’s Star Trek toy, but at least they’re there.
Lasting Appeal : 4.0
The multiplayer seems open-ended enough, but the whip-select will prove to be its undoing as players will flock back to a mouse and keyboard once the campaign ends and the allocated gamerscore runs out.
Overall Score (Not an average)
5/10 – Average (Not bad but not great)
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