Bob McDob
Better Health Through Less Flavor
Just picked up my copy yesterday, along with the Confed Handbook (Yay!). While I won't be scanning everything from the game like I'm doing with the guide, I will try to pick up as much as I can. Obviously, I can't do anything resembling a detailed review, but here goes:
The opening sequence is pretty well done, all things considered. In open defiance of Roberts tradition, it features 3D-rendered actors on a bridge resembling the Concordia from the movie. Basically, it details the attack of the TNS Andromeda by an unknown aggresor as it explores an alien wormhole. It's kinda similar to Prophecy, with a giant ramming alien capship standing in for the Kraken shipkiller. Voice acting is decent. The game's been in development quite a while, so the cutscene isn't exactly cutting-edge (looks more dated than the Prophecy intro). It does have a certain charm, with a grainy, frontier-like quality - or you could just interpret it as crappy rendering. Either way, it's over pretty quickly.
But you didn't come for me to do an in-depth analysis of the intro, did you? Very well: The main screen leads to the obligatory single-player, multi- and skirmish options. The first Terran mission (you can only play as the Terrans in the campaign, though it includes training missions) pits your fledgling squadron of three ships against an unknown alien race. It's basically a tutorial - Captain Blackwell walks you through everything from combat to base construction. Planets play a rather large role in this, the flavor more akin to WC Armada than in that you'll build starbases in orbit around planets.You'll also have to deal with your ship limit by building sensor towers, a nod to Age of Empires. Another reminder of Armada's influence is that of jump points - you can actually command fleets across several systems, using the handy-dandy jump map. This does men you'll have to deal with all the nessasary supply routes and stuff - one of Conquest's semi-innovations is that you'll have to deal with supply lines and stocking ships with ammo. It's one of the first games to deal with this (the first I believe to be Earth 2150), and it's bit annoying how the tutorial rather shys away from this topic.
Combat and gameplay more or less resembles Armada (and I mean the Star Trek one this time) in that all combat is 3D on a 2D plane. The interface is similar too, right-click fare simple as any half-decent RTS. Another staple is resource management - what RTS would be complete without it? The obligatory minerals here are found in asteroids and nebula gas, a la Homeworld, which you extract with harvesters (also doubling as salvage corvettes). Unlike STArmada, they aren't used as barriers, but they do considerably slow your fleet. Another difference here is that you'll have to deal with all sorts of specilized ships, like marine transports that capture vessels and resupply ships that, well, you get the point. There's also annoying little fighter-craft that buzz around your capships like angry wasps . You don't control fighters directly, as the smallest buildable combat ships are corvettes, but the squadrons launched from carriers do provide much-needed backup).
The graphics are rather dated, and the interface takes up a third of the screen (though you can minimize it), but it doesn't really hamper gameplay. The "holoscreen" has a zoom feature, but rather than the STArmada-style orbit, it's straight zoom-in, map-style. The game feels more like TA in space than anything else - which isn't a bad thing, incidently. You can rotate the map, but only NSEW - nothing like STArmada's rotate-at-will free-form camera, and the background looks kinda crappy. Asteroids and debris seem to use 2D rendered sprites, but unless you lust after eye candy, it's really no biggie. No matter what you heard, the music probably won't send you screaming off a cliff - it's actually pretty decent string orchestra stuff, if a bit repetetive.
Atmosphere seems generally excellent throughout, though some cheesy dialogue kinda breaks the mold. Every mission begins with a Simcity-style tongue-in-cheek radio ad (i.e., "The chaplain is shocked and appalled", followed by a voice-over of the chaplain saying "I'm shocked and appalled!"). There are little touches that remind you this is developed by the Wing Commander folks (besides the intro title stating once for all that this is a "Roberts Brothers Production") - there's the aformentioned Pegasus NavCom cameo, and the Mantis and Celereons pull duty for the Kilrathi and Nephilim (or Zerg and Protoss - though the races aren't nearly as varied as in Starcraft). Either the folks at DA have been taking good notice of Prophecy, or bugs are just really popular baddies. Personally, I favor the latter. The ship design is also very WCish, though it derives mostly from the movies - there is, however, a "Mantis Tiamat-class Dreadnought". Hmm.
Should you buy Conquest? In a pinch, I'd have to say yeqh, though I'd recommend you try the demo first and read a few reviews not quite as lousy as this one. That's not nearly all of it, and I haven't even covered the vaunted fleet admirals, but I suppose that'll have to wait until I get deeper into the game. Now where did I put that box...
The opening sequence is pretty well done, all things considered. In open defiance of Roberts tradition, it features 3D-rendered actors on a bridge resembling the Concordia from the movie. Basically, it details the attack of the TNS Andromeda by an unknown aggresor as it explores an alien wormhole. It's kinda similar to Prophecy, with a giant ramming alien capship standing in for the Kraken shipkiller. Voice acting is decent. The game's been in development quite a while, so the cutscene isn't exactly cutting-edge (looks more dated than the Prophecy intro). It does have a certain charm, with a grainy, frontier-like quality - or you could just interpret it as crappy rendering. Either way, it's over pretty quickly.
But you didn't come for me to do an in-depth analysis of the intro, did you? Very well: The main screen leads to the obligatory single-player, multi- and skirmish options. The first Terran mission (you can only play as the Terrans in the campaign, though it includes training missions) pits your fledgling squadron of three ships against an unknown alien race. It's basically a tutorial - Captain Blackwell walks you through everything from combat to base construction. Planets play a rather large role in this, the flavor more akin to WC Armada than in that you'll build starbases in orbit around planets.You'll also have to deal with your ship limit by building sensor towers, a nod to Age of Empires. Another reminder of Armada's influence is that of jump points - you can actually command fleets across several systems, using the handy-dandy jump map. This does men you'll have to deal with all the nessasary supply routes and stuff - one of Conquest's semi-innovations is that you'll have to deal with supply lines and stocking ships with ammo. It's one of the first games to deal with this (the first I believe to be Earth 2150), and it's bit annoying how the tutorial rather shys away from this topic.
Combat and gameplay more or less resembles Armada (and I mean the Star Trek one this time) in that all combat is 3D on a 2D plane. The interface is similar too, right-click fare simple as any half-decent RTS. Another staple is resource management - what RTS would be complete without it? The obligatory minerals here are found in asteroids and nebula gas, a la Homeworld, which you extract with harvesters (also doubling as salvage corvettes). Unlike STArmada, they aren't used as barriers, but they do considerably slow your fleet. Another difference here is that you'll have to deal with all sorts of specilized ships, like marine transports that capture vessels and resupply ships that, well, you get the point. There's also annoying little fighter-craft that buzz around your capships like angry wasps . You don't control fighters directly, as the smallest buildable combat ships are corvettes, but the squadrons launched from carriers do provide much-needed backup).
The graphics are rather dated, and the interface takes up a third of the screen (though you can minimize it), but it doesn't really hamper gameplay. The "holoscreen" has a zoom feature, but rather than the STArmada-style orbit, it's straight zoom-in, map-style. The game feels more like TA in space than anything else - which isn't a bad thing, incidently. You can rotate the map, but only NSEW - nothing like STArmada's rotate-at-will free-form camera, and the background looks kinda crappy. Asteroids and debris seem to use 2D rendered sprites, but unless you lust after eye candy, it's really no biggie. No matter what you heard, the music probably won't send you screaming off a cliff - it's actually pretty decent string orchestra stuff, if a bit repetetive.
Atmosphere seems generally excellent throughout, though some cheesy dialogue kinda breaks the mold. Every mission begins with a Simcity-style tongue-in-cheek radio ad (i.e., "The chaplain is shocked and appalled", followed by a voice-over of the chaplain saying "I'm shocked and appalled!"). There are little touches that remind you this is developed by the Wing Commander folks (besides the intro title stating once for all that this is a "Roberts Brothers Production") - there's the aformentioned Pegasus NavCom cameo, and the Mantis and Celereons pull duty for the Kilrathi and Nephilim (or Zerg and Protoss - though the races aren't nearly as varied as in Starcraft). Either the folks at DA have been taking good notice of Prophecy, or bugs are just really popular baddies. Personally, I favor the latter. The ship design is also very WCish, though it derives mostly from the movies - there is, however, a "Mantis Tiamat-class Dreadnought". Hmm.
Should you buy Conquest? In a pinch, I'd have to say yeqh, though I'd recommend you try the demo first and read a few reviews not quite as lousy as this one. That's not nearly all of it, and I haven't even covered the vaunted fleet admirals, but I suppose that'll have to wait until I get deeper into the game. Now where did I put that box...
;;;
