Reviewed: June 26, 2004
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
DreamCatcher Interactive

Developer
Primal Software

Released: May 28, 2004
Genre: RTS
Players: 10
ESRB: Mature

7
8
6
6
6.7

System Requirements

Besieger is the latest RTS game to get piled onto the ever-growing heap of PC strategy games that threaten to collapse store shelves around the world. I’m not a huge fan of the RTS genre; in fact, the last RTS game I played and enjoyed enough to actually complete was World War II: Frontline Command back in 2003.

Each year I like to play one or two RTS games and see if somebody has managed to come up with something new. DreamCatcher has been on a roll recently with some massively popular games so I figured I had a pretty good shot at enjoying Besieger, and while the game manages to significantly innovate upon the established genre, there is still too much “classic” RTS gaming to hold my interest through all twelve levels.

Besieger is a real-time 3D strategy set in a medieval fantasy world in which rival players wage war as either Viking or Cimmerian warriors. Gamers conquer factions of Ogres, Werewolves and Centaurs and smash their way into the enemy’s heavily defended Citadels, while in turn defending their own domains. Pretty standard stuff.

The game does offer some unique story-based gameplay with a series of quests that determine the eventual outcome. As well as the bloody battles, each player must create an economy to allow them to construct or upgrade 40 types of buildings and more than 50 different units for battle. You must also ‘create’ and train workers for fighting and other key skills. This experience and fighting efficiency carries over as each level is conquered.

The impressive feature set also includes:

• Powerful 3D game engine using real-time terraforming and LoD (Level of Detail), allowing the game to provide zoom-in or zoom-out views, without any fog.
• Cinematographic and entirely free camera with convenient control modes, to allow for first-person battles.
• Twelve huge levels with photo-realistic landscapes, located in mountains, deserts, forests, etc., with thousands of trees, stones and other objects on each level.
• Hundreds of high-polygon models boasting skeletal animations and all-encompassing damage model.
• Realistic sky (sun, moon, clouds and stars) as well as day/night and weather management providing unparalleled immersion.
• LAN and Internet multi-player for up to 9 players with a variety of modes.

Once you draft a soldier he must be trained in a certain type of warfare. You decide this by sending him to a certain building to learn the required skills. The designers may have taken this a step too far. If you want to reclassify a soldier you must first send him back to his original barracks to “un-train” then send him to the new building to learn a replacement skill.

All of this is designed to slow down the process of amassing a huge army and defeating the enemy (and the game) too quickly. If you have the patience for all of this “busy work” then you are going to love the concept, but for a gamer like me who got bored mining crystals in Command and Conquer you’ll be squirming in your seat.

Besieger also features Heroes, a concept that is becoming increasingly popular in RTS games. Heroes are a sort of “super soldier” that are not only more powerful than normal troops, but exert a heroic “sphere of influence” that will boost the morale and abilities of nearby soldiers. There is even a leveling-up ability that will bolster your heroes to almost god-like status.

Once you have drudged through all of the prerequisite resource gathering and troop building you will be ready to engage the enemy, assuming they haven’t locked their sights on your first. In addition to balancing your population you must also balance a strong defense with an even stronger offense. This is made more interesting through a skill-based element that allows your troops to get better through combat or through additional training at upgraded buildings in your city.

As the title implies, Besiege is a game of assault. From the very first recruited soldier the game is an arms race where you rapidly try to build the stronger army while fortifying your own position, and much like other games in the genre, this game is all about defensive layers. You’ll need the skills of General Patton and the strategic mind of Napoleon to layout walls, towers, and defensive lines of troops. A well-placed hero can make all the difference.

All of this strategy and combat would normally make for a very challenging and entertaining game, but there are a few serious flaws that keep Besieger from ever getting off the ground, the biggest of which is the AI, or rather a lack thereof. The enemy AI is pretty simplistic using the concept of quantity over quality. It will throw endless waves of troops at you in unwavering tactics, no matter how many and how fast you cut them down.

Your own AI isn’t much better. Your men will constantly get hung up on terrain, structures, and even each other. After a few missions you will start subconsciously designing your defensives to allow for these deficiencies, but until then you can expect some troop movements that reminded me of the Three Stooges all trying to go through the same door at the same time. BONK! Oh, Wiseguy! Nuk Nuk Nuk…

You can alleviate some of these problems by micromanaging your troops and laying out their paths in smaller steps (waypoints), but in the heat of battle you really need to be able to click the troops and the destination and rely on the computer to get them there with reasonable, albeit simulated intelligence.

The multiplayer game plays pretty much the same as the single-player campaign, which unfortunately includes the same quirky pathfinding and AI issues. Unlike the solo game where you can reload if you get screwed by the AI, you simply take your lumps in multiplayer.

The interface is pretty standard RTS stuff but there were a few quirky omissions of commands that should have permanent placement on the HUD and weren’t there. The rest of the icons and troop statistics are all placed nicely and easy to read. It should take you about 15-30 minutes to get comfortable with the mouse and keyboard commands.

It’s interesting to see the subtle advantages of speed and initiative of forces running down a slope versus the slow plodding nature of those headed uphill. Everything in Besieger is destructible, even the landscape, so you can actually change the terrain over the course of battle. There is a good selection of units and structures and these are all modeled quite nicely and are fully destructible.

Everything is textured so that it scales with the camera view. If you zoom in you will see some exquisite detail on the men and the buildings, but if you pull back to view hundreds of troops the textures scale back to keep the framerate playable. My only small complaint would be with the lack of details on the terrain, both in the sparseness of trees and the repetitive textures that just make things a bit boring over time.

You have full control over the 3D camera but I found the limits of the zoom to be rather…err…limiting. The camera can only pull back so high, often barely high enough to clear a mountain peak and when you go underground you can expect some problems with the camera hanging up on walls and blocking your view.

Sound effects are nicely varied and all work to create a believable experience. You’ll hear the typical sounds of construction and destruction and everything in-between. It’s good but average.

In this highly competitive market you really need to have a quality game to get your title noticed, especially in the burgeoning RTS marketplace. Besieger is a valiant attempt to try something new, and while it succeeds on a few levels, it fails on just as many.