Reviewed: December 23, 2005
Reviewed by: John Bowlin
Publisher
Midway Games
Developer
Reality Pump Studios
Released: November 14, 2005
Genre: RTS
Players: 1-8
ESRB: Teen
7
9
6
7
7.2
Minimum System Requirements
Recommended System
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
The Earth 21xx series of RTS games, which began in the 1990's with Earth 2140, has always been an often-overlooked series with a lot of potential. Earth 2150 especially was an excellent RTS game that didn't get the recognition it deserved. 2150 had two "sequels", The Moon Project and Earth 2150: Lost Souls. Now series developer Reality Pump Studios has released Earth 2160, continuing the saga of the war-torn planet in the future.
The first thing about Earth 2160 that I noticed is that it's not set on Earth at all. Apparently the war between the Eurasian Dynasty and the United Civilized States on Earth resulted in a cataclysm that sent the Earth out of orbit and into the sun. Fortunately, thousands of humans survived by getting in gigantic space ships and escaping Earth before it was totally destroyed. Unfortunately, the leaders of the Eurasian Dynasty and the United Civilized States also survived, so their warring nature was far from quelled.
You would think that the survival of the human race would be the most important thing and that all remaining humans would work together peacefully toward that end. But... no. Instead, the moon-based civilization known as the Lunar Corporation has colonized Mars where the E.D. has decided to land, and now they are fighting over what limited livable land is on Mars, rather than sharing it for the good of the species. On top of that, you have the U.C.S. out there somewhere still pissed off at the E.D. and also needing space, and a new alien race has been discovered...
Earth 2160 has four unique factions and each one plays out quite differently than the other three. When you first start the game you only have the option to play either the Eurasian Dynasty, a militaristic faction specializing in cybernetics, or the Lunar Corporation, a normally peaceful faction that is fighting back from Eurasian Dynasty encroachments on their Martian settlements. Later you can also play the campaigns for the United Civilized States, a faction that specializes in robotics, or the Morphidian Aliens, an alien species that was trapped under Mars and awoken by the UCS, who have the ability to morph themselves into different units and buildings.
Each of the four factions has their own campaign of seven missions each, for a total of 28 long campaign missions. The Eurasian Dynasty's campaign is designed as a tutorial of sorts, so it is highly recommended that you begin the game with the E.D. The campaign missions are long, and mostly tedious. It can take hours to come up with the right strategy for destroying the enemies, watching wave after wave of your units destroyed by the efficient AI. You can also play the single player Skirmish Mode which is a free-form non-mission based gameplay, with varying objectives pre-set at start of play, like killing all enemy heroes, or destroying all enemy bases. You can play against up to 8 AI opponents.
The first thing you're going to notice when playing Earth 2160 is that it doesn't hold your hand. This game is hard. And it has a tremendously steep learning curve, even for veterans of the RTS genre. The AI, even on the easiest setting, is very effective, primarily because the computer is so efficient at unit production and base-construction compared to a human player. It is highly recommended that you read the respectable 74 page manual before beginning play, and you might consider purchasing or downloading a strategy guide for this game. You're going to need all the edge you can get.
Earth 2160 has an almost infinite variety of units. This is because the game has a unit design mode where you get to select what type of engine, chassis, armor, weapons, and add-ons like shield generators for your vehicles. In fact, the key to winning is to figure out what type of units the opposing side has developed and then design units that are effective against that type of unit. Different kinds of armor are good against different kinds of weapons, so you need to design units that use a weapon that is good against the armor your enemy's units have, and your own units should use an armor that is effective against your enemies' weapons. Units also can gain experience from combat and go up in level, and as they gain level they get bonuses to hit points and damage.
Base construction between the different factions works radically different. For the Eurasian Dynasty, you build linked buildings that tie together with tubes and joints, and massive walls for defense. For the Lunar Corporation you build upwards, stacking different modules on top of modules into huge towers. The L.C. uses energy walls for defense. The U.C.S. robots use a typical building layout where you just have to build buildings within a certain radius of each other and close to their power source. The aliens have the most unique method since they build "buildings" that are living aliens that morph into different structures.
Each faction has special hero units that must not die during the missions, but can be extremely effective tools. Each hero has special abilities, and can use special equipment and weapons that you find in the missions. Additionally, you can hire "Agents" which are like mercenaries that will fight for your faction for a price. Different agents do different things, like some might enhance resource gathering, while others enhance your research, some for reconnaissance, etc. Different agents have different relationships with other agents, so you might have a situation where one agent is in love with another, or another hates the other, etc.
Research is extremely important since this is what lets you design new buildings and unit types. Each faction has their own resources to harvest and spend for units and research. Each faction has their own tech tree of what they can research. Sometimes you have the ability to research multiple items at the same time. You can also find technology from artifacts or steal it from your rival factions.
There are three basic types of materials to harvest: Water, Metal, and Silicon. There are actually twelve different kinds of metals that can be harvested and each one will have different properties for your units, such as their color, hit points, and armor rating. Controlling resources is critical to winning on most of the maps. Fortunately resource gathering is not tedious nor does it require a lot of excessive micro-management.
The AI in Earth 2160 is formidable, even on the easier settings. The AI has the ability to learn from its mistakes, so that if it tries things that do not work it will try other things and become more and more effective in battle as the game progresses. The bad part is, until you master what each enemy unit type looks like, you will not know what units to make to counter them, but the AI will always know what units to make to counter yours, so it can be frustrating to make an army of units that are quickly decimated by the AI's efficiency.
Earth 2160's interface is pretty streamlined, but since there are so many different options even as good as it is you can get lost or be too slow to react to the ever changing conditions during the game. Fortunately you can pause the game and still take control of the camera and issue orders, so that does help a bit. The real flaw in the interface is a complete lack of information about your units and especially enemy units. If you could easily see that, why yes, those enemy units are using reflective armor and missiles, which will be too effective against my laser-wielding chemical armor guys, the game would be much more accessible to the newbie.
It doesn't help that the campaign modes are pretty boring story wise. There is little in the way of cinematics or cut scenes, it's just go here, do this, do that, and oh yeah, this is happening. The characters aren't terribly interesting, even if the factions themselves are all unique and well realized. The plot is very predictable, and the surprises few and far between. While each faction is indeed unique and plays out quite differently, none of the factions really have the kind of personality or draw to make you like them or enjoy playing that faction.
Earth 2160's graphics are as good as you are likely to find in any real-time strategy game, a hallmark of the series, really. Earth 2160 uses the all new Earth-4 graphics engine, which has much more detail than previous incarnations of the series and spectacular 3D effects. You can choose resolution from 640x480 up to 1600x1200. The engine has advanced pixel shading, bump mapping, and lighting effects. Explosions look incredible, as do the weapons firing.
Earth 2160 has an excessive amount of detail, down to the little cloud puffs kicked up from the Martian landscape as vehicles travel across it, leaving tread-marks in their wake. The artistic design of the vehicles and buildings is unique for each side, especially the alien species, and gives each faction their own unique flavor. The only downside to the graphics is that some of the landscapes can get old at times since we're basically talking about dead planets and asteroids.
The camera in Earth 2160 is extremely flexible, letting you zoom in or out, rotate, pan, etc. You can also turn on some auto-camera features that will make it attempt to stay relevant, which works more than not. Another nice feature is the ability to go into first person mode for a particular unit. You can even have that camera as a picture-in-picture window for some great visuals, while leaving the main viewing screen for doing your strategies.
Earth 2160 has decent sound effects for all of the explosions and weapons, but the voice acting for most of the heroes is flat and unappealing. On top of that, the music is rather uninspiring, even if it does fit into the theme of the game pretty well. I found myself turning off the music and just playing some MP3's instead. It's not really that the sound is truly flawed, because it's for the most part, competent. It's just that none of it really stands out or is memorable.
Fortunately, Earth 2160 has a competent multiplayer mode, which can be a heck of a lot of fun, assuming you can find players. Playing with other newbies to the game can be a much more enjoyable way to learning the game than playing through the campaign mode itself. You play multiplayer by logging into the EarthNet matching service in the game. A maximum of eight players per game can play. There is a ladder and league play. You can also “spectate” games if you just want to study the experts, or watch replays. You can even save a multiplayer game in progress and come back to it later.
One downside to EarthNet multiplayer is that Europe has had the game for much longer and there are some very talented players that will school you if you happen to play against them. Another problem is that you will need to download a rebalancing file from www.e2160.com before you can play. And lastly, since the game hasn't been out long in the US there's not a lot of players available during US prime time.
Earth 2160 even comes with a world editor to let you design your own maps and missions for multiplayer. The editor is pretty flexible and could be used to create maps with a lot more terrain variety than the ones you find in the campaign if you wanted too. This reviewer didn't spend a lot of time with the editor, but it did seem pretty easy to throw together a quick map if you wanted to, and flexible enough to do some more complex things. According to the forums, there's supposed to be an SDK released for the game which will allow for an extreme amount of customizations and mods, which can only add life to the game.
Earth 2160 also has LAN mode multiplayer, but each PC must be running a unique copy of the game, which is a shame since it would be nice if they let you play with just a single copy on at least two computers. This feature wasn't tested, because the reviewer only had the one copy.
Skirmish play, which is a lot like multiplayer except it is you against the AI, has a big flaw in that it is always the player against all the AI opponents. SO you can't set up a game with 4 AI's and expect them to fight each other, instead they will all gun for you, which really takes a lot of the fun out of the skirmish mode, and I consider this a fatal flaw for that part of the game.
One thing unusual about Earth 2160 is the product activation feature. When you first play the game, you have to enter in your CD-KEY, and then the game logs into a server on the Internet to activate it, which will tie that key to your computer's hardware configuration. The activation will then give you back an access code, which you need to write down for future use. The good part about this copy protection method is that you don't need to have the CD in the drive whenever you play it. The bad thing is if you ever need to reformat your hard drive or reinstall it on a different PC, you may need to contact technical support to activate the game in order to get all of the features. Also your EarthNet account is tied to your CD-KEY, and you can only create one account with your key.
Earth 2160 is pretty much a game by RTS experts for RTS experts. This game is not novice friendly by any stretch of the imagination. It has an extremely steep learning curve, a ruthless AI, and so many options and features that they will easily overwhelm anyone new to the genre. The interface is pretty good, but lacks a lot of information on screen that would make the game more accessible.
If you're an RTS expert, or you don't mind a very hard learning curve, you might enjoy Earth 2160's superb graphics, which really are pretty much the best in the genre so far. The multiplayer can be fun, especially with friends, but the down side is that each player has to own their own copy of the game, even for LAN play. Even RTS experts might be turned off by the generic campaign story and lack of any real personality to the factions.
On the plus side, each faction is well balanced and plays out very differently, so if the bland sci-fi settings don't bother you, there's a lot of gameplay depth here to sink your teeth into.