Reviewed: April 30, 2005
Reviewed by: Mike Colgan
Publisher
Got Game Entertainment
Merscom
Developer
Codo Technologies
Released: April 26, 2005
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Teen
6
4
3
3
4.0
System Requirements
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
If you are a seasoned computer gamer who enjoyed strategy games back in the mid-90s, you may remember a brilliant game called X-Com. The plot was simple – you ran a mercenary organization in the near future, which helps to investigate and eliminate alien threats that pop up all over Earth. You oversee the construction of a military base, recruit new alien-ass-kicking talent, stock up on advanced weaponry, and fly around the globe painting the streets green with alien blood.
One of the great things about X-Com was that you could play in a variety of different ways. You could go in, guns blazing, and kill everything that moved, or you could incapacitate the aliens and take them back to your base for research of their biology and weapons. In that way, the game rewarded you for smart playing, and kept you motivated from battle to battle.
Laser Squad Nemesis proclaims that it is “Tactical Warfare from the Creators of X-Com.” With a promise like that, I came in with high hopes of sophisticated turn-based alien combat. Unfortunately, I was rewarded with what seemed like X-Com themed chess, a game with surprisingly low production values and none of the flavor and atmosphere of its spiritual predecessors.
In Laser Squad Nemesis, you control one of four factions: human space Marines, rogue robot Machina, classic B-movie alien Greys, and biological nightmare Spawn. Though there is some variation in the types of units each faction possesses, the game plays much the same in every case.
The “story” behind Laser Squad Nemesis is as stereotypically sci-fi as it can be. The ravenous Spawn show up, feasting and breeding and popping out of peoples’ stomachs Alien-style, so the humans build an army of advanced AI robots to tackle the Spawn threat. The robots, or Machina, break free from their shackles and start thinking for themselves. Meanwhile, the Greys, an advanced alien race that has fostered human civilization from its infancy, have decided that the whole experiment has gotten too messy and are ready to pull the plug.
Gameplay is composed of 10-second turns. At the beginning of any engagement, you place down a number of soldiers and support units worth a different number of points, up to your point limit for the mission. Before each turn, you give each of your fighters orders to march in certain directions, pause to assess the situation, and fire their weapons. You can also choose the have them fire at will, or only fire at specific targets.
The game provides you with a few short tutorials that hold your hand too often and never take the training wheels off. In these tutorials you are introduced to the basic mechanics of maneuvering and combat, but then you are left to fend for yourself through several slapped together “campaign missions.” The real meat and potatoes of this game, supposedly, is the “multiplayer” component, which consists solely of play-by-email rounds.
The play-by-email feature might have been cool. If you have a friend who has picked up Laser Squad Nemesis as well, you could set up a nice leisurely e-mail game to fit your hectic schedule. Since I don’t have a friend who has LSN, I set up a game with another random player through LSN’s Internet server. Several days later, I still have not received a response from my computer-chosen component. It reminds me of Internet dating services. Or maybe my computer-selected nemesis of the Laser Squad variety is as "enthused" about this game as I am.
All in all, the game is just not that much fun to play. Perhaps it could have been more compelling if they’d added some animation, or music, or humor, or anything to lend atmosphere to the game. The mechanics are a little too simple, and I think that takes a large degree of the challenge and fun out of the game.
Graphics...what graphics? Laser Squad Nemesis is a crude, sprite-based game with clunky animation. For most of the time, players are presented with frozen placeholders for soldiers. Movement paths and weapon shots are represented by crude colored lines. Except for a few doors opening and closing, the environments in which the battles take place are sterile.
You can zoom in and out to catch a larger view of the field, but when zoomed in, the graphics take on that distorted-pixel look like you used to get on old LCD monitors when you selected a resolution that didn’t match that of the screen. The interface is unimaginative and just plain ugly to look at. Windows system fonts do not a great atmosphere make.
There is no music in this game. None. Not in the opening screen, not in the game itself. This is a big negative for me. Good music in games, like good music in movies, can set the tone of the finished product. This game would have felt a lot better if it had had some sort of music. Instead, my music is the over-noisy fan of my computer next to me. Bummer. I’m tempted to play the song “Here Comes Another One” by Monty Python, which I feel sums up the mood of this game.
Sound effects in the game are limited to weapons firing (with generic “pyew pyew” sounds for lasers), mechanical doors “whooshing” open, and various creatures and machines dying or exploding. Yawn.
With the purchase of Laser Squad Nemesis players receive a free 3-month subscription to the game’s play-by-email servers. The corollary of this absurd statement is that if any player can keep their interest in the game for more than 3 months, they will have to pay to continue playing the game against other players. That means that you are paying good money to be connected to other random players who may never respond to your e-mail challenges, or worse, to play e-mail games against your own friends.
The pay-for-play model makes a certain kind of sense for MMORPG’s. In those games, servers have to keep track of thousands of players and objects and the companies that administer the game need to constantly tweak the gameplay and help out players. It would even make sense for Blizzard to charge money to access their online servers for Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo, which actually host active gameplay, but they don’t.
However, at $19.95 for the game and additional costs for longer subscriptions, you’d probably be better off finding an old copy of Starcraft and playing it for free.
If you play Minesweeper for hours on end, you’re not likely to be disappointed by this tepid turn-based strategy game. However, the rest of us will probably be disappointed by the lack of compelling gameplay and the absolutely sterile feel to the game. X-Com fans should not be fooled by this pale imitator of the classic.