Reviewed: March 19, 2007
Reviewed by: Ansel Newcome - Beill

Publisher
Codemasters

Developer
KDV Games

Released: February 20, 2007
Genre: RTS
Players: 1-6
ESRB: Teen

2
6
3
3
3.6

System Requirements

RTS games have been following the same essential pattern for years. Gather your resources, construct your base, build an army, and rip the opposing guy’s army a new bellybutton. For me, this method has worked just fine since 1992 when I first started harvesting spice in Westwood’s "DUNE 2" (ah, memories). But lets face facts, real time strategy has come a long way since then, but sadly Maelstrom does little to teach the old genre new tricks.

Maelstrom places you in control of three factions warring over the landscape of a near future earth; the Remnants, a resistance-like faction with strength in numbers, the Ascension, a high-tech empire with transformer type vehicles (now who doesn’t like those?), and finally, the biological alien Hai-Genti forces. These three factions are going at each other’s throats to control what’s left of earth’s landmass, given that most of it is covered in water. Yes folks, global warming has claimed the life of an otherwise quality story from us, but believe me the repetition does not end there.

All of these qualities seem like ingredients for a prime RTS, however, its only when you actually attempt to play the game that you realize that there is something terribly amiss. Anything resembling logical gameplay or just plain fun is completely absent from Maelstrom. The frustration you will face in the first mission alone is enough to send the most devoted RTS fan searching frantically for the uninstall button.

Merely finding your way around the map in Maelstrom is a chore unto its own. The scrolling tends to jerk around, forcing you to use the otherwise completely useless mini-map, which forces you to hastily rotate the camera to find your forces before they are blown to smithereens.

Your units require almost constant attention, as they can barely find their own way around the map thanks to some horrible path finding issues. They will also rarely attack enemy units unless you direct them to do so. By itself, this wouldn’t seem like much of a problem, but merely selecting your units, of which you can only command 9 of at a time, turns into a horribly complicated ordeal given the number of units involved in some missions.

You can attempt to alleviate some of the micromanagement for your units by fooling around with their A.I. settings, but this proves to be just as useless. When you tell them to be aggressive, they will often take off in pursuit of the enemy base and getting themselves killed in the process, or when they are told to be defensive they will just stand their ground and take enemy fire.

The A.I. issues don’t end there however, as your enemies tend to be just as dumb. Even with the computer’s A.I. set to "hard", enemy units will rarely attack your base, and are devoid of any strategy outside of "there’s a different colored unit than us, let’s shoot and see what happens".

Maelstrom tries to remedy these issues by giving you the option to directly control your "hero" units in a third person shooter perspective, which not only is impossible to use or otherwise command your forces, but is also completely redundant. Anything you can accomplish in this view, could just as easily been done from the traditional top-down perspective. One cannot comprehend how utterly stupid this is until they realize how fragile their "hero" units really are, and as soon as any of your heroes bite the dust, it is game over and you are then subjected to another annoyingly long load time.

Granted, a few of these issues could be resolved by playing against another human in Maelstrom’s 6 person multiplayer matches. However, a lot of the same bugs, such as path finding still carry themselves over to the multiplayer aspect of the game. This, along with the fact that finding another person to play with is practically impossible due to the game‘s geriatric pace, makes Maelstrom all but completely unplayable.

Some of the weapon effects in Maelstrom apart from looking great, also take advantage of the game’s destructible, morphing terrain. Some weapons send out pillars of flame complete with heat ripple, some weapons leave giant blast craters, while others send giant shockwaves rippling through the earth, knocking over trees and toppling buildings. Maelstrom’s terrain engine also tries to lend itself to gameplay by giving you units that can alter the shape of the terrain. While this is very powerful in terms of the engine, its application is utterly useless, as it is to cumbersome for the player to use, and the A.I. is too dumb to figure it out.

Above all else, the water is some of the best I’ve ever seen in an RTS. Apart from sporting the usual transparency and reflection effects, the physics of the water allow it to actually flow and fill terrain, and can flood a base if nothing is done to prevent it.

While Maelstrom’s graphics are quite impressive, no amount of spit shine can help to polish the filth that lies underneath. The graphics are definitely something to look at, but with all the thought that went into how the game looks, you would think some of that grey matter could’ve gone into developing the actual mechanics of the game.

The sound effects are nothing to write home about, except that in some places they are non-existent. And what I’m mentioning is not just mere ambient noise; I’m talking about explosions here people. This is where I’m supposed to ask where my earth shattering Kaboom went, but it’s quite obvious that it was drowned out by the game’s mind-numbing music.

The music in the game, while not terrible, is enough to put anyone to sleep, which may actually be one of Maelstrom’s few redeeming features, perhaps allowing you to forego your nightly dosage sleeping pills.

The A.I. is just too simple to offer up any real challenge in the single player game, or in skirmish matches, so this entails very little in terms of game hours even with the 4 campaigns. If there is any challenge to be served up in single player matches its from managing the utter stupidity of your own units.

The Multiplayer component, gives a decent amount of maps to play on with variable objectives and number of players, but given the lack of current players. Your chances of using this part of the game to any extent are slim to none.

Maelstrom does all too good a job of letting some of the more horrendous elements of RTS games rear their ugly heads once more. Don’t let it’s fancy graphics fool you, Maelstrom will practically feel like a nostalgic trip down memory lane with all of the bugs you knew and loathed.

After all was said and done, I thought this otherwise horrible game might have one redeeming feature, but alas, the box is non-biodegradeable.