Reviewed: August 18, 2004
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
1C
Codemasters

Developer
KD Labs

Released: June 29, 2004
Genre: RTS
Players: 4
ESRB: Everyone

8
9
8
8
8.4

System Requirements:

In a day and age where your typical store shelf is littered with dozens of mindless RTS clones, Perimeter comes across as something totally fresh and unique, even though it relies on the very essence of the RTS genre; resource gathering, unit creation, and the epic struggle for survival against seemingly impossible odds.

When I first saw Perimeter the big selling point was the complex terraforming aspect, a system so intricate that nVidia was showing interest in the technology, and while that element still plays a massive part of the resource system, Russian developer, KD Labs has spent the last two years fleshing out many other equally intriguing aspects of gameplay.

Despite the extra development time the story that drives the game seems to have some gaps. The impressive opening movie introduces you to the futuristic era, the races involved in the conflict, and some of the basic technological concepts like Frames, giant city-sized ships that look like pyramids. Yet, I found it hard to care about any of the factions and ended up playing to “win” rather than drive the story to its conclusion.

Hundreds of years ago nine such frames launched into space in search of “the promised land”. Traveling through inter-dimensional portals, these huge mobile cities pass through space in search of their destination, guided by the Spirits, a race born with knowledge of vast technologies. The journey is fraught with many perils including that of this new dimension's native inhabitants, the Scourge.

The journey has taken many centuries with generations of inhabitants following in the footsteps of their ancestors, but for a few this journey is nearing an end. Some of the Exodus are beginning to doubt the Spirit council, with rising political tensions forcing the Exodus to split into many factions, some wishing to return home, some determined to follow the spiritual quest of their forefathers and others with their own agenda entirely. And so begins the War.

Perimeter consists of numerous missions that take place on various planets. You travel from planet to planet as the story dictates. Upon arrival you typically have to do some preliminary landscaping just to mount your Frame. Every structure must be built at “zero level”. This means your nanobots in charge of landscaping need to fill in or dig out any variance in elevation until a smooth surface is standing by.

Once your Frame is operational your next order of business is to charge the Spiral, the primary energy core used to power the warp gate to reach the next destination. Of course, the enemy will be preparing to attack so in additional to setting up a network of energy stations, you also need to prep a small army to defend your structures.

Each Frame comes with five Multi-Modular Platforms (MMP’s) that can be configured as Brigadiers or Buildmasters. You can configure the MMP’s to be either of these and switch them back and forth as needed, but you must maintain a careful balance since each type is responsible for either terraforming or building structures.

Later in the game you can create a variety of offensive units and reconfigure these units during battle, but Perimeter, as the name might suggest, is more about territorial acquisition than unit vs. unit combat. You’ll need to continually expand your base, amassing more energy stations to power the Spiral and the defense shield that protects your structures. Your power is directly proportional to the amount of zero level ground you have under your control and the number of energy stations pumping power back to your Frame.

When it comes time to create factories and labs you will have to do some serious space management. Structures share a certain power radius so placing them close enough will create an intricate web of power while affording a shared level of protection from the giant perimeter force shield that pulses like a giant soap bubble above your base.

The perimeter is your strongest defense tool, but also the most demanding when it comes to energy. Prolonged activation will drain your power reserves in mere moments. You do have the ability to individually activate (or deactivate) certain force shields on specific structures if only a section of your base comes under attack. There is something most satisfying about a swarm of aliens flying into your bubble and watching them disintegrate.

Even more important to tacticians is the fact that any structure that loses power becomes neutral and are ripe for the taking. A break anywhere in the power grid can result in multiple structures losing power in a cascade effect. Savvy generals can take advantage of such opportunities to link those neutral buildings to their own network with a carefully placed structure of their own and in a single instance swing the tide of war in their favor. It’s a great tactic in the single-player campaign and a huge upset in multiplayer games.

Perimeter is a challenging game and even when I first started out and was struggling with the basics the Scourge started swarming my base. I was expecting at least a few minutes to prepare and build up some rudimentary defenses but wave after wave of ground and air enemies started flocking toward my Frame.

Scourge are not the only enemies in the game and you will ultimately face off against the other rival factions. Unit and formation combat is common for such battles but even the landscape comes into play when certain attacks can scar the surface creating uneven terrain that your Brigadiers will need to smooth over to restore optimum energy production.

Even more challenging is the way the game changes tactics when you face off against rival Frames. The Scourge are pretty mindless and you can often defeat them with a surplus of energy and some well-timed shield activations. Frame vs. Frame relies on great tactics including new technologies, unit creation, and unit upgrades.

AI is surprisingly good, at least for non-Scourge attacks. While the Scourge will simply throw massive numbers against your shields in an attempt to wear you down, other Frames will send out units to discover and exploit any weaknesses in your defense.

There are three primary units; soldiers, officers, and technicians that you can create, and new more powerful units can be created in the field by combining various combination of these three to create units like a tank, plane, or a mobile SAM launcher. It’s a very clever element to the design because rather than building massive amounts of various units you can reconfigure existing units on the fly.

Perimeter is a complicated game, but you should grasp the basics in about thirty minutes and after the first three or four missions you should be landscaping and creating units with no problem. There is a good variety in the mission design and objectives, and my only complaint is that many of the missions simply aren’t outlined well enough, leaving you to guess at what to do, obviously leading to a lot of trial and error gameplay.

Perimeter has the best terrain you will ever see in a game; so smooth and deformable that it’s almost like virtual clay. The closest thing I have ever seen to this level of smooth rolling terrain detail is the old voxel technology used by Novalogic for their old Comanche games and that couldn’t change shape on the fly.

The downside to this level of detail is the staggering amount of polygons on the screen at any given time even before that first unit is placed on the level. To create terrain that is this smooth and that can be morphed in the smallest detail requires millions of polygons.

My 3200+ with a gig of RAM and a 5900 Ultra card was systematically bitch-slapped and sent home crying for an upgrade, but with a bit of trial and error, resolution changes, and graphical options tweaks I was able to get the game running well enough. Even when the framerate neared slideshow levels it didn’t affect the gameplay. Most of the intense action is handled on single screens and the jerkiness only cropped up during fast camera pans around the level. Still, for a game that has been in development for two extra years, and two generations of video cards later, it should just run better than it does.

When you aren’t sweating the framerate you can enjoy some of the best special effects in the genre. Perhaps the most simple element in the game is also the most fascinating; the zero level tool that allows you to create complex splines to designate the target area. If you prefer your effects a bit more flashy then you will certainly enjoy the glowing power beams that create intricate webbing across your base, shafts of light reaching into the sky, and the pulsing blob-like force field that wavers over your installation.

Units are modestly detailed. Nanobots scurry about the terrain leveling hills and filling in gaps. Soldiers, Scourge, and tanks are just a few of the 28 morph-able units you can experiment with. Add to that 24 buildings types and 30 diverse maps and you have a massive variety of visuals to carry you through the 27 campaign missions.

There’s not a lot of speech other than vocal alerts of incoming attacks and other warning messages. Units are all robotic and speechless so most of the sound is reserved for the sounds of combat, the hum of energy shields, the whoosh of rockets, the whiz of lasers, and the crackle of explosions and fire. Nothing really stands out as being superior, but it all works well within the game.

Perimeter also has a rich multiplayer feature for up to four players via LAN or Internet and GameSpy is used for matching up Frame commanders for some quality multiplayer battles on the 6 specialty maps created just for the occasion. Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch are your only multiplayer options and the fact that the maps are all designed with four players in mind will make things a bit lonely for two-player games.

The terrain becomes increasingly important in online tactics, and the element of base building over your typical arms race is a nice twist on conventional RTS gameplay. Multiplayer games also tend to have even more units being created and used in combat further adding to the previously mentioned performance issues.

And on an unrelated note, kudos to Codemasters for shipping this game on a DVD. I’m not sure if the game is even available on CD but the DVD made the 4+ GB installation fly by.

Casual RTS gamers or those set in your strategic ways might want to check out the single and/or multiplayer demos before dropping $40 for the complete package.