Reviewed: October 25, 2002
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
DreamCatcher Interactive
Developer
Lemon Interactive
Released: July 14, 2002
Genre: RTS
Players: 8
ESRB: Teen
9
10
9
9
9.8
System Requirements
Recommended System
It looks like the next wave of deep space RTS games have arrived. Strategy First’s epic O.R.B. title, which stole the show at E3 has been pushed to 2003, and Hegemonia, another DreamCatcher title, is about to release anytime now and is guaranteed to bring tears of joy to gamers who have never even played a space RTS. But while we wait for what will come, Project Earth: Starmageddon is here and ready to rock your world.
Starmageddon is a full 3D real-time strategy game set in the backdrop of deep space where you can play as either the humans or aliens. The stories run concurrent so the game unfolds the same way no matter which race you choose, you just get to see the story from a completely unique perspective. This is a great concept, albeit not totally original, so even though you might be the oppressed humans defending your part of the galaxy in one campaign, once you start playing the aliens you realize they have their own reasons for doing things. Good guys become bad guys and vice versa.
The story behind Starmageddon is simple yet effective. Humans are moving into uncharted parts of space and getting ready to colonize a new world. Playing as the humans you will take control of a Sundiver, a huge ship controlled by rare pilots with the unique ability to command these vessels and huge armadas with their minds. On regular routine patrol a giant comet literally appears out of nowhere. Upon closer inspection an alien fleet is found hiding in the comet’s tail. Let the melee begin…
Starmageddon plays much like any typical RTS game. You start off with a base and must mine your resources to build up your fleet in anticipation of a great battle that will often be won more out of sheer numbers than brilliant tactics. Those of you that played Homeworld released back in 1999, or even the more recent Star Trek Armada will slip right into this style of game. For newcomers, there is an excellent tutorial that gets you up to speed on gameplay mechanics and the amazing interface.
I tend not to taint myself by reading other reviews for a game before I write my own, but I’ve been following this game long before I received my review copy, so I had some prior knowledge of what others were saying. It seems almost unanimous that everyone hates the interface and controls in Project Earth. Let me tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. Starmageddon has one of the slickest and most intuitive control panels I have ever used in an RTS game, and I have played them all, and I am terribly biased against complicated interfaces. I even read a couple of reviews that condemned the game because you couldn’t pause a mission. Odd – I hit my PAUSE key and it says “Mission Paused” and all the ships stop moving.
This is a 3D game so camera movement is paramount. Keep in mind this game is played from a virtual camera (the mind’s eye of your Sundiver pilot) at all times, so you can go anywhere and look at anything from any angle. Use the arrow keys to pan and move the camera around in your current 2D plane or hold the RMB to move through the Z-axis. Spinning the mouse wheel controls your camera crosshair and holding CTRL while moving the mouse gives you full 3D rotation, and clicking the MMB will zoom you up close to a selected unit or your crosshair. Simple stuff.
Selecting and grouping units is even easier, especially considering the vastness of space and the number of units you will eventually amass. You can click on any ship to select it or double-click to select all ships of that type. You can also drag a window to select a group of ships or press A to grab the entire fleet. All selected ships also appear in a text list along the side, which you can also use to toggle ship selection. Grouping is done with the standard CTRL+number method then pressing that number again will select the group and pressing a second time will zoom the camera to focus on that group.
One you have your units selected you simply click on the target whether it be asteroid, ship, or open space and the unit will respond appropriately. Choose a miner and an asteroid and it will collect resources. Choose a fighter and an enemy Imp fighter and they will swarm in for the kill. You can force actions like destroying an asteroid by pressing ALT while clicking the target. Again, it couldn’t be easier and the friendly tutorial had be totally comfortably with the interface by the time I played my first real mission.
The interface is made even simpler by having everything on one screen. There are really no pop-up menus or anything to get in your way of the overall game experience. Your iconic menus are along the top and right side of the screen grouped around your 3D radar and 2D space map. To access the menus you simply hold down the CTRL key to invoke the camera lock. Now you can move your mouse freely about the screen without changing the camera and pick from any of the intuitive icons.
Clicking on main icons such as your command ship opens up new sub-icons allowing you to build smaller support craft. Build orders can be queued so you can crank your Fury fighters out four or five at a time without having to baby-sit the construction phase. You can also do technology research to upgrade your various ships. It’s all terribly cool and downright fun to play.
Now that we’ve established that the interface is probably one of the best (and not the worst as others would have you believe) let’s delve into the gameplay. Again, it’s all standard RTS stuff. You enter a new area and start mining those resources to build fighters and bases, and more miners. You can launch strategic attacks on the enemy base or their mining operations to slow their production. When you think you have enough fighters you go in for the big kill, assuming the enemy hasn’t already launched a first-strike against you.
The combat is pretty straightforward with the notable exception of your lack of intricate control over ship formations. More recent (and advanced) RTS games allow you to pick formations for grouped units like column, line, wedge, etc. There is nothing quite so advanced in Project Earth, and you are at the mercy of the AI in determining how ships will interact with the enemy once you have targeted them. While many may balk at this tactical oversight, I found the AI was more than up to the challenge, and I actually enjoyed one less thing I had to worry about.
Ultimately, this simple combat design reduces the outcome of most battles to a mathematical formula based on sheer numbers and ship class. But as any seasoned RTS gamer will tell you, an overwhelming army is always a major factor in winning these kinds of games. There is still some strategy involved in placing fighters in proximately to asteroid fields and your Sundiver to provide protection for your unarmed and mission critical craft. The AI does a good job of engaging the enemy when they enter their sphere of influence.
One innovative twist on the combat is the implementation of parallel battleplanes, which is a fancy term the designers use that simply translates to the ability to fight in up to three unique sections of space, all connected with warp gates or black holes. If you think managing one battle is challenging, just try to multi-task orders for two or even three ongoing wars, all at once.
My only real complaint about the entire game is that you can only save between missions. Now I realize that it would be nearly impossible to save the current state of your little corner of the galaxy everytime you feel threatened or before you launch that final assault, but many of these missions are quite long and it really devastates you when you find you needed five more fighters to win that battle and have to play the entire mission over.
The graphics in Starmageddon are beyond words. After shorting out four keyboards from excessive drooling I had to get one of those plastic keyboard covers. I’m exaggerating of course – it was only two keyboards. Seriously, this game is breathtaking. Every frame of this game looks like an airbrushed sci-fi painting, and some of the more detailed images such as planets and nebulae could be mistaken for Hubble photography.
If you have the system to back this game up it will deliver on the visuals. My 1.4ghz Athalon with 512mb RAM and a GeForce 3 Ti500 card allowed me to play this game in a stunning 1600x1200x32 with every detail toggled on and set to maximum setting. Ships are created with huge amounts of polygons and detailed with intricate bump-mapped textures. There are incredible dynamic lighting effects ranging from the glowing engines of the ships and their wispy trails to glowing gaseous nebulae, lens flares, and the vibrant explosions of enemy ships. There is an excellent LOD (level of detail) engine in place that dynamically adjust the detail according to the distance you are viewing an object. This guarantees the best possible frame rate at all times.
The movies and in-game cutscenes are all generated with the game engine to create a seamless blend between game and narrative. With the exception of the letterbox format you would have trouble knowing when a movie was taking place.
The designers have included as much real world physics as possible into this game such as inertia and angular velocity, yet they have managed to keep it fun and playable. This is truly a testament to balanced gameplay and engine design.
The only visual oddity I saw in this game was that when asteroids were attacked or mined they suspiciously shrank rather than blow apart. Only when the smallest version of the asteroid was finally destroyed did it break apart with a substantial explosion.
Battles are stunning to watch with some reaching epic proportions. Once you have issued the appropriate orders it is most pleasing to sit back and watch the action unfold as wings of ships engage other fighters or assault an enemy construction asteroid or mother ship. It’s like watching your own sci-fi movie and you are the director.
I am compelled to mention the interface once more. Everything is presented in a simple design with intuitive icons that not only graphically depict the ship or upgrade, but also the status of the build order with a gradual fill of the bar graph. The rest of the interface includes maps and radar and everything is just a bit transparent to let the game slip through, almost like a plasma HUD. There are all sorts of nice subtle animations and lighting effects on the interface like little sparkles that travel along the perimeter of the display.
On the downside, there are numerous typos and grammatical errors, some of which I can't imagine how they ever got through Q&A. As a writer and editor I’m more likely to catch these than the casual gamer, but it seemed there was at least one error on every box of dialog – big stuff like spelling “available” without the “L”. It really took the shine off an otherwise professional package.
In space no one can hear your scream, but you can hear some really cool engine whines, explosions, and other sci-fi effects that are presented in a slick EAX surround sound package that delivers 3D spatial effects, even on a two-speaker setup. Granted, there are not a lot of sound effects, but the ones that do show up are all excellent.
The music is wonderful ranging from orchestra scores to trance and techno riffs that sound like they were lifted from the Matrix. They are also cued to the onscreen action so they dynamically reflect and enhance the visuals and gameplay.
The voice acting ranges from very good (narration) to humorous (cutscene characters). It’s not so much the actual acting as it is the stereotypical characters derived from just about every cliché used in the history of motion pictures. All of the actors did a decent job with the material they had to work with, and the story is quite engrossing, although admittedly unnecessary in your ultimate quest to annihilate the enemy.
The single player campaign in Project Earth offers a substantial game experience with over a dozen missions for each race totaling 20-30 hours of gameplay. Of course the lack of a mid-mission save results in most gamers replaying at least a few of the levels after a discouraging defeat which admittedly inflates the overall game time. I've logged about 20 hours on this game and have only completed the human missions and the first three of the alien campaign.
There are multiplayer options for Deathmatch, skirmish and team play for up to eight players but there really isn’t an organized community or any online services that are supporting this title, so it will be up to you to host your own games or locate other players in chat rooms or game forums.
There are several upcoming space RTS games on the horizon that may soon be competing for the coveted spot that Project Earth now holds in this particular genre. Hopefully the designers of those games will take a good look at what this game has already brought to the table and build upon it.
Project Earth: Starmageddon is a stellar title (pun intended) that offers some of the best visuals your 3D-equipped PC can dish out. The complexity of battling in the 3D vastness of space is made easy with an intuitive interface and commands that can be as simple as the mouse and the CTRL key.
If you love RTS games or just want to lose yourself in some of the most gorgeous visuals ever brought to the PC, you will definitely want to take this game out of space dock and put your resource management skills to the ultimate test.