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| Time to make some upgrades! | Can you feel the warmth? |
As a RTS fan I could not turn down the chance to try a new space-based RTS, while the likelihood of it competing with the larger titles of Star Wars: Empire at War is very low an RTS is an RTS.
As soon as you run that executable and watch your way through the skipable movies you are instantly hit with some of the games musical numbers while accessing the title screen, and it is in my opinion really quite good.
It has the right genre of music to really make you want to charge into battle and come out the victor. For those who love the C&C series you’ll know what I mean when you start a campaign and hear ‘Hell March’ playing, then you know it’s time for war! I found Genesis Rising to have the same oomph behind its music fuelling you to charge the battlefield.
With any game that has sound (which is most to my knowledge) sound effects can make or break the entertainment value. Fortunately Genesis Rising comes through with enough futuristic buzzing, zapping and shooting sounds to keep you interested while you pummel the enemy into submission.
Overall the musical interludes and effects impressed me enough to keep my attention solely focused on winning the battle.
Once getting into the game I was impressed, you could look around and see so much detail, from the background displaying stars and planets to the foreground detail of massive floating bases and their defending space craft.
After a close inspection of all that was around I decided that though the detail was very good, from what you expect from most games these days I was expecting something of a higher standard from setting on the graphical options on highest.
However, in consideration this is perfect for systems that some of the newest and highly demanding games cannot support.
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| Woohoo! A blood banquet! | The capitol ship |
Now, I am a big fan of special effects, the flashier the better, and though there are other games that can produce much better effects Genesis Rising still can hold its own with some of its special effects ranging from thruster trails to weapon systems.
All in all, the graphical output of this game is defiantly on par with most of the average games and will easily beat some of the less reputable games you can still find. This is probably one game any variety of system can handle and enjoy without much sacrifice.
When it comes to actual game play it is like any other strategy game, harvest resources, save em’ up and spend out on massive war machines. Genesis Rising is no different, though it does have some twists.
While most games collect money or credits and others collect wood and ore, Genesis Rising relies on blood reserves, harvested from either your main base or destroyed enemy ships, though the principle is the same, the resources are used on building ships and weapons.
However there is another twist to building ships, they come completely unarmed. Though they do have a series of genetic slots, which first require you to take some time and blood to do some genetic research and apply what you make to your ships. This took some time to learn the way it works and its probably one thing that puts me off the most, though it was funny after building my fleet and sending them to battle they ended up sitting there as I had not equipped any weapon systems.
Though when it comes down to it, Genesis Rising is just another RTS where you build and destroy which the slight difference of blood being used in all of your transactions.
However while the playability was good the AI did suffer, I sat there watching the computer sit there watching me, it was a very long and interesting staring contest standoff. Though that might be considered unfair comparison as the AI did eventually do something, which seems more like random destruction then anything more. All I can say was I waited and waited and still was not attacked. Infact the only other ship to come near me was a patrol ship.
As this is in its beta stage, I cannot hold complete judgement on this as it could dramatically improve by the time of retail release. Hopefully it will.
While the game offers a new way of battling for the universe, with blood fused life forms it still just seems like another RTS which could eventually run out of entertainment once you take over the universe twenty odd times. Personally, while I enjoy RTS games I get rather bored of saving my resources for one massive battle and obliterating the enemy after awhile.
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| Maybe this was a bad idea? | Fighters, Primed and Ready! |
All in all, I am impressed by Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade it has many good elements to it that outweigh most of the bad, and those few problems it does have are due to it still being in its beta stage. Once this game is completed and some of the bugs and problems ironed out I think it will do well as a space-based real time strategy game. Definitely something for RTS fans to give a try!
Top Game Moment: Forming lines of blood fighters, and then sending them out to spread chaos.
