A sure way to win more than one thousand gamer hearts is to offer players something original, preferably never seen before. A sure way to get a series of slaps in the face, to be ridiculed and spat on is to offer something original, never seen before. "What a paradox?"- you ask, perplexed and at the same time wondering whether the reviewer is overusing some specific representatives of the flora. In fact, everything is quite simple. The gaming industry is developing very quickly, much faster than cinema in its time. If during the formation of cinematography it was enough to show a steam locomotive shrouded in steam, then forty years later the public deigned to demand spectacle, acting, a clash of characters, and, finally, original ideas! But if a work telling the story of one of the largest mafia families has become a world classic, crafts about creepy aliens biting off the legs of everyone left and right ended up where they belong – in the trash heap, that is. The same thing happened with games. Spoiled by good projects, gamers now do not forget their names with delight when they see a little rat digging a hole. Give them an original, fresh, innovative idea, but as soon as you add spices – that’s it, the ficus idea turns into a rolled-out mess that half the planet laughs at.
Our visitor today – PSI: Syberian Conflict – a game that loudly proclaims its originality right from the opening credits. Let’s take this opportunity and immediately examine the guest under a microscope. And then we’ll decide where to put the coveted hook in “execute cannot be pardoned.”.
Battlefield – Earth
The small planet Earth, rich in reserves of water and oxygen, and, presumably, huge deposits of minerals lying hidden, attracts alien tourists; a piece of bread spread thickly with jam attracts well-known insects. Completely ignoring other universal attractions, the evil aliens do not even try to establish contacts, organize an embassy, organize the import and export of goods, even, excuse me, for the post of President of some tiny country, like the USA, they do not try to run for office. Apparently, we are so disgusting that as soon as any other race notices representatives of homo sapiens, their instincts immediately prompt: “Kill them as quickly as possible.”!“And it doesn’t matter what lofty goals the aliens’ consciousness was occupied at that moment: they were looking for a grandmother lost many thousands of years ago or dropped to Earth to buy hamburgers – they immediately give up everything and begin to organize a form of genocide.
So, the superintelligent race of Evolons lived and did not grieve in one distant, distant galaxy. For long epochs they existed relatively peacefully, causing drunken brawls only in their sandbox, and evolved, accordingly, according to the laws of development, since they did not meddle in the affairs of their neighbors and did not get punched in the face from them. An invariably beautiful day has arrived, when politicians (or whoever they are)?) decided that the Evolons had reached the peak of their form and there was simply nowhere to develop further. Clever orators declared themselves omnipotent gods, and among them there was a particularly impudent specimen named Skiva, who from that moment commanded the speech of himself as the only one (note. author: and unique). Politicians, stunned by this turn of events, quickly divided into two groups. Those who were still weak supported Skiva, while the rest declared holy war on him. And alien blood flowed like a river. In the end, most of Skiva’s supporters either died in battles or hid in barns, and their proud leader himself tried to escape on an interstellar ship, but an enemy bullet spoiled the navigation system, as a result of which in 1908 a meteorite plopped down in Siberia, which, in fact, was the means of transportation of the disgraced Evolon leader. After almost 60 earthly years, the surviving supporters of Skiva regrouped, rested and flew to the long-suffering Earth in order to recapture the carcass of the boss from the inhospitable Siberian lands, and, if possible, the living boss.
The Soviet Army will try to prevent the enemy from doing this, and a natural war of the worlds unfolds.
Soup with https://mexluckycasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ cat
Before us is a completely stereotypical real-time strategy with rudimentary elements of tactics. As a matter of fact, all tactical diversity is again exhausted by an eerily standard set. First of all, you can’t build buildings. This to a certain extent limits strategic initiative and forces us to be more careful with the issued troops. But it is still possible to prepare new combat units. There are points scattered throughout the maps from which certain harvesters are capable of extracting biomatter. This substance is used to train troops both from aliens and from soldiers of the Soviet Army. Quite a plot twist, I tell you. The fact that the aliens raise their warriors from biomass is understandable, but the fact that an ordinary Russian officer can make his own personnel from it is interesting.
The harvester, by the way, is issued strictly one at a time, so you should take care of it more than a wad of money carefully hidden in a mattress. With the destruction of the collector, an inexorable game over will begin.
Secondly, everything in the game revolves around the heroes. Since you can play for both aliens and earthlings, their heroes are, accordingly, different. You won’t be able to create a lot of soldiers – caring developers have set a limit on the number of cannon fodder. Therefore, it is mainly the heroes who have to fight, occasionally, in especially difficult moments, supporting them with furious attacks of little men dangling under their feet and timid shots of semi-toy equipment. There are exactly seven heroes for the entire game, but don’t rush to rejoice: only three are subject to development and strengthening, so you’ll have to give up tempting dreams of raising yourself an uber-team of invincible heroes and using them to smash everything that moves. You will have to choose from a medic, a scout, a marksman, an artilleryman, two tanks (one large, the second smaller, but more nimble and fast), a leader and simply a hero, who is the embodiment of strength and power. Don’t be surprised that I didn’t give two lists: despite the difference between the races, the structure of their armies coincides almost one to one.
I would recommend that you choose one powerful shooter, a first aid kit and a piece of equipment. This way you will get a strong and balanced pack. You should forget about goodies like the scout once and for all, as about a terrible nightmare – there is no balance in the game at all, and the knight of the cloak and map will be tripped up by the last submachine gunner, even if he is seven spans in the forehead and ten levels in statistics, and he will not even have time to scout the surrounding territories a little.
The process of distributing experience between heroes is extremely stupidly organized. They all collect it, but only part of it goes into the common treasury, so the main characters are bought perks and skills, and the rest just waste a lot of experience on the brakes. Very, you know, unpleasant.
Warchief’s Manual, page 3
It’s easy and pleasant to fight for the Soviet Army, everything is familiar and intuitive: here are machine gunners who, for some reason, go into a hand-to-hand attack in a chain, instead of shooting from their machine guns from afar, here are tanks who joyfully shoot each other, with special effects proving to the user that he bought this game for a reason, here are rocket troops pouring a hail of homing shells on equipment, and here is a grenade launcher sneaking up on to an enemy harvester and shot him at point-blank range; he himself did not die, which is why we conclude that he is explosion-proof, which is a joy.
The main disappointment is that the tactics and results of combat operations when playing for Evolons are NOTHING different from playing for earthlings. Yes, instead of the usual soldiers with machine guns, there are some lopsided freaks, whose mothers, who escaped from DOOM 3, met their dads, who escaped from Painkiller, and produced something completely mind-blowing, and this is by no means a compliment. But they attack with the same effect and at the same distance, despite the fact that the attack animation is different.
Total: we developed one race, then redrew its fighters, practically without changing the characteristics. The only exception is that the Evolons have some kind of self-propelled chest of drawers that sluggishly fires at enemy infantry. Tell me, does the closet look decent when it is turned into a defensive tower?? There is no place for such “fighters” in an alien armada.
All this chaos runs from one resource deposit to another, staging endless fights for control over them. No doubt, it looks and plays quite interesting, but, alas, too monotonous. After an hour you will only be grinding your teeth, but this is only if you have enough patience and perseverance, otherwise, turn off the game and go do something more enjoyable.
A feature of the game that is especially positioned by developers is anomalies. These are special places on the map where something anomalous happens to your troops (or to non-your troops). No, additional heads with arms do not begin to grow, although perhaps this would significantly diversify the gameplay and would amuse bored gamers. But, for example, health is restored, the area gradually opens up, and the enemy regiments stop, paralyzed by the powerful influence of the “bad” place.
Graphic shortcomings
Graphics engine is disappointing in quality. No, sometimes, by straining and creaking the gears so that you can hear on this side of the monitor, it produces an acceptable picture in half. But this only happens on New Year’s Day, and even then only every twenty years. In short, you shouldn’t expect anything pleasing to the visual receptors. The models of warriors and equipment are quite well-designed, the special effects are quite good, but the textures are washed out, and the level design is not particularly impressive, to put it mildly, and if we really hit the truth, it’s not at all impressive, but on the contrary, it’s very annoying.
Developers with Evolons were fined on all counts. Not only did they create an incredibly developed alien race in all the parameters of the corresponding Soviet Army (or is this a peculiar compliment, maybe we overlooked something due to the darkness of the peasantry and lack of education?), they also drew it, as if getting some kind of perverted pleasure from distorting familiar forms. Evolons are wonderful, eccentric, psychedelic fearfolk, the mere sight of which will send old women and children into a panic. What is not at all clear is why, having made worthy Soviet soldiers, the developers created the aliens with much less diligence, and the quality ultimately suffered greatly.
I have absolutely nothing to say about the music except that it is incredibly gray and boring. However, in games of this kind, the best compliment to the music track is something like: “It doesn’t interfere – and God bless it.”!"
Final comments:
Plot. The Soviet Army and incredibly advanced aliens are bludgeoning each other over the heads with seemingly different clubs, but in the end they end up with the same thing. ChudnO, I wouldn’t say more.
Graphics. The year before last, "The Siberian Conflict" would probably have received a higher final score, since in the strategy genre the graphical performance was assessed insofar as. But now – excuse me. Badly!
Sound. The quality is so average that I don’t want to mention it again. Imagine a surreal picture: 50% of the soundtracks of modern games are better, 50% are worse, and Syberian Conflict is exactly in the middle.
Total. Wireframe Dreams is a young studio, and no one is particularly surprised that their first serious project turned out to be a strong, but unremarkably average, game for one or two evenings. This is certainly not a failure, but not a breakthrough either. The original idea turned out to be rubbed into dust by mediocre execution. But it’s okay, maybe Wireframe will show everyone.