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Stormrise review — A complicated mess

The RTS games have been pretty much the same over the years, the same controls, same interface types etc. But it’s only been the same because it works, and the small changes that have refined RTS games over the years have made things better not worse. Just look at Supreme Commander for instance, and the map features it introduced when it was released back in 2007.

However, one cannot say the same about Stomrise, an RTS in a post-apocalyptic setting. The developers, Creative Assembly — makers of the successful Total War franchise — have tried to create something new, most noticeably the camera system and controls. A new control scheme called “Whip Select” was designed for the consoles, however, Creative Assembly tried to carry the controls over to the PC version of the game (which we are reviewing). Bad idea. Very bad idea.

You see, PC is the natural home for RTS games. Sure, some have tried to make console RTS games for ages, but they’ve never matched the PC counterparts — the controls were always slow and never really worked as well as a mouse and keyboard (mostly mouse). If someone would take the sluggish console controls and use them on the PC, some would say it was insanity. Others would simply cry “blasphemy!”. This is exactly what Stormrise brings to the PC, sluggish controls that were meant for the consoles. And a lot of other bad things.

Wait, let’s back up a bit. Here’s the story: A series of firestorms wage over the world and destroys most of it. Some people hid underground and went into a cryogenic hibernation, thinking they’ll just pop back in when things cool down. While others stayed above surface and were exposed to the storms, and eventually mutated and became powerful beings called “Sal”. Yes, “Sal”. This of course sets up the two main factions of the game, which duel it out.

Now back to how much Stormrise sucks: first, it’s not really an RTS, as you don’t have a bird’s eye view, you don’t build a base, and you don’t control a lot of units. You control a group of soldiers through a series of battles, but your view is limited to being a camera just above the units, which in and of itself, is not really RTS. One could even argue that the game would have worked better as a third person shooter with some decent squad features. As for the controls, which I mentioned earlier, well, not only were they designed for a console game, but they also happen to suck on the console game. So when you port something like that over to the PC, it’s so bad that it’s almost funny. For the RTS fanatic though, it’s outright insulting. On top of that, you have a horrible camera system that is worsened by the rather tight level design, where your units don’t have much room to move, especially the bigger ones. This usually forces the camera to get stuck behind a wall or place where you can’t see anything.

I won’t go into detailed gameplay mechanics here, because, honestly, it’s pointless. With controls that are so bad, and with a constant frame rate stuttering, even on a high end PC — the game only runs on Vista and DirectX 10 graphics cards, by the way — and the overall buggy release, it doesn’t really matter what else the game has to offer, it’s still ruined. Oh, and it doesn’t have much to offer, in case you’re wondering.

The Good:
Decent voice acting

The Bad:
Horrible controls
Bad camera
Missing a lot of RTS elements
Buggy
Frame rate issues
Boring story
Downright unplayable at times
Vista/DX10 only

Overall score: 1/10

Stormrise Game Review: Tough Times, Tough Timing, Tough Luck

With a name like Stormrise, you think it’s got to be a really interesting game, right?  When I first heard about this one poised to invade markets literally just a few days ago, I was picturing a nice Baldur’s Gate style medievalist fantasy.  Of course, if I’d read up on it in  advance I likely would’ve been sorely disappointed right from the word go, but instead my  disappointment had to wait until I finally got my hands on a copy of Stormrise.

Now available for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC, Stormrise presents an ominously possible future, as humanity faces a global catastrophe brought on by what seems to be a combination of its own willing ignorance and global warming.  In response, humanity develops a kind of satellite network to counter the resulting superstorms.  It works, for a while, until things get vastly worse through humanity’s meddling.  The result?  A hellish apocalypse unleashed on earth, and two warring factions left to fight over the ruins: the Echelon, a technologically advanced human society that sealed itself in shelters for protection, and the Sai, a race of mutants who’ve learned to live on the now-blasted surface of earth and instead depend mostly on monsters for assault where the Echelon would instead have tanks.

You play an Echelon commander who’s been out of the fight for some time, and wage war against the Sai for your own survival.  You’ll be in charge of several different kinds of battle unit, including several classes of infantry, aerial units, and giant mech suits.

It’s hard to pan Stormrise directly.  It’s an innovative enough idea, and the real-time strategy subgenre has been badly underappreciated, especially in these days of constant nonstop first person shooters every time I turn around.  There’s even some stuff to like in how easy it is to move from one unit to the next with the right analog stick.  The plot is deep and interesting with a lot of room for growth.

But there are problems here.  Of course, there’s almost inevitable comparison to fellow recent release Halo Wars, and you can rest assured that, giant mechs aside, Stormrise will not even vaguely be able to compete with Halo Wars.  I liked how rapidly I could switch between units in Stormrise, but I found that getting them to move anywhere was a confusing prospect.  The much-vaunted 3D aspect of the game has to take an unpleasant backseat to the sheer fact that, often, you can’t see where you’re supposed to be going next around the buildings and hills and valleys and assorted whatnot that’s cluttering up your field of vision.

There seemed to be a lot of problems with unit balance—at one point, I dispatched a mech and two units of infantry to seize an energy node, while leaving the balance of my force behind to shepherd the portal from which further troops could emerge.  My expeditionary force was chewed to bits by what I later discovered was a nigh-infinite flood of Sai troops, and when that happened, the game apparently decided that I just suck too hard as a commander and forced me to restart the level from the last save point.

Suffering from unpleasant control schemes and a really lousy sense of timing, Stormrise will almost inevitably wind up as second banana to the Microsoft juggernaut as presented by Halo Wars.  And this is sad, as the innovative ideas and interesting storyline will inevitably be lost to bad controls and better alternatives.

Stormrise PC DX10, Vista Exclusive

Penetration of DirectX 10 hardware and Windows Vista is pretty high nowadays, but gamer reception to it has not been entirely positive. Keeping that in mind, Creative Assembly’s upcoming RTS Stormrise will be one of the first PC games to require both a DX10-capable video card and Windows Vista.

"Stormrise has been designed for DirectX 10 and Vista only right from the start," said Stormrise lead designer Artem Kulakov, who added: "Vista only. DX10 only. No fallback option. We have never suggested this or hinted at it, so it shouldn’t be a surprise."

Speaking of the move, he said that DX10 offers a lot of “advantages” over DX9 and that they have had fewer driver-specific compatibility issues.

Stormrise is a small-scale real-time strategy designed for consoles in mind. It is expected to hit stores on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 this month.

AMD Announces DX10.1 Games

Processor and GPU maker AMD announced today a list of future games that all feature support for DirectX 10.1, an updated version of DX10 found in Windows Vista. The games are BattleForge, Stormrise and Cloud 9.

The latest from Creative Assembly, Stormrise has been said to be “built from the ground up specifically for high-def consoles”. It will reportedly feature controls that will “revolutionize the way RTS games are played.”

BattleForge is a RTS-CCG hybrid in the works at EA Phenomic, with Cloud 9 in the works at NHN.

AMD noted that only its ATI Radeon HD 3000 and HD 4800 cards currently support the DirectX 10.1 technology, which, surprisingly, is yet to be adopted by NVIDIA.