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IGN Review of Stormrise
When I previewed Stormrise, a new real-time strategy title from Creative Assembly, I was hopeful. The game, set in a dystopian future with plenty of ruined cities and stormy skies to enjoy, was designed from the ground up for consoles. Playing the preview build, I was intrigued by the Whip Select control system (which I'll explain in detail later) and the battlefield camera, but a number of bugs and framerate jitters kept me from enjoying the full experience. Unfortunately, those issues weren't just limited to the preview build. Stormrise has a lot of good ideas and is a sincerely valiant attempt to make RTS work without a keyboard and mouse, but the game's technical problems, coupled with some truly frustrating control limitations, ultimately makes Stormrise a disappointing entry in the genre at best.
And then, of course, I found out the game was coming to the PC, so I pose this very important question: why? This game was designed for consoles. We already know that RTS games work on the PC -- that's where they've always worked. But still, Stormrise awkwardly waddles into the PC universe and somehow manages to become an even more embarrassing disaster than it was on consoles.
In case my thoughts written above didn't scare you away, I'll expand on the game's premise. Stormrise takes place in a world torn apart by massive fire storms. After a catastrophic technological incident known only as The Event, pockets of humanity were forced underground into cryogenic hibernation in a desperate attempt to survive. The people remaining on the surface began to evolve over the countless years thanks to their exposure to the storms and they eventually became powerful beings known as the Sai. Now that the original threads of humanity -- the Echelon -- have awakened from their underground slumber, the two forces have begun to clash. You fill the boots of Commander Aiden Geary, a leader of the Echelon Special Forces and a strange player in these troubled times.
After a somewhat convoluted but still powerful opening cinematic, the story of Stormrise suddenly takes a dive as characters are forcefully introduced, plot points are loosely chained together and the entire affair becomes nearly unintelligible. It really is a shame that the game couldn't have kept its wits about it from start to finish, because I'm all about the post-apocalyptic scene.
In terms of gameplay, Stormrise is far from a traditional RTS. It's not so much about building a base and commanding armies as it is jumping from node to node with small groups of soldiers. All the action takes place right down on the battlefield, as opposed to from a bird's eye view. When in control of a unit, the camera sits just above its head and you can move your cursor around from its perspective. In this way, you can tell it where to go and what to attack. In order to select a different unit, you use the console-intended Whip Select system to jump from one unit to another. By holding the right mouse button down and pushing the mouse in a certain direction, you can highlight a unit's icon on screen and let go of the button, which switches you to that unit's perspective.
This brings about one of the biggest problems, which I'll continue to repeat throughout this article. Stormrise does not work on a PC. Whip Select was designed with a control stick in mind, so using a mouse instead is a joke.
Besides controlling units, your other obligation in Stormrise is to manage the pre-determined resource nodes on each map, which must be captured first and can then be turned into shielded turrets and refineries. The biggest strategic element in Stormrise is figuring out how to go about holding onto these nodes, as they're a vital aspect of resource gathering and some can even be used as spawn points for new units. But besides node control, commanding units is what you'll be doing the most in Stormrise.
But you don't have to command one unit at a time, of course. You can group up to three units together and you can also issue Indirect Commands by moving the cursor over a friendly unit's icon, hitting a button and dragging the resulting arrow to a new destination. These techniques, along with the Whip Select system, are great in theory for a console game, but just don't make sense for the PC.
Controlling a massive army is next to impossible in Stormrise. Sometimes, you need large forces to overwhelm the enemy but trying to whip between the groups is cumbersome. Even mapping different groups to the number keys does little to alleviate the frustration. By the time you've built up an entire army, the screen is completely littered with icons and keeping precise track of your units is a disaster. Stormrise works much better when you're working with smaller scale conflicts.
Another fine example is when I had my group of Sentinels (heavy weapon gunners) dig in to defend my own node. They suddenly became caught in an animation loop where they set up their guns, then decided against it and put them away... only to set them up again. Later in the battle, when I tried to put them back into a Neutral position so they could move to a new location, I found that they were stuck in place and couldn't break away. Score another one for crazy glitches.
Then of course there's the fact that the game runs poorly on the PS3, 360 and especially the PC. The framerate suffers horribly and the game can rarely handle a lot of units on the screen at once without stuttering. When your forces collide with the enemy in an epic confrontation, expect the game to actually freeze momentarily before picking back up where it left off. Or perhaps it'll just crash altogether, which is what happened to me once on the PS3 version. If you have the graphical settings turned up on the PC version, expect to watch a slideshow. Honestly.
Lastly, if you're interested in checking out some multiplayer action, don't hold your breath. As I write this article, just about 10 players have been officially ranked on the online leaderboards. There won't be many people to play against and having an RTS with no community behind it just isn't good. Multiplayer will not be a feasible option in PC Stormrise land.
©2009-04-03, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
And then, of course, I found out the game was coming to the PC, so I pose this very important question: why? This game was designed for consoles. We already know that RTS games work on the PC -- that's where they've always worked. But still, Stormrise awkwardly waddles into the PC universe and somehow manages to become an even more embarrassing disaster than it was on consoles.
In case my thoughts written above didn't scare you away, I'll expand on the game's premise. Stormrise takes place in a world torn apart by massive fire storms. After a catastrophic technological incident known only as The Event, pockets of humanity were forced underground into cryogenic hibernation in a desperate attempt to survive. The people remaining on the surface began to evolve over the countless years thanks to their exposure to the storms and they eventually became powerful beings known as the Sai. Now that the original threads of humanity -- the Echelon -- have awakened from their underground slumber, the two forces have begun to clash. You fill the boots of Commander Aiden Geary, a leader of the Echelon Special Forces and a strange player in these troubled times.
After a somewhat convoluted but still powerful opening cinematic, the story of Stormrise suddenly takes a dive as characters are forcefully introduced, plot points are loosely chained together and the entire affair becomes nearly unintelligible. It really is a shame that the game couldn't have kept its wits about it from start to finish, because I'm all about the post-apocalyptic scene.
In terms of gameplay, Stormrise is far from a traditional RTS. It's not so much about building a base and commanding armies as it is jumping from node to node with small groups of soldiers. All the action takes place right down on the battlefield, as opposed to from a bird's eye view. When in control of a unit, the camera sits just above its head and you can move your cursor around from its perspective. In this way, you can tell it where to go and what to attack. In order to select a different unit, you use the console-intended Whip Select system to jump from one unit to another. By holding the right mouse button down and pushing the mouse in a certain direction, you can highlight a unit's icon on screen and let go of the button, which switches you to that unit's perspective.
This brings about one of the biggest problems, which I'll continue to repeat throughout this article. Stormrise does not work on a PC. Whip Select was designed with a control stick in mind, so using a mouse instead is a joke.
Besides controlling units, your other obligation in Stormrise is to manage the pre-determined resource nodes on each map, which must be captured first and can then be turned into shielded turrets and refineries. The biggest strategic element in Stormrise is figuring out how to go about holding onto these nodes, as they're a vital aspect of resource gathering and some can even be used as spawn points for new units. But besides node control, commanding units is what you'll be doing the most in Stormrise.
But you don't have to command one unit at a time, of course. You can group up to three units together and you can also issue Indirect Commands by moving the cursor over a friendly unit's icon, hitting a button and dragging the resulting arrow to a new destination. These techniques, along with the Whip Select system, are great in theory for a console game, but just don't make sense for the PC.
Controlling a massive army is next to impossible in Stormrise. Sometimes, you need large forces to overwhelm the enemy but trying to whip between the groups is cumbersome. Even mapping different groups to the number keys does little to alleviate the frustration. By the time you've built up an entire army, the screen is completely littered with icons and keeping precise track of your units is a disaster. Stormrise works much better when you're working with smaller scale conflicts.
Another fine example is when I had my group of Sentinels (heavy weapon gunners) dig in to defend my own node. They suddenly became caught in an animation loop where they set up their guns, then decided against it and put them away... only to set them up again. Later in the battle, when I tried to put them back into a Neutral position so they could move to a new location, I found that they were stuck in place and couldn't break away. Score another one for crazy glitches.
Then of course there's the fact that the game runs poorly on the PS3, 360 and especially the PC. The framerate suffers horribly and the game can rarely handle a lot of units on the screen at once without stuttering. When your forces collide with the enemy in an epic confrontation, expect the game to actually freeze momentarily before picking back up where it left off. Or perhaps it'll just crash altogether, which is what happened to me once on the PS3 version. If you have the graphical settings turned up on the PC version, expect to watch a slideshow. Honestly.
Lastly, if you're interested in checking out some multiplayer action, don't hold your breath. As I write this article, just about 10 players have been officially ranked on the online leaderboards. There won't be many people to play against and having an RTS with no community behind it just isn't good. Multiplayer will not be a feasible option in PC Stormrise land.
©2009-04-03, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved