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Editorial contributions to the site by me, I file under the name "The Ramblings of a Moron" for naming continuity, and to warn of non-perfect editorial skills. (Not to mention the high probability of completely moronic things being said.) This is me trying to improve my written communications as well as contribute at the same time. Without further delay:
The Ramblings of a Moron, Articles by Cynagen
This post does not reflect the views, opinions, or stance of Widescreen Gaming Forum and it's staff. It is only of my own, so anything you have against it, PM me or comment.
Eliminate, and or Dominate. These are your basic goals in all things Multiwinia, the multiplayer spawn of the award-winning Darwinia. Here you're tasked with 1 of 6 different challenges, some harder than others. Classical modes such as Domination (deathmatch), King of the Hill, and Capture the Statue, will lend themselves to classic multiplayer feel, while the newer combat scenarios Assault (assault a heavily defended fort), Rocket Riot (be the first to launch), and Blitzkrieg (hardcore capture the flag), give quite a bit more difficulty and unique essence.
Pew pew pew, "AUUUGGGGHHHH", *running around on fire*. These are typical actions of your Multiwinians while playing this wonderfully designed and thought out game. They're funny, cute, or just down right disturbing depending on your stomach. Now while this is a well thought out game, there are still some severe pitfalls it cannot avoid; It's an RTS game, and therefore is subject to fall under such scrutiny against giants like World In Conflict, or the ever popular Age of Empires and Rise of Nations. However, considering this is RTS on the most simplistic scale I've seen to date on a computer game, I'll shy away from doing so. That being said, make a bad move with your troops, and you're most certainly marching (if they're under a commander), or walking (free-roam Multiwinians) to their deaths, just like any other RTS.
Now I'm going to speak of my games with P-Storm earlier this week, as it's the freshest memories of the game, and it did reveal quite a few things I don't think I would have encountered playing by myself. Firstly, one of the game's training maps has a huge flaw, where, given enough luck and good timing, a single player (cpu or human) can take control of multiple outer islands, leaving the game in a virtual stalemate. Now while I was in the lead with said stalemate, the game did compensate by giving P-Storm and the CPU player crates with all sorts of wicked things to use against my massed forces, such as annoying anthills, meteor showers, and even a homage to Defcon, a nuke strike launched by submarine outlines pulled from Defcon itself. Trailing dashes following the outlined nukes and all. We even encountered the game introducing us to the Evilwinians, a race of pure black Multiwinians whose sole purpose was to otherwise create chaos, and spawn all sorts of virii from Darwinia, only after eliminating the previous computer entity used to fill out the third spot. After winning through fun little tricks (pointing radar-based Multiwinian transporters away from adjacent enemy islands), and a large amount of turtling, we moved on to test out other maps and modes. Rocket Riot was much fun, but I'll leave that to P-Storm to speak of, since he won that map hands down (and completely humiliated me). We next tried the Assault mode, setting ourselves as the attackers and leaving the computer to defend itself against our onslaught. After quickly figuring out that attacking from 4 seperate points with at least 5 turrets in direct firing range on each corner was an excercize in futility, I instead turned to focus my troops into one point on one of the sides of the base in the center, and this worked so much better, much to my surprise, after making a few successful assaults upon the lower levels, it was time to move up to the second and final level of this base. With a proper application of a Meteor Storm, this was relatively easy, and the game was won with little return fire, a satisfying, yet at the same time, unfulfilling victory. The game had let me down, and sadly this was not the first time.
The game's AI is lacking in some places, making brash decisions that it can't back up/re-enforce or doing something as stupid as disconnecting a radar beam with 40+ Multiwinians still in transit, killing them in the process. These were things I could not see a human player doing unless they were in a dire situation that called for such a move, but I'll let this not bug me as much. Other things that did bother me, was the fact that it can be easy to turtle your troops, and still win depending on the game's initial setup. This was made abundantly clear with the first match free for all between myself and P-Storm, whether this was of purposeful design by Introversion, or an oversight, I'm not one hundered percent sure, but I'm sure it's not the only map and or mode where this can be done. The one thing that bothers me quite the most, is if sales of the game have been even half as stellar as Darwinia, where are all the players? I have quite a hard time finding games online with total strangers, and it's not because I have a retail copy, I get the same server list on the Steam version as well, and it's pretty much playerless. There are around 20 servers always on, but never any players, and that makes me sad as I would much rather prefer to play this with a human than the computer, it IS a multiplayer game afterall, with heavy emphasis on the multiplayer.
Scoring:
Graphics: 10/10 (This game is consistent with it's hits Darwinia, and Defcon.)
Audio: 7/10 (While all the little sounds of battle and your Multiwinians dying are being heard, the soundtrack just detracts from it.)
Action: 9/10 (With just the right settings like what I used for our Rocket Riot, it can get very fast paced.)
Re-playability: 7/10 (With limited online play with other humans, this really does make the game only good for killing time in small batches, you don't even feel bad for not completing the game and leaving early.)
Value to Cost: 8/10 (This is fun, but like I mentioned, lack of humans now, and lack of motivation to rekindle and keep the community alive hold this back.)
Overall score: 82%
Please be advised, this is a guest edition of the Ramblings, so without further ado, here's P-Storm!
P-Storm's Ramblings
Shortly after I awoke one day, I took to the forums and there I saw a post by Ibrin, posting free Multiwinia for the first 2 who answered, and was lucky enough that I received one. First thing while downloading the game, I thought, "Damn, that was small, 50mb, is it really going to be a good game?" The answer is yes, it is a fun game, but let me continue. When I started Multiwinia up, I noticed that it selected my desktop resolution, and everything maxed out to my specs. Nice, so I don't have to set it to that. This is how I would like other games to function as well... but yeah, probably nobody else cares about that. The next thing I did was start exploring the tutorials. If you are new, then try the tutorials, they are "Good", in a sense, there is some AI programming done, but there has to be much more directions, like the satellite (radar), you can only move with your own powered satellite. Grouping you have to do with your right mouse button and things like that.
Then I spoke with Cynagen, about explaining it to me. Once he gave me the basic concept of a deathmatch game which he set up, I beat him, my first ever match :P. There are 6 game modes, and we tried 4 of them. The first one was deathmatch (Domination), straightforward just kill the other opponent(s). The second one was King of the Hill, some kind of hold point for more points. Here I was second place, because some stupid aliens (Evilwinians) that spawned from a crate... We started with 3 players, I wipes out green, and we ended with them (Evilwinians). The only bad thing was that my point was held by the Evil guys. There was a strategy that you can only send your troops to the middle island, and cynagen did use that. So he had the control point of the green cpu (was stupid, didn't try taking their home base myself... so can't blame him.)
The third map was about some kind of rocket (Rocket Riot), which you had to fuel them with solar power, and then get 100 men in it. This was the first omfg map, because of the massive numbers of units that we received (thanks to Cynagen's settings). I controlled both side islands with solar panel systems, which Cynagen didn't noticed it till mid-game, and that is why I won.
Now more details.
The game is a fresh new RTS for me, it is nice and massive but you can keep control of it. The crate spawning and those things add a nice random element in it. So for gameplay I would say 8/10. It is not bad, but it is not a new gametype.
For the graphics, when I downloaded the 50mb, I thought it would be bad. And while they were bad, they weren't the way you think. They were bad if you compare it to Far Cry 2 or some of those games. For the RTS like this it was awesome, with those grid lines and everything. So graphics also a 8/10.
Sound, sorry can't tell a thing about it. Did mute it, so i could here vent.
The replay expectation: I think it will be about an average RTS, so that is good. If you can find a opponent online, it will vastly increase it.
The multiplayer aspect of the game was nice, sending troops and those things. The only bad things are the bad tutorials, and the gameflow. Sometimes your on a stalemate, and can't do anything major.
Overall value, 8/10. If you want a good RTS that is refreshing, random but still nice, then choose this. It is not a graphic wonder, but it is a new style what most people also will like.
Scoring:
Graphics: 8/10
Audio: N/A
Action: 8/10
Re-playability: 7/10
Value to Cost: 8/10
Overall score: 62% (No audio score, possible 82%)
As always, thread is open to discussion, looking forward to some discussion.
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Current build: Intel i5-4670k | 32GB DDR3 | RAID0 2x250GB 850EVOs | nVidia GTX980Ti (MSI G1 Gaming Edition) | SoundBlaster Zx | Dell 2405FPW (Landscape, primary) & HP w2338h (Portrait)
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