Maelstrom

James Swallow is a British author, journalist and scriptwriter. He was the one behind the novel inspired by The Butterfly Effect. Among his writings there are a few Warhammer 40,000 novels, Halcyon (based on the Stargate Atlantis television series) and others. He even had a contribution to some episodes of the Star Trek series. The world of games should know him best for the scripts of games such as Battlestar Galactica, Killzone and the latest RTS developed by KDV Games, Maelstrom. The Russian developers at KDV promised to redefine the whole genre with their new Sci-Fi RTS featuring RPG elements as well as a third-person shooter implementation. Did they succeed? Not quite, but?

Story About the same time the humankind seeks refugee on the orbital station of Laputa and the Red Planet in the UFO series - that's the year 2050 - Maelstrom presents a future Earth devastated by an apocalyptic ecological disaster. They called the times of chaos that followed this disaster Maelstorm - a word taken from an ancient language that referred to a storm so terrible that it could tear open the world. The most valuable resource the planet has to offer turns out to be the water. Like always, the humans are divided into two factions that try to prove their supremacy and ensure their survival. Right in the middle of this ferocious life and death fight a new enemy pops out of the blue, trying to colonize the entire planet for itself and destroying all the water supplies that remained. The alien race of Hai-Genti (that's mainly what made me think of the UFO series) is out on a terraforming mission that includes poisoning the water to make it usable for their own purposes. Well, things are going to get a lot messy for both human sides. Will they destroy each other and offer the planet to the aliens on a silver platter or will they put aside their differences and realize that none of them is strong enough to eliminate the menace by themselves?

Concept Theoretically this is the best part of the game. You're cast into the war zone to serve the interests of each of the three factions in the game. The Remnants gain your sympathy with their everlasting efforts to survive in the harsh environment. They're closest to the military modern organization. They fight to save as many human lives as possible and secure all the resources to rebuild the shattered world. As resources, they collect solar energy, water and salvage (used to as building material). Their heroes are high ranking officers trained with the Navy SEALs and a former Russian spy.

On the other side of the human war there is the Ascension organization. These are the bio-engineered ?superior" humans. The leader of this faction is Arlan Khan, the Iron Lord that was behind all the research projects in bio-engineering before the world literally collapsed. Their army is mainly composed of enhanced soldiers and drones. At the leader's side sits his own son, Maximilian Khan, and a genius in revolutionary technologies. As resources they use solar energy, hydro energy and DNA (told you they were advanced).

The ultimate terror of human life has a name - Hai-Genti. They have no place to call home and they decided settle on Earth. Unfortunately for the current inhabitants (the humankind that is) the aliens require mutagen and biomatter as resources. The mutagen is their energy source and is obtained by polluting the waters. That's mainly the reason that the two races cannot co-exist. The age of this race (as well as the age of any of the heroes) is unknown and they are lead by a sexless bio-neural intelligence known as the Overseer (I bet Arlan Khan would love to do a little experimenting on him).

Each faction has its specific units as well as specific buildings. Practically playing each of them is rather equivalent to three different experiences as even the game's interface changes to fit the chosen race better. The third-person perspective can be used at any time to impersonate any of the heroes in a shooter-like experience (direct control mode). The downside is that the actual implementation of all these turned up to far out from what it was supposed to accomplish. Maybe if the game came out 10 years ago it would have been the hit of the century. Unfortunately all it shows now is primitive elements of each of the genres it tries to combine.

Gameplay The single player campaign is composed of four mini-campaigns. First you'll have to please the Remnants and guide them in their quest to rid the planet of the threat that the Ascension represents (From the Ashes is the code name for this operation). Next you'll get into the shoes of the bio-engineered faction and do your best at eliminating all the weak rebels that keep wasting the resources that only the Ascension should benefit from (code name The Oncoming Storm). You gotta know who you're fighting against, so the third mini-campaign concerns the alien race (mission Fire and Ice). The fourth ladder is all about saving or dooming humanity (suggestively entitled World's End). It's the final battle for survival - mankind against aliens. Who will be at the top of the food chain?

The problem with the gameplay is that there's (a lot) more to complain about than to be grateful for. Oh, well. One at a time. So we're dealing with a RTS. First of all there is little choice of building no matter what faction you play (seven for the Remnants, six for the Ascension and another six for the aliens). The units don't come in much variety either. They all feature three specific heroes along with some infantry and land vehicles (that luckily can be upgraded to turn amphibious). The aerial units seem to be out of fashion in the future. The only air units available can only serve as transportation (there goes your dream of a bomb and run air attack - well, there's only the Pestilence and Raptor units over at the aliens that can shoot from the air). At least you'll be glad that any idle unit can be easily spotted on the right side of your screen.

The future does seem to be keen on commando squads as you can't select more than 12 units at a time. The huge trouble however is that the pathfinding is so poor that you may even loose your troops on the way as they take a wrong turn or fail to see a mountain that is right in front of them. The AI is? kind of hard to be graded. There are many times when the enemy only engages you after you've spotted him, even if he was one step away (covered by the fog of war). The only way to capture something is to stand next to it long enough and you'll need to be doing that with infantry troops as the vehicles are incapable of such an action. At least it takes a while for your influence on that resource to wear off as well, so you can easily kill the blasted enemy that keeps circling you and get back to the capturing.

The other thing that, in my opinion, hinders the single-player experience is that you have to play the campaigns in the exact order that the developers thought of it, otherwise the storyline would have been no more. As eager as I was to try out the direct control mode as disappointed I was by it. There's not much to do there but go left/ right/ forward/ backward and fire at the enemies. No jumping and definitely no free roaming. There is always some ruin that will block your path and you'll find yourself attacked from the back a lot. The only thing that I found useful in this mode was that you can shoot a little further and sometimes the enemies will fail to actually notice you unless they are on patrol (the huge target in the middle of the screen may have a big contribution to your success).

The single player game is rather a tactical RTS since most of the enemies are spawned at specific locations and follow a predictable routine. If you'd like to really test your skills against the computer, try the skirmish mode. The interesting thing in the game is that vehicles need to get amphibious to cross the wide areas of water, otherwise they take damage. Infantry however has no problem swimming all the way.

Despite the great seas that seem to be everywhere, the water supplies are scarce and there only a few spots for you to collect fresh water - thus limiting your water resource income. Just as well there are only a few specific places where you can set your headquarters. Thank the divinity you can construct the rest of the buildings anywhere on a flat piece of land.

The good thing is that the long loading screens are accompanied by a hypnotic spiral that tries to comfort you. Oh, and don't bother trying to avoid the briefing before each mission - the game is loading for a while. You'll get your start button about the same time the briefing is done.

Video Lush terrain types and terraforming possibilities that may give you the edge on your foes assure the good looking output of the game's visual aspect. Depending on the faction you're playing you'll be able to create valleys, lakes, freeze water, melt ice or even create tornados. The waters look nice as well as your infantry swimming to the shore. The mountains however act as impassable terrain and you'll have to go around for a good while. The zooming is far from anything you've seen in Supreme Commander, but it does a good enough job at getting you in the middle of the action. The gloomy atmosphere also extends to the not so detailed unit design. These are rather simple and their animations are? goofy. The acting during the cut-scenes doesn't really have much to do with acting. The lip synchronizing is nowhere to be found and the lush hip swings that your female heroes do has absolutely nothing to do with the dialog.

Sound Well, the background music seemed pretty apocalyptical to me with orchestrated sounds and everything. Unfortunately, it wasn't either impressive, nor did it offer a long enough soundtrack, proving to be pretty soon repetitive. You could surely give KDV credit for trying to make the dialogs fun (with remarks such as "Let's move like we got a purpose", "You only need one hand to control the mouse" or "We've got H2O, boss"). Despite their efforts, the voice-acting is really flat and even these remarks don't seem so funny after a while.

Multiplayer How possibly could a RTS title come without a multiplayer option? Don't worry, it's got multi. Maelstrom supports up to 6 players (I've only seen one such map). The win conditions can be selected from Kill All Enemy Commanders, Destroy All Enemy Bases (the classic annihilation or deathmatch) or Capture All Water Stations. There are 14 maps to serve as your battlegrounds, ranging from small 2 players maps to big 6 players ones. If you fail to find a human opponent the computer can fill in for a few of them, the multiplayer mode serving as skirmish mode as well.

Conclusion Maelstrom, the terrible storm, proves to be nothing more than a grand concept poorly implemented. It is wonderful that the developers wanted to blend in various game genres that didn't interact much over the years, like real-time strategy and shooters. Unfortunately, they lacked the mastery to achieve all that. Personally, I would have been extremely happy if they would have concentrated on only one of these genres and bring improvements rather than show off the eternal inconveniences of both of them. I guess having too great expectations is not always benefic. I must say again, the whole theoretical concept is awesome, but the realization of the game gives the impression of newcomers to the gaming industry. Of course, we could give them some slack if they promise to try harder next time. Can we really do that after they've proved to be worth more with 2004's game Perimeter?