Stormrise

Preview from Matt - Monday, 16 March 2009 @ 10:18am

I used to like RTS games. Among the first games I played excessive amounts of was Dune II, a now iconic title that defined a genre and started the Westwood Studios label that continued to define it with later titles. Dune II was the first game that made me look up from a night of playing to be confronted by the rising sun.

My love of the strategy genre continued through Westwood. Command and Conquer was the name. Command I did. Conquer I did. I somehow skipped the titles of upstart rivals like "Blizzard" though. Warcraft? Starcraft? Pft. Stupid names. Like anyone is into craft.

But something went wrong. The love soured. The spiraling system requirements of the now 3D titles of C&C games made my computer cry, and I just couldn't get into them. They seemed like 3d for the sake of it, without every really surpassing the awesome that was the original 2D of Dune 2. Ugh, Dune 2000.

I transferred most of my gaming love to consoles. Xbox, PS2, Gamecube and up. And of course, I had to drop my love of Real Time Strategy games. After all, everyone knows how much they suck on a console.

The problem with RTS on consoles is the same as it is on FPS. You don't have a mouse. That means any control system you get is basically a tarded up version of a PC interface. I mean, you can get the hang of it, but it just never feels smooth and natural. The main problems are selecting units (an easy click and drag on PC) and navigating around in the environment. Console ports have attempted to replicate this, but they were always slow and unresponsive.

A few recent efforts have attempted to improve on that, revolutionising control. Tom Clancy's EndWar had the innovative idea of simply removing control input altogether, using voice command exclusively to order units.

Enter Stormrise, the new and soon to be released title from Sega Creative Assembly. Stormrise aimed from the beginning to do console RTS right, by wiping the slate clean and making a new controller interface based on the console controller, rather than just trying to port something that wasn't suited to it.

Robots and dragons and lasers ... oh my

I recently visited CA, and got a chance to sit and chat with Ken Turner - Creative Director, and give Stormrise a good hearty thrashing.

It was a bit weird going to The Creative Assembly. I've never visited a studio by myself. See, Yug couldn't actually be part of the interview because he works at Creative Assembly! He was involved in the development process as a designer, and is now the manager of the Stormrise Community at Stormrisers.com. Speaking of which, you should go and have a look. (Once you've finished reading this, of course.)

The first thing that needs to be discussed is the controls. This is going to be hard. Someone tried to explain this to me once, telling me exactly how it works, and seemed rather surprised that I had no idea what they were going on about. The fact is, you won't really get it until you give it a try.

Control is a little strange at first. The right thumbstick controls a kind of "select stick" called Whip Select. Sweeping it to the sides will select units which are seen radiating from the centre of your unit. Holding the right stick in a direction will focus your attention that way, and icons of the units selected will biggify, and then when you release will end up with that unit as your active unit. This means that with a single press on the stick you can flit from unit to unit Point of View, covering the entire map in a jump, and eliminating any need to scroll around the battlefield.

The left stick handles actions from that point of view, which also ties in with looking. This part actually takes some getting used to, as your FPS instincts kick in and try to make the right stick handle camera... which it doesn't. As well as looking around from the right stick you also move by pressing the A button. Holding down the button instead of just pressing it lets you set their direction once they arrive, which is handy.

Well that can't be a GOOD thing

There's a lot more to it than that, obviously, but these are the two core mechanics.

How do they work? Badly. Well, let me correct that. I did badly. I found myself trying to look around, and switching units by mistake. Much of which I passed off with muttered references to how I wanted to check the battle from this angle. This is because the right stick is select, and my FPS/TPS brain is expecting the right stick to be a camera control.

The thing is it never felt like the control was faulty. It honestly didn't. It just made me aware that I wasn't all that experienced. After an hour or so I settled down and started to "get it" a bit more.

The initial control is hard, but not because there's anything wrong with it. A fair comparison might be the first time you played an FPS with mouselook on. You spend ages running around looking at the floor or ceiling before you finally settle down to lurching around like a kayak off Cape Horn.

But a lack of familiarity is hardly an issue in itself, and you couldn't say that FPS controls “don't work”. It takes time, and a willingness to adjust and learn.

After I played I got a chance to watch Ken play. Ken has some serious experience with this title, and watching him confirmed it - the system works. You just need to give it a chance.

I wonder whether people are going to be willing to learn a whole new gaming control they don't know to work in a genre they do. It seems to me that there's a risk that people just won't be willing to put in the hard yards, and will dismiss the controls as “stupid” or too hard due to their unfamiliarity. I think that's a serious problem Stormrise will face. It's probably not as big a problem with people buying it, but anyone playing a demo without seriously committing time to it would be in some trouble.

The story here is ongoing battle between the Sai and the Eschelon. An apocolypse whose nature I'm unsure of has occurred on earth over time, leaving two factions behind. The Sai have evolved through the chaos, and are in tune with the new world that has been formed. The Eschelon opted insted for a bit of a quiet nap and slept through the whole thing, only to wake up to find a bunch of cranky mutants think THEY run the place.

It's the eeeeend of the world as we know it ...

The Sai are your hippy superhuman mutant psychic types, while the Eschelon are the more standard military. Eschelon develop heavy weapon platforms, and traditional (though futuristic, natch) vehicle types. The Sai are a bit more esoteric, and have some more organic options in addition to their more conventional troops.

The two that really caught my eye were a large crab-like Matriarch that spawned a host of killer crustaceans of doom, and the Riftworm - a giant flying eel which takes a kind of heavy bomber role.

Sai units are particulalry imaginative and interesting, but the Eschelon less so. They are the expected assortment of mechs and marines. I've no doubt heavier weapons will offer more variety and spectacle, but I didn't really see those as much.

An interesting feature of stormrise is its support for Line of Sight and verticality.

The question of what you can see and why is a core concept in RTS titles. Many use something like a "fog of war", wherein you can see only what is within a certain radius of your units. Anything outside that is either invisible or sometimes covered by literal fog, or darkness.

Stormrise opts to use a line of sight mechanic instead. LoS bascially means you can see what your troops can see. This is a more advanced option than basic proximity, as it takes into account cover, and other obstructions.

Another thing that is a factor in your Line of Sight is height. Elevated positions have a longer (and usually wider) line of site, compared to a ground position.

This adds a nice gameplay elemen where ground units can be sent to rooftops or other high ground, to act as spotters. As well as providing a better view some units can do things like light up a target for artillery from these vantage points.

The potential for this in multiplayer is huge, with stealthy individual units playing pivotal roles in establishing battlefield awareness, requiring enemy resources to root them out and blind you.

This same mechanic applies to flying units. The unit that can fly also get a high vantage point and longer line of sight, letting them serve as effective lookouts. Some that are merely hovering units can even pop up to higher altitudes for a "birds eye" for a while.

These game features will combine well with the innovative control to make an RTS the equal of any on the PC for multiplayer play, without feeling like compromises have been made, either in terms of control or depth.

I do have one reservation on multiplayer. The game is tuned around two factions only. I personally think more factions woul dhave offered a greater variety. Think Ordos/Harkonnen/Artreides, or Protoss/Zerg/Terran. Orcs/Humans/Elves. You get the idea. These varied balances are a well established standard, and I think 2 may be less than people expect or want. I say that because it's less than what I would want personally. Another factor is that as well as not being able to have other than those two factions, you also can't have more than two sides. When playing multiplayer with four people you end up with two teams of two. All-out brawls can be a lot of fun, and it would have been good to see. I appreciate that it's not what they wanted to do, but it seems like a lacking feature to me.

Holographic riot shields not the smartest idea

Other negatives unfortunately come to mind while watching and playing Stormrise. Perhaps it's just that I've been playing a bit too much Killzone 2 lately, or perhaps it's the fact that I was about 50 cm away from a 60 inch TV when I was playing it, but the game looked just a little rough and unpolished. It's also possible that these things are still being polished. I noticed a degree of aliasing on units, but it probably wouldn't be visible at a normal distance from a normal TV. Still, there was an element to the graphics I found a little lacking. A kind of blandness, a lack of detail in certain units, that speaks of a rush, perhaps, to get this thing to market. In a similar way there are minor issues to some unit animations, with them popping in and out of slightly contrived movements.

They're not killer issues by any means, but I can't help thinking that perhaps another month or two of baking would give Stormrise the polish we expect from a AAA title these days.

Regardless, Stormrise is an RTS, and that's a genre where graphical flair takes a back seat compared to other issues like unit balance and interface. Those aspects appear to be expertly handled. Sega Creative Assembly have earned their stripes when it comes to historical RTS, and it looks like everything they've learned from historical combat is surprisingly applicable to giant bipedal mechs.

But Stormrise isn't alone now in attempting RTS on the console, and the Xbox 360's newly released Halo Wars may give it a run for its money. Which is the better title? Well, I've never been much into Halo, and everything I've heard suggests Halo Wars lacks the depth and complexity of Stormrise. I can see Stormrise being a popular choice on Xbox Live and even more so on the Playstation Network.