Impact
Site Admin Joined: 01 May 2004 Posts: 3258 Location: Pinecrest, FL	Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 10:26 pm    Post subject: Ground Control II: Multi Player Demo 8.25/10   Ground Control II: Multiplayer Demo Release Date: Today! (June 22, 2004) Publisher: Vivendi Universal Producer: Massive Entertainment Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS) Ground Control II is a real time strategy game that takes into account such things as terrain height advantages, forest defense bonuses, and vehicle weak points. Infantry can also capture buildings and use them for added cover when firing upon enemies strolling by in the open. Massive Entertainment also did a wonderful job making Ground Control II easy and comfortable to play by allowing players to use hotkeys, formations, and unit groups of up to 16 units. They also made use of the Alt key to bring up all units' health bars to keep track of which units (friend and foe alike) are weak and need of repairs. We reviewed the Single Player Demo a while back, it can be found here. Vivendi has since released the multiplayer demo, and is releasing the full game in stores today. There isn't much to say about the multi player demo that wasn't already mentioned in the single player review. It is essentially the exact same game, but played online. You can join games through a gamespy based in-game interface (much like starcraft, or other RTS games), and then select a team, race, and chat with others in the game. Once inside the game, gameplay is the same as the single player demo. Your team tries to capture Victory Locations and Landing Zones from the enemy. You can air-lift in units by using AP (aquisition points). AP are always being gained, but they go up faster when you destroy enemy units, or capture extra Landing Zones and Victory Locations. I was slightly worried about lag, every game on the internet now has the potential to lag, and make the game less fun. I was upset to find in the first 2 games I played had some noticable lag. Units would jump, or speed around after staying still for a few seconds. I haven't noticed any lag since my 2nd game however (I've played about 6-7). Multi Player games can take anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes. Most games I played lasted around 30 min on average. Expect to lose your first few games by a pretty good margin. The new race takes a while to learn and understand how to use. There are about 15 different types of units for each race, and each has a different specialization. If you have not played the single player demo, I suggest you play that first to understand the basics before jumping in and playing online. The mutli player demo includes 2 races, 3 maps, and supports up to 8 players. The full game is also released today, it might be worth picking up. Thumbs up from Impact! [page] Screenshots: Quote: Infantry can hide in the trees for a defensive bonus, and make them harder to see. Many infantry coming unannounced from the trees is always hard to deal with. Quote: Capture Landing Zones from enemies to win the game. Some units like the tank in the screen shot have weak armour in the back. Hitting them from both sides makes life difficult for your opponents. Quote: Use your Drop Ship to bring in reinforcements. You can select which landing zone to drop them at. Quote: Grouping different types of units with different strengths can form an extremely effective outpost. Quote: Each race has a scanning unit. Get rid of enemy scanners quickly. Otherwise your army's moves are revealed to your opponent. Ratings on a scale from 1 (awful) to 10 (amazing): Gameplay 9/10 - Ground Control II had everything you'd need to comfortably play a real time strategy game from camera rotation, to hotkeys, to unit groups. It doesn't bring anything new to the genre, which is reserved for a full 10 point rating. Graphics 8/10 - Our computer with a Radeon 9800 was able to smoothly run the Ground Control II demo with full graphic details, 4x FSAA, and 8X Anistropic filtering. This means that Massive Entertainment is not pushing the envelope on the hardware it has available, but they did do an excellent job all else considered. Sound 7/10 (the final release will probably score higher in this category) - The tutorial and cut scene voices are well done and the sound effects are appropriate, but the demo does not do anything special with audio. The sound tab in the options menu is greyed out, but this makes us think that perhaps they have something better in store for the final release. Replay Value 9/10 (Multi Player always will score higher in Replay Value) - With 3 maps, 2 races, and support for up to 8 different players, the multi player demo should provide quite a few hours of play. Overall 8.25/10 - I liked the game, it is a solid RTS. If you liked the single player demo, the multi player demo would be right up your alley. The full game is also released today, so it might be worth checking that out. Links: Massive Entertainment Vivendi Universal Demo Download
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