Ground Control
Sometimes reviewers surprise me with their seemingly short memory. Some review I read of Ground Control thought the whole gameplay was really new and innovative. It's good, I'll assure that, but it has been done before in the two not entirely unknown games in the Myth series ... Call yourself a reviewer of RTS games but can't remember the Myths? What's reviewing coming to?
Anyway, back to the game! As I said above, gameplay is basically Myth set in a sci-fi enviroment. For those of you not familiar with Myth (and you're forgiven, you're not pretending to be reviewers :-) the concept is RTS without base building and resource gathering; all focused on controlling your troops. More strategy and less clicking in short. The single player game is a 30 mission campaign about two sides, the Craywen corporation and the Order of the new Dawn, fighting over the planet Krig-7B. As far as I've got the plot seems to be developing nicely, sure good enough that I don't want to spoil it for anyone ...
Each mission begins with a briefing, stating your initial objectives, the usual stuff. Next comes something new: dropship configuration. You see, since this is a game without building/gathering, all forces you have during a mission are the ones you start with. These forces are brought to the battlezone by dropships, each ship able to carry a maximum of four squads. You may have up to three dropships available, meaning a maximum of twelve squads. Twelve should be plenty to take care of, believe me. Especially since you really can't afford to lose units like you're used to in RTS games (no construction, remember?). Anyway, you can also do some configuration of the squads themselves, some tweaking of statistics and picking special weapon. What I liked most though was the option to name the squads. Squads that survive missions gain experience and medals too, so there's some risk of getting attached to your groups ... Once you're loaded and ready, it's off to the mission!
Like the Myths, the missions take place in a great looking 3d world. There's a lot of eyecandy to keep you interested, especially when you position the free floating camera close to the ground and follow your units as they zoom across the battlefield. Camera control is probably the best one I've used in a 3d RTS, the mouse and arrow keys are all it takes to get around. Unit control is another thing quite Myth, only you never control individual units, just squads (like in War of the Worlds). Click a squad, right-click a destination and drag before release to set facing direction. Formations are limited to line, box and column, but those are about all you need anyway, I've never missed any others so far. Formations, movement and attack modes are easily set with a line of buttons to the right of the screen. It's all very simple to pick up.
Sounds and music are pretty good. Verbal acknowledgements from units are a bit longer than usual, and engine sounds tend to hang around in a slightly annoying way, but that's about all the thoughts I've had about the sound of Ground Control. The music I don't think much about at all, but it's quite movie-like.
All been pretty positive so far, eh? So, let's get started on the a-bit-lesser-good parts! First off, and this is in unison with every other reviewer out there it seems, I don't understand why exactly the game has to incorporate friendly fire. It happens all the time, and I don't like it at all. Good thing your command APC can repair other units, otherwise this could have ruined the game ... Then, there's one more major annoyance, but this one I can have understanding for. There's no in-mission save feature. No, nope and no again. Some mission replays ahead, that's for sure. Still, I understand the decision. This way, you don't get into bad one-step-forward-and-save habits, and you won't replay a long hard mission just to save your favourite squad (makes things a bit more realistic that way, even heroes die). But it's not nice to play a whole mission and fail right at the end because the AI of the squads supposed to clean up the enemy base failed to keep its units alive ...
Ground Control is good looking, nice sounding and easy to pick up. The setting is about as far from Myth 2 as you can get. Still, I find that Ground Control makes me want to play Myth 2, and it also makes me feel that Myth 2 was just a nudge or two better than this (but hey, Myth 2 was second try, maybe Ground Control 2 ...). Maybe just a touch of nostalgia, but the feeling's still there ...
