Welcome to the World of Worldshift
The setting takes place well into the distant future where a cosmic entity crashed into earth, and happened to mutate flora and fauna alike and destroying civilization as everyone knew it. Humans are now struggling to survive in five large cities scattered across the globe. Any humans that were unfortunate enough that were outside the safety of these cities have been mutated into elf-like creatures that are known as tribal’s that can wield magic after the “world shift”. An alien species has touched down on earth and is better known as “the Cult”. Why the Cult is there and for what purpose, no one really knows for certain. Speaking of not knowing, the game expects you to know setting from the get go. There’s no explanation in the introductory video and if you wanted to figure out how the world ended up in this current state is to check the official website.
Not only is the setting behind the game confusing, but the story it’s self is disconnected. I know the game was developed by a Bulgarian studio and maybe this is a shoddy translation job, but I can’t imagine it was well written to begin with. The story is rather thin and follows a defected human military leader that pairs up with his tribal allies to help keep a tribal girl with amazing powers safe from the clutches of the evil humans. There’s also the “technology” vs. “nature” element to the story which for some reason, makes me think of Fern Gully. Originality is lacking in the story, and sadly this bleeds well into the gameplay.
The game play in the campaign mode is very lack-luster and lacks any variety. They maps are very akin to the installation missions in Starcraft where you take a small force and mill around the map looking for certain objects, interest points or units to kill. Officer units have special skills such as giving friendly units attack bonuses, and have area of attack spells. Sadly though, any unit that is not an officer unit lacks spell-like abilities. The missions get very repetitive. There’s very little variation and a lot of the time you’ll be wanting to just sneak past enemy locations just to get by as they’re insanely over powered in the later levels. When it comes to saving your progress, you have to hit certain check points that are marked by a lightning bolt on the map. Thinking this was the games “save” feature I was mistaken. If you choose to quit the mission, and try to come back to it later thinking the game would start you back at that last check point, it won’t and you have to play the map back from start. The check points are only used in case you die to re-spawn you back to the last save point while you’re playing that level. Why the developers wanted to use a console like save system on a PC exclusive title is very confusing. Once you’ve completed a mission you’re awarded with items that can be applied to your units. The biggest design flaw with this becomes painstakingly apparent once you go multiplayer.
There’s no question that the game was developed for multiplayer. New players are at major disadvantage once they go multiplayer as veteran players will have already amassed powerful items to bolster their armies as the random matching doesn’t take into account players who are more experienced. Don’t expect to be building a ton of defensive, or offensive installations. You only have one base that allows you to build units, despite which faction you choose. All units are bought with money which can be obtained by building mines on top of “Xenolite” crystals deposits. There is no counter units, which harkens back to the early days of RTS games on who can amass the most of their stronger unit(s) the fastest and dominate. Terrain isn’t taken into consideration as you don’t have bonuses to having the higher ground or cover which is a definite step backwards if you’re going to contend with what’s on the market today. You have two online gameplay modes: Death match and co-op that could add to the value of the game if you can a good game. When I’ve looked for a match, they’re few and far between even though this game has been released in Europe for well over a year. If you’re looking for a wide variety of maps to play on, there isn’t many to choose from, only seven maps last I checked. Maybe there will be an update later down the line.
Control wise, it’s very straight forward and takes the conventional control route of allowing you to select multiple units with a click and drag action. While on the topic of controls this game lacks any control customization. Not that the defaults pose a problem, but having options to increase the mouse sensitivity and the like would be expected in any PC game.
Visually, the units and characters are detailed fairly well and the level design in the campaign mode is pretty good. Another good point is how well detailed the units are, they look amazing for an RTS. The models are not perfect sadly, as the animations are best described as wooden as they just stand, and shoot, and collapse to the ground. No variety in the death animations at all. Sometimes the units can be hidden behind terrain and hard to spot, and the aura they use to highlight this isn’t the best and can easily been overlooked. It’s disappointing that the level design didn’t transition over to the multiplayer levels are they’re mostly open fields where you can run into each other fighting one another without any real strategy. The voiceovers are pretty bad and sound very uninspired and rushed. Sound effects are on par with the voices as they’re badly mixed and had a “generic stock” quality to them. The music is a nice combination of synthesizers mixed within a dominant orchestrated soundtrack that’s pleasant to the ears and is a change of pace from the weak sound effects and poor cheesy voice acting.
