I know that this game isn't as highly popular as other RTS games, but I think there still is a group of fans devoted to the series. Anyway, I've been checking out a variety of demos, lately, and took a look at this one.
My guess is that, if you played one of its predecesors, like Earth 2150 or the Moon Project, you'll probably also enjoy this game. However, if a demo is suppose to attract new players, who might not otherwise know anything about this game, I'm not sure that it is doing the cause very much good. At least that's the feeling I walked away with after giving it a try. There are a couple of issues that sound small, but end up making the demo experience more frustrating than enjoyable.
First, there is a problem during a tutorial sort of mission, which is one of the two missions that are available, in which you are told to make your group of units crawl by hitting the C key. Being a tutorial, the mission won't let you proceed until you accomplish this, but the game doesn't seem to recognize that you are hitting C and that your guys are crawling. As a result, you end up hunting around, trying to find a path to proceed on, but they are all "blocked" (i.e., the game shows the terrain as inaccessible).
As it turns out, you can get around this by using a mouse click on an icon menu to get the game to recognize that you did issue the proper order, but it isn't immediately obvious that this is what you need to do. I suspect that this is a bug related to the game being originally developed in a european language and not fully translating over to US keyboards and US English versions of Windows.
Ok, that was one irritation, the other was that the demo is limited to 45 minutes of playing time for each of the two missions. I wasn't aware that this was a limitation of the demo and assumed that the mission needed to be completed within a time limit. (There's no readme file included with the demo that might have clarified this.) When I didn't complete the mission in time, I assumed that I failed the mission.
I know, some of you probably are thinking, "Well, duhhh!", but for a mission driven single player campaign, I really think it is a mistake to impose a time limit, here. I think the people who put together the demo missed the point that they want to leave the people playing it with a good feeling when they get done. I think that they would do better by letting someone successfully complete a mission; so, they could have that experience. I understand why a game like Civ IV might want to use a time limit on their demo, but I don't think the same rationale applies here.
Anyway, the bottom line is that I came away with feeling like the Earth 2160 Demo was a good example of how to do a demo badly, and I probably had a more positive mind set towards the full version of the game, going into playing the demo, from my previous experience with the Moon Project, than I ended up with afterwards.
Did anyone else give this a try? What were your thoughts?
My guess is that, if you played one of its predecesors, like Earth 2150 or the Moon Project, you'll probably also enjoy this game. However, if a demo is suppose to attract new players, who might not otherwise know anything about this game, I'm not sure that it is doing the cause very much good. At least that's the feeling I walked away with after giving it a try. There are a couple of issues that sound small, but end up making the demo experience more frustrating than enjoyable.
First, there is a problem during a tutorial sort of mission, which is one of the two missions that are available, in which you are told to make your group of units crawl by hitting the C key. Being a tutorial, the mission won't let you proceed until you accomplish this, but the game doesn't seem to recognize that you are hitting C and that your guys are crawling. As a result, you end up hunting around, trying to find a path to proceed on, but they are all "blocked" (i.e., the game shows the terrain as inaccessible).
As it turns out, you can get around this by using a mouse click on an icon menu to get the game to recognize that you did issue the proper order, but it isn't immediately obvious that this is what you need to do. I suspect that this is a bug related to the game being originally developed in a european language and not fully translating over to US keyboards and US English versions of Windows.
Ok, that was one irritation, the other was that the demo is limited to 45 minutes of playing time for each of the two missions. I wasn't aware that this was a limitation of the demo and assumed that the mission needed to be completed within a time limit. (There's no readme file included with the demo that might have clarified this.) When I didn't complete the mission in time, I assumed that I failed the mission.
I know, some of you probably are thinking, "Well, duhhh!", but for a mission driven single player campaign, I really think it is a mistake to impose a time limit, here. I think the people who put together the demo missed the point that they want to leave the people playing it with a good feeling when they get done. I think that they would do better by letting someone successfully complete a mission; so, they could have that experience. I understand why a game like Civ IV might want to use a time limit on their demo, but I don't think the same rationale applies here.
Anyway, the bottom line is that I came away with feeling like the Earth 2160 Demo was a good example of how to do a demo badly, and I probably had a more positive mind set towards the full version of the game, going into playing the demo, from my previous experience with the Moon Project, than I ended up with afterwards.
Did anyone else give this a try? What were your thoughts?
Facebook
Twitter