Chaos theory camouflaged as a strategy game...

User Rating: 4.9 | 7th Legion PC
7th Legion looks like a regular sci-fi Red Alert-clone, but at the heart it is nothing more than a frantic shooter where you are more or less along for the ride. When first playing you will probably start planning out your base and get a slew of mixed units. Instead of mining, cash will trickle in periodically or when you complete various tasks, such as killing a set number of enemies within a given time period.

Building the base is simple enough, and is usually done within the first 30 seconds. Then, while your are busy building your assault force, suddenly all your units on screen are hit by massive explosions, and half of them vanish in smoke. But there is no enemy in sight?

Yes, the computer has played a "battle card", one of up to six that each player can hold. Most of them boil down to giving the enemy an ultimate smackdown, while others allow for stealth or control of enemy units. As you can tell, strategy immediately goes out the window, and then it all boils down to pumping out as many units as possible, lasso them all and send them in the general direction of the enemy.

I can safely say that few games will annoy you as much as this one. The interface is unpolished, pathfinding is dire, and response times are horrible. Usually you will lose a number of units in every confrontation simply because it takes them seconds to actually start engaging the enemy. It's a shame, because underneath all this you can feel a playable game peaking out, this game could have been implemented so much better.