A fantastic journey into the world of full 3D strategy.
Ground Control locks two futuristic warring factions into combat on the war-torn planet of Krig-7B. Both sides survived a series of apocalyptic wars on Earth to launch to the stars and create massive interstellar empires. The Crayven Corporation concerns itself with maximum profit, sometimes to the apparent disregard of the soldiers' lives. The fanatical Order of the New Dawn commands a legion of selfless, unquestioning troops in the war against the heathen and heretic.
The story itself is actually fairly engaging, fueled by cool cinematics and good voice acting, both in mission briefings and during the battles themselves. Plot often unfolds during battle, providing a convincing reason to keep playing. The constant cliff-hanger storyline doesn't hurt either, as you try to uncover a massive secret that has both sides devoting unusually high resources for such a desolate world. The rich storyline is pleasantly reminiscent of such acclaimed games as Starcraft and Warcraft III, and it really adds a lot to the experience.
Ground Control completely eschews several typical real-time strategy concepts. There is no resource gathering at any point in the game, nor is there any way to produce or train additional units during missions. The units that you bring to a mission are all that you will usually get to complete the objectives. Massive Entertainment skillfully evades the obvious pitfall behind this design; the game is full of additional tactical depth to keep gamers occupied.
Before each mission in the campaign, as well as in online multiplayer, you select squads of units to fill your dropships, which shuttle you to and from missions. The selection of combat forces is diverse, including combat infantry, light and heavy assault vehicles, several slower artillery units, and a few types of stunning “aerodynes” or low-flying support aircraft. You command units in collective squads (ranging from a single to up to eight units) that appear on a command interface with health and status reports. Each unit is rated in four abilities: firepower, armor, speed, and perception (view range). Units with high speed and perception tend to have lower firepower and armor values, and vice versa. Each unit can also have one offensive and one utility special ability, with a few charges depending on the ability's power. For example, Crayven Marine units can have assault mortars and medpacks. Each type of unit has a few choices in each category that you can set before each mission.
The game does a good job of easing players into the experience and initially limiting the selection of units and abilities, then quickly broadening the choices that you have as you grow in skill and experience. Ground Control's combat is, with few exceptions, intense, exciting, and thoroughly entertaining to watch and engage in. To make up for the lack of resource gathering, the game gives you plenty to think about and plan for in the thick of the fight. The developers do so by borrowing several concepts from more intricate wargames. Vehicles have weaker armor at the sides and the rear, so it pays to plan flank attacks. The cover that you see in-game actually works; hiding infantry in a bed of rocks makes it much harder for vehicles to see and hit them with heavy weapons. Elevation also matters. Units on top of a hill have far better perception, accuracy, and cover than units below. All of these considerations combine to create a true tactical atmosphere that would not be present in a typical strategy game. At its best, the game creates a fantastic combat experience.
Unfortunately, Ground Control possesses a few disappointing design flaws and omissions that hold it back a bit. The first is an addition to the list of tactical details that the developers added in order to enhance the depth of the game. The concept of friendly fire is introduced in the normal and hard difficulty levels. A squad firing from behind another friendly squad will inevitably shoot that group of tanks in the rear. In theory, this forces the player to realistically place squads and tank formations so as to maximize firepower and minimize confusion but, in practice, yields to constant frustration as the game's suspect pathfinding and individual unit AI kicks in. Units ordered to move to a position will often get stuck on geographic features such as rocks or thick foliage, resulting in some annoying clicking battles to get your troops back on track. Tanks in battle will tend to get stuck in between squads, turn their back sides to the enemy, and in general confuse themselves. It makes the missions far more frustrating than they would normally be.
In-game saves are also mysteriously omitted, apparently to increase the game's challenge and tension; in reality, this only multiplies the frustration felt in some of the extremely difficult later missions. The game also suffers from a smattering of poor design decisions. Before each mission, you can tweak your squads' abilities, perhaps increasing a tank squad's firepower at the expense of its speed, or some other combination. Squad morale and experience also increases with successive missions and combat tours, making the units supposedly more accurate and devastating with each shot. The problem with these good design aspects is that, unlike the devastating effect of each unit's special abilities, there are no drastic visible effects at all of any of your pre-mission decisions and unit experience levels. Many unit abilities are tough to accurately use and judge. For example, Crayven sniper infantry units can supposedly cloak and blend in with surroundings, but it's tough to really plan any sort of sneak operation because you don't know the effective range of this cloaking; any experimentation could lead to the death of the squad. The lack of in-mission saves amplifies this problem.
These problems may sound crippling, but Ground Control still manages to deliver a powerful strategy gaming experience because of the sheer intensity of its combat and the amount of tactics required to achieve victory. The game's beautiful graphics presentation certainly helps. The high quality textures, intricate lighting, and exhaustive detail on each unit really immerses the player into the game. The sound is also impressive, featuring dynamic levels of volume and booming explosions, as well as a solid voice acting performance for nearly every character in the game. Multiplayer is also a unique experience, far more frantic and fast-paced than any other strategy game to date. Battles combine judicious use of tactics and flanking with the beautiful dance of artillery shells and high-speed aircraft dogfighting in the skies. The multiplayer package is only slightly hampered by some balancing problems between the more preferable heavy assault units and their recon counterparts. Aerodynes, though stunning to watch in action, are extremely vulnerable to the game's diverse and common anti-air units, so their use can be limited. The two sides tend to be anolagous to each other; a heavy assault tank on one side is met by a vehicle of similar ability on the other. Each faction nonetheless has a distinct feel to it.
There is a lot to say about Ground Control. The game's 30 mission single-player campaign will chew up a lot of time and easily justify the price of admission, and that's not even counting the fantastic multiplayer component. Though Massive Entertainment's 3D gem may have some flaws, these missteps are ultimately overcome to produce a fantastic tactical combat experience.