Nice concept. Bad implementation

User Rating: 4.1 | Maelstrom: The Battle For Earth Begins PC
I am generally a very fair person; I will play a game before I judge it. So, ditto with this one. First things first. The game concept is good. That is, the whole submerged planet thing. Water as a resource has been done before, so has solar energy as a resource. I like the way the Zer-- sorry, Hai-Genti, play. Calling down eggs, and then morphing the individual eggs mean that you can assemble a strike force in no time flat, depending on the number of Hac-- inception spores you have. The water is nice. I like the water, seriously, and since the whole game is about a submerged earth, that's good. I also like the way the vehicles interact with the environment, the Scavenger knocks down lamposts in its way, and the trees move as it brushes past. Nice touch.

Now the bad. AI sucks. Specifically, there is little AI. I watched in wonder as my troopers walked into Legionairres, bumping into them before firing. Watched again as the same troopers walked around each other endlessly. To its saving grace, the AI did get my hero. Though it may have been luck. Textures are simplistic. Nothing much in the way of textures.Story. Hmm. What story ? Abilities, don't work as well as they should. Third person gave me a headache. The simplest movement caused my hero to turn 90 degrees. I laughed my head off in the skirmish when the Hai-Genti commander called in a sub-hero and he fell face first from the sky into the water. The audio is ..... bad. The only other voice acting this bad was in Earth 2160, and that is forgivable, because the game wasn't produced in English, anyway. My other pain point was that there are so few buildings in each faction. Only the Remnants have a decent tower. The Hai-Genti only have landmines. Ascension never even heard of the word. And there is NO attack-move. Only 'move'. Overall. The game concepts are nice. The water is nice. But the implementation of it is nearly non-existent. The Hai-Genti, in my honest opinion is the only race that passes muster, and only because it resembles the Zerg, and I'm biased to them. If the game had undergone a serious facelift, it would've shined. But, some people may like it. So in all fairness, before you buy it, cream it off someone and try it out first.