Perimeter was pretty cool game with original concept. But what the hell happened to its sequel?
I could write a whole bunch of my disappointments with this game, but that would take too much time I don't want to spend on this... Thing.
What's the main difference? It has nothing to do with the first game, except for main factions. All of you who played the first game should know how the story goes (and all of you who don't the game is civilized enough to inform you in the opening sequence) :
In the near future people have set out to conquer this weird dimension they discovered called the Psychosphere, a network of planets who all have a strange property: people can shape them with their own mind. But with time people's nightmares have spawned this horrible monsters called the Scourge and the whole Psychosphere has become unstable and started to fall apart. Humanity has split into 3 factions. Exodus, who seek the promised land outside of Psychosphere where they would be safe and believe they will get there by reaching the end of the chain. Harkback who believe that the promised planet (New Earth) is located in the opposite direction, at the beginning of the chain, and the Empire who believe that conquering the other two nations would stabilize the Psychosphere. The latter eventually fail and their mainframe was destroyed while two remaining factions both arrive at the same planet, and the conflict starts all over again.
The second game picks up here, where the first game ended.
But the problem is, it has nothing to do with gameplay mechanics of the Perimeter. Developers obviously never heard of that saying, if it's not broken - don't fix it.
Say good bye to everything that made first Perimeter original and fun and say hello to a game that is plain dumb. No more terramorphing, no more nanomorphing units, energy networks and everything. Let me explain the main, the only segment of the gameplay.
You no longer control the mainframe. You only build power generators. Lots of them. Each of them is individual and autonomous. They can flatten the terrain around them and you can build 3 types of turrets for defense (ground defense, AA and artillery), and 3 types of factories so you can construct your 3 units. Yes, there are only 3 different units you can build! And don't expect something spectacular. Their design is butt-ugly, they are no fun and effects of their attacks are abysmal. No more morphing in the middle of action and adapting to the situation. You can no longer destroy 3 crucial generators and cut off half of enemy's base, you have to destroy pretty much everything. This means no strategic play, everything is toned down to tank rush with a couple of unit types that are not impressive and not fun to play with at all. You will repeat this process of spamming energy generators and light factories and 5 minutes later spamming of the cheapest unit and sending a bunch of them to wreck enemy's base in all-around 10 minutes of every mission, over and over again. Of course, if you don't give up on this game in the meantime.
And that is pretty much everything this game has to offer. A piece of software some drunk dudes made during one night of bad ideas and even worse realizations.
If you ever wondered should you buy this game, I will say that you should avoid it at all costs. If you want a Perimeter game, stick to the first one. That one is at least fun and original. If you really want something new, buy some other mindless no-brain-needed-to-play game, like Tiberium Twilight. At least it's much prettier too look at.