Posted January 06, 2009
This game sports a vaguely interesting (but predictable) story, great voice acting (Tom Baker!), a large array of vehicles to pilot and a decent dose of tactical squad based warfare. If you have ever played either of the Battlezone games released by Activision just before 2000, you already have a good idea of how this works. However, the base building has been replaced by a single nano-tech capable carrier, which serves as a base for your forces and a factory for replacing lost vehicles.
Antaeus Rising is set in the not too distant future, where the world has reached the brink of destruction before seeing reason and striving for Utopia. However, an Old World Cartel has established a base in an archipelago, somewhere, and would see the return of the Bush administration (only sort of kidding). You have have been tasked with ending this madness, with the aid of a small squad of mercenaries, all of whom have died in battle and been resurrected in electronic form. This means that no matter how many times these guys die (and they will), they can be restored from a handy backup... How convenient! They all have diverse personalities and are reasonably well voice acted. However, you will get tired of hearing the same quips over and over again, as usual. Your squad can be called on to pilot a diverse collection of tanks, choppers and planes throughout the game. As in Battlezone, you can take over at any time and pilot a vehicle manually. This is necessary for anything involving stealth or trickery, but your forces tend to do okay on their own in regular combat situations, especially in support roles. Certainly you will do better than the AI units in most situations, but its good to see they are not completely useless. Its also fun to try out the different types of vehicle and each is well suited to a particular situation. There are synergies between different types of vehicles and weapon systems to be discovered and utilised. The game doesn't hold your hand too much here and experimentation is a must.
The game is broken into discrete missions across a series of islands, which are a good mix of stealth, investigation and destruction of specific targets. A few of them can be quite difficult until you work out exactly what the level designer had in mind, but most of them aren't that frustrating and can be achieved in a number of ways. Only a few of the missions had me tearing my hair out, usually against overwhelming odds or a slow fight of attrition where one mistake means you will soon be overrun. Overall though, there is a lot more fun than frustration here. While you are busy blowing stuff up, you can direct your squad to assist or collect resources to build more vehicles or equipment. There is only a single resource type, which is collected from structures or scrap, meaning a very simple economy. There is also a steadily revealed tech tree which serves to keep the game interesting all the way to the end. The graphics are a little cartoonish compared to contemporary titles, but they still hold up fine. Highly recommended title and as usual for GOG, you can't go wrong with the price. Enjoy!
Antaeus Rising is set in the not too distant future, where the world has reached the brink of destruction before seeing reason and striving for Utopia. However, an Old World Cartel has established a base in an archipelago, somewhere, and would see the return of the Bush administration (only sort of kidding). You have have been tasked with ending this madness, with the aid of a small squad of mercenaries, all of whom have died in battle and been resurrected in electronic form. This means that no matter how many times these guys die (and they will), they can be restored from a handy backup... How convenient! They all have diverse personalities and are reasonably well voice acted. However, you will get tired of hearing the same quips over and over again, as usual. Your squad can be called on to pilot a diverse collection of tanks, choppers and planes throughout the game. As in Battlezone, you can take over at any time and pilot a vehicle manually. This is necessary for anything involving stealth or trickery, but your forces tend to do okay on their own in regular combat situations, especially in support roles. Certainly you will do better than the AI units in most situations, but its good to see they are not completely useless. Its also fun to try out the different types of vehicle and each is well suited to a particular situation. There are synergies between different types of vehicles and weapon systems to be discovered and utilised. The game doesn't hold your hand too much here and experimentation is a must.
The game is broken into discrete missions across a series of islands, which are a good mix of stealth, investigation and destruction of specific targets. A few of them can be quite difficult until you work out exactly what the level designer had in mind, but most of them aren't that frustrating and can be achieved in a number of ways. Only a few of the missions had me tearing my hair out, usually against overwhelming odds or a slow fight of attrition where one mistake means you will soon be overrun. Overall though, there is a lot more fun than frustration here. While you are busy blowing stuff up, you can direct your squad to assist or collect resources to build more vehicles or equipment. There is only a single resource type, which is collected from structures or scrap, meaning a very simple economy. There is also a steadily revealed tech tree which serves to keep the game interesting all the way to the end. The graphics are a little cartoonish compared to contemporary titles, but they still hold up fine. Highly recommended title and as usual for GOG, you can't go wrong with the price. Enjoy!