Title: Stormrise
Release: March 24, 2009
Genre: RTS (real time strategy)
Developer: Creative Assembly
Publisher: SEGA
Platform: Xbox360
Rating: M (Mature)
Product Link: http://www.amazon.com/Stormrise-Xbox-360/dp/B001D5DQKW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1239596392&sr=8-1
Website: http://www.sega.com/stormrise/
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It is always a welcome treat to watch a game developer try new things. Experimentation has led to some of the finest games ever created, but for every Katamari Damacy there is a Stormrise, a malformed, ill-conceived mess whose very existence forces one game reviewer to retroactively upgrade all other RTS games’ review scores by a full star.
In terms of presentation, the look is unimaginative and brainless. Every character seems to be rented from a generic game warehouse. The only thing that separates the main hero from the other soldiers is the lack of armor covering his arm. The settings all look bombed out with a palette spectrum of puke-colored browns and grays. The music is lazily composed with no real theme that sets Stormrise apart from anything else on the market; dismal rock music accompanies you from level to level. Voiceover work is average although the dialogue is overwhelmingly vanilla with no attempt to engage gamers beyond the most simple of levels.
The “experimentation” alluded to earlier is in regards to the fact that Stormrise attempts to become the first fully 3-D RTS played from the unit’s point of view. Even on paper, this is a bad idea due to the fact that RTS games typically have small armies littering the landscape and require an over head point of view to give some idea as to what is happening. Stormrise asks you to strategically wipe out enemies on the map and take over territories in a third person camera angle at all times. You “whip” from unit to unit and move each squad independently from every other squad. There is no way to comfortably select several squads and move them to the same location all at once so we are left to move squad by squad to where they are needed while being fired upon by our enemies. The result is mostly “whipping” to the wrong units, constantly spinning around in circles and hearing that one by one your units are being killed somewhere because you either A) forgot where you placed them or B) accidentally sent them on a death march across the map because you thought the cursor was closer to where you wanted them to move. At no point in the game do you ever feel in complete control of your army and that effectively removes any strategy or enjoyment from this game.
You can’t help but wonder if the developer, Creative Assembly, played the final build of the game before shipping it out first. Any time spent with Stormrise would have set off a siren that screeches “abort” in the minds of anyone who has ever played an RTS or any other game that requires you to see what you are doing. Stormrise is an early contender for worst game of the year and should only be played if given as a gift and the one giving the gift refuses to leave until you have played it.
Overall Rating: * / 5
M. Michael Chwedyk "The Gamekok"- MuzikReviews.com Sr. Video Game Reviewer
April 13, 2009
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