"Yeah, my momma she told me don't worry about your size"
Meghan Trainor - All about That Bass
I suppose my Marching Morons post can wait, as I've just installed, played and uninstalled the demo for WH40K: Battlesector, another title pointlessly trying to popularize turn-based multiplayer. While in principle I applaud the return to demos for finished products instead of publishing games in "beta" vaporware stage, in this case it made me unlikely to buy. On one hand, you could probably spot something fishy about Battlesector from one of their promo videos promising "fierce fast-paced combat" ... illustrated in a montage of freeze-frames! On the other hand, tell me what fundamental strategic interface tool is missing here:
Look carefully.
Especially in the corners... come on... it's right in front of you... or rather isn't.
Give up?
Maybe a glance at a truer multiplayer strategy game will refresh your memory.
That's Demigod, the most promising incarnation of the AoS game concept (or as the kiddies call it "MOBA") which unfortunately committed suicide via a mix of months-unaddressed unnecessary micromanagement, balance and lag issues. Demigod really was "fierce fast-paced (real-time) combat" complete with strategic elements like upgradeable team resources, gear management and resource node control. And lookie there, in the upper-left corner: a minimap! In fact Demigod gave you two ways to take in the battlefield situation at a glance, either minimap or zooming out as I did here until the field itself is situated atop a greater fantastic structure, whereas the previous screenshot was... also zoomed out as far as I could.
One thing I've always found funny about All About That Bass' music video: while superficially trumpeting their victory over fake beauty standards, Trainor and her backup dancers are still wearing about a kilo of make-up between them! Similarly, while Battlesector superficially might make good on WH40K's promise of tactical squad management by opting for more cerebral turn-based mechanics instead of real-time button-mashing, at the same time it really wants to keep you from thinking too hard. This is likely due to two conflicts of interest.
First off, turn-based multiplayer has yet to really overcome the tedium of waiting for your opponent to move, so Battlesector does whatever it can to keep your attention locked on how cool something looks while it's happening and not on how little's happening second by second. But just as the compass and map should've been integral to No Man's Sky from the start, some kind of strategic view is integral to a squad management game.
Second, Warhammer's camp-goth aesthetics are inescapably geared toward hyperexcitable tweens, and Battlesector is obviously all about the feels of thumping one's chest at playing a blood angel for the glory of Bloody the angel of blood.
Most aggravatingly, this does not look like a bad game. The couple of missions included in the demo show solid tactical basics, with resistances, choke points, melee engagement, range optimization, etc., which makes all the more perplexing Battlesector's conspicuous effort into masking its perceived weaknesses instead of playing its strengths. It's obviously designed for multiplayer given its small maps and low number of units. Fine. But instead of owning that shit, it also worries it won't be exciting enough. It jams your face into the game mat to prevent you from gaining any perspective on its totality of pieces and board size.
The conflict plays out in other ways as well. Battlesector allows you to order multiple units instead of completely locking your camera during animations (Sanctus Reach, ugh!) which should help during multiplayer, but still tries to sneak more subtle interface timesinks past your notice, like not being able to end a turn during animations, or convoluted numerous extra bonus gratis superfluous shot-by-shot firing animations, or slow, ponderous unit motion with built-in pauses at beginning and end, or a bullet-time camera during attacks, not to mention the overextended (albeit, for once, bearably voice-acted) cutscenes.
Battlesector could've done a better job than Gladius at adapting WH40K squad tactics for online play, if it weren't also all about its starry-eyed customer base, hedging its bets on feels instead of marketing stategic functionality. Financially I'm guessing it'll do fine in the short term on the backs of fanboys buying yet another Warhammer title to reaffirm their devotion to the brand, but like its predecessors I doubt it'll be worth buying until it drops to half-price or less. Basically another case of what can you give me that Planetfall doesn't?
For single-player, that game can already give me more status effects, more units, more maps, more guns, more terrain features, More AoE and DoT and RoF, more turn-based tactics in general than even the most generous estimate of Battlesector's potential, and with the same grimdarky space wizard cheese for aesthetics to boot! If you've got all the right junk in all the right places, flaunt it! And, in addition, it allows you to fast-forward all unit moves.
As counterpoint to Planetfall (fundamentally a squad tactical) or Demigod (which while it tragically failed for some very valid mismanagement, no-one could accuse of missing its own point) tell me what Battlesector's core selling point is? If "fierce fast-paced (multiplayer) combat" was going to be your edge over Planetfall, then as soon as I fired up the first mission I should've been slapped in the face with an interface designed to allow me to out-think, out-maneuver and out-score my opponents at a glance, not have my nose rubbed in blood marine bleedin' angel blood bloody bloodiness. Or, if you wanted to build an immersive Blood Angel experience, screw the multiplayer, screw the fast pace and build on whatever their particular brand of balls-to-the-wall pyrrhic victory might be in the original WH40K fiction with varied units and abilities and persistent antiheroic characters.
*Sigh*
I'll catch you in the bargain bin a year from now, Battlesector.
More importantly though, think of how many games fail precisely because instead of capitalizing on their strengths, they undermine those strengths and waste time, resources and niche appeal hedging more bets than they can cover, slathering whore make-up over otherwise attractive features. It took twenty years and five installments for Age of Wonders to at long last make good on such an attempt, and that is a very rare example.
No comments:
Post a Comment