IOE

[Redpossum]

OK, I bought the full game last night, via digital download.

Nice presentation, cute briefings, all that part is fine.

As far as I can tell, the engine is solid. The various units look a bit too much alike for comfort, but that's a minor point.

My complaint is with the map & scenario design.

For starts, the so-called tutorials are nothing but a series of canned lectures. They are totally non-interactive, and non-participatory. The new player is given no opportunity to practice anything, no hands-on activity at all.

The second scenario is poorly designed in that if the player does the obvious and builds his building right where he starts, he blocks most of his starting units from ever moving toward the enemy. Hello? Yes, I see the Matrix guy addressed this in his walkthrough, but it's still really poor scenario design. If you're not supposed to build there, you shouldn't be able to build there.

The third scenario is the killer, however. And I bet a lot of gamers flat out give up here, and go play something else more accessible.

As soon as the scenario starts, you have enemies in your face. Individually superior enemies, no less, and in superior numbers. There is no time to get oriented, no time to look around, and no useful way to pause the game while you do either of those things. Yes, you can pause the game by pressing Escape, but the screen is largely obscured by the menu, which makes this paused mode worthless for any sort of reconnaisance or planning.

This is just too difficult. You give a new player zero opportunity to learn any skills in the tutorials, very little in the first two scenarios, and then drop him into a mess like that in scenario #3?

That's just poor scenario design, folks. And it's a crying shame, because the rest of the game, as much of it as I have been able to discover thus far, really deserves better. But a frustrating experience like this is just going to chase would-be players away. There are too many other games out there, and too much competition for the gamers' attention and dollars. A gamer has no need to put up with being frustrated by poor scenario design.