Your old man croaked and left you a mountain of debt. Time to head for the stars, mine planets for riches, and beat back spaceships bent on your demise.
Unlike most real-time strategy games, Planets doesn’t feature a variety of units, or even give you direct control over army movements. Instead, you pick a planet to invade, specify how many ships to attack it with, and watch minions stream into battle from all your occupied worlds. You’ll eventually learn to upgrade and convert conquered planets into income-generating banks, invader-blasting fortresses, and metropolitan population centers, but the focus is always on managing the placement and flow of your forces as you dominate each solar system.
Asteroid belts can force you to take time-consuming detours.The mechanics sound simple, but gameplay often feels practically unmanageable. While you can toggle planets to “guard mode” to prevent them from sending ships to war, and thus alter the ever-changing routes forces take between orbiting planets, it’s maddeningly difficult to do so quickly enough to be effective. By the time you’ve shuffled your cursor around and made adjustments, your A.I. opponents’ swift reactions will have changed your needs. Paired with the absence of mid-mission checkpoints or a save system, this means even momentary delays and judgment lapses often leave you hopelessly outnumbered.
It’s a minor relief to compete against slower-moving humans, and the option to play as robots who behave a bit differently injects a smidgen of variety. But even in online games, paltry tactical options and awkward controls make Planets feel shallow and clumsy.
Online matches move slower than skirmishes against the A.I.PUBLISHER: TopWare Interactive • DEVELOPER: Targem Games • ESRB: Everyone • MULTIPLAYER: 4 on same screen or Xbox Live • ACHIEVEMENTS: Tight-fisted • COST: 1,200 Microsoft Points ($15) • RELEASE DATE: November 14, 2012
+ Challenging series of varied solar systems to dominate; four-way online warfare.
– Struggling to quickly direct traffic and toggle planet states makes you wish for a mouse.
– No checkpoint or save system means constantly starting from scratch.
? How did zombies learn to fly spaceships?
