Iendicis, reviewing "Warzone 2100" Real Time Strategy Pros -Great unit creation mechanic -Nice new graphical touches -Plenty of play time Cons -Hackneyed plot concept -Somewhat stupid AI -Subpar recreation project (so far) Warzone 2100 started its life as an RTS from Edios and Pumpkin Studios, and while it had some varied ideas and a very pleasing 3D graphics engine for its time, it was a commerical flop. After many movementsof ownership, the game was finally realeased via source code, and a group of developers created this recreation. The game itself is a very fun RTS experience, and the game's economic loss is one excellent freeware game, if not without its minor shortcomings. The plot has been heard before: for some "strange" reason, the nuclear defence system, NASDA, malfunctioned in the Earth's orbit, releasing its warheads and wiping out most of the world. You as the Commander control a small band of survivors, as bloodthirsty bandits roam the cratered lands. The plot gets bigger from there, enveloping three parts of one large campaign. Eventually there is a greater enemy revealed in these petty bandits, and the story gets pretty interesting in the later sections. Only the original story concept is really that cliche, though some of it does seem a little over the top. A bigproblem here is that the original had excellent cutscenes spread everywhere, and this version could notinclude them (it wasn't included in the source code), so the player will have to make do with text and subtitles. Each campaign has a branch of your group known as The Project, with Alpha, Beta, and Gamma being the sections as well as the names of the campaigns. The key difference in Warzone gameplay-wise compared to other RTS titles that turned out to be more popular is the unit creation. Instead of each unit having certain stats and attributes, like the Zerglings or the Firebats in StarCraft, the game gives you "artifacts" that were left behind before the nukes dropped. These artifacts, when researched, give the player an extra part, such as a more powerful or altered gun or a new unit template. You use these to design and manufacture units. There are a lot of combinationations in this game, though most aren't even worth tinkering with. This is also built on when the artifacts carry through to each game, so you keep your upgrades throughout. In the long run, though, the game is made through this very cool mechanic, and it's the main reason to pick it up. It just simply works. The A.I. is a little sloppy, though not enough to warrent a real backfire. The pathfinding is a little less polished than what a gamer might normally expect (tanks will run into each other and try to walk through walls), but it's okay in the long run due to the generally easily navigatable landscape. The enemies aren't overly intelligent, though they make up for that in sheer numberts and brutality. A skirmish mode that wasn't in the original game is a nice addition for friendless gamers, and the A.I. will present more than enough challenge for a while, especially on hard mode. Your units can manage themselves if you place them smartly as well: trucks will begin to heal units and buildings, and combat units will fire and chase enemies around a certain radius. The interface is pretty clean, though a lot of dialog bozes can start piling up if you don't press the "close" command every few minutes. The controls are pretty standard for an RTS, with the exception of the right mouse button, which is used to rotate the camera every which way. Sometimes units are still selected when you thinkthey aren't which can lead to some frantic intervention in your plans, but once you gte used to cancelling certain cursor commands then everything will be alright. There isn't anything in this game will take more than the well designed tutorial or the first mission to understand entirely, so a new player can slip in with ease, assuming they'veplayed some sort of RTS game before. If not, this is a good game to start with: there aren't too many variablesto worry about: there is no huge list of units to learn, and there's only one resource to manage. The graphics are an interesting mix. Included in this version is the original game as well as a mod by a user named "Grim," which frees up the camera a bit and gives the game some extra polish. While the original had a very neat 3D camera interface, the textures were somewhat blocky and muddy, and Grim's GFX really makes the game shine. The only problem might be in the camera movement, because now the landscape doesn't block it like the original did; that feels a little messed up as well, because then the view starts going through geometry. But that aside, just having the free moving camera (fully rotatable, zoom) from the original itself allows the player to see every moment of the huge, sometimes gorgeous firefights that occur in most RTS's. Plus, although the game was made in 1999, the system requirements are fairly low. The original game needed a Pentium 166 and 16 megs of ram, and while Grim's GFX mod pumps up the game a little more, the specs shouldn't be much higher than that. In fact, the game is almost a laughing stock comapred to today's PC's, and can and should run on anything, including laptops and very old, dusty machines. There's also Linux and Mac versions available on the offical site. Another problem that this recreation presents: there's no music. You can find the files amd put it in (instructions are on their forum) but in the end it's not worth it. Yeah, it's kind of moody and tonal and really well done, but this is a good game to just play your own music to. Some of it is toneless techno, while others are just low beats. It's very bizarre, but give it a try if you don't mind downloading some more. The voiceovers are pretty good (though most of them were edited out with the movies) and tell you when certain things happen, as is the genre's typical use. The sound effects are alright but can get obtuse and annoying, like the building creation ray buzz that comes off of the Trucks. The game is plenty long, so any gamer who wants a good choke of RTS game doesn't need to look any further. The campaign will probably take a good twelve to twenty hours, while skirmish mode can add to that. There is no server browser for multiplayer though, only IP, so get ready to setup your games with friends. It's a great LAN party game--if you can set up the IP--because of its dependence on the action part of the game (there's only one type of material to harvest). Real-life-player games can get ferociously and fantastically frantic, and it's definitly a good game to play if you can dole out some IP addresses. It's just a fun game to play alone or with friends, and there are plenty of unit mods to extend the experience even further. There are a few more things that keep this from a perfect score of 5: there's a time limit on all maps that can get very frustrating at times, and some of the setup procedures for this version of the game are less than ideal. To access the best resolutions mode, you have to type in "-viewport 1280x1024" after the .exe address in a shortcut or the actual file name. The build here as stated has no music or movies, though it's still being constantly updated and improved, so there's room to grow. There are a whole lot of CD rips out on the web, but this one here is technically legal and easier to setup, and as a plus it's smaller while including the "Grim GFX" mod. But all things aside, this game is excellent for a freeware RTS game, and you don't want to pass it up. It gets a 4.4 because of the great way it shakes up the usual RTS paradigm, regardless of the few presentational issues, and it was a much overlooked game when it was released. Don't make that same mistake twice. It has a very substantial community behind it, and it's there for a very, very good reason. Warzone 2100 is a definite thumbs up. A rating of 4.2 out of 5. System Requirements Minimum (for original game) * Pentium 166 * 16 Megs Ram * 45 Megs of free disk space * Windows 95 Official game URL: http://wz2100.net/ Download location URL: http://wz2100.net/downloads.html Warzone is a mild game with "animated blood and gore," but it's not very violent. A suggested age level would be 10+. Multiplayer through TCP/IP. Picture expalinations: Most of these pics were taken from the first mission, but several of them are in debug mode (there's a little indicator above the menu I couldn't turn off). I got the cutscenes from a CD rip version over at Home of the Underdogs, but they look pretty bad as thumbnails. Enlarge them and those odd lines go away.