Hidden Gem of the Week: Earth 2150 Trilogy

It's time for another Hidden Gem from the PC gaming history. Let's get a closer look at a strategy game Earth 2150.

Earth 2150 is the second part in the Earth strategy series from TopWare. It was one of the first fully 3D real-time strategy games available on the market. At the time of release the game featured some really impressive weather effects, had a detailed physics engine and made strategy games fans really excited. Pete Davison, our brave commander, decided to go into the future and lead the Earth fractions to the final victory and here are his impressions on the game. Remember we're giving you a discount on the Hidden Gem of the Week, so until Sunday, October 18 at 11:59 p.m. EDT you can grab Earth 2150 with expansions for only $4.99!

by Pete Davison

The Earth is dying! What do you mean, “again?” This time it really is. It’s been knocked off its orbit by everyone having big fights all the time and is heading for the Sun. Yes, the SUN. The big hot thing. The big thing that probably isn’t too good for your skin if you get too close. There’s only one option left... RUN AWAY!

Earth 2150’s premise may have been heard before - catastrophic, apocalyptic disasters turn planet into initially inhospitable and later completely uninhabitable hellhole - but this game offers a rather unique take on both the idea and the real-time strategy genre in general.

Placing players in charge of one of three factions - the technologically advanced United Civilized States, the primitive but determined Eurasian Dynasty or the matriarchal pacifist society of the Lunar Corporation - Earth 2150 gives one the unenviable task of saving the human race from certain extinction... or at least, the bit of it that you’ve chosen to swear allegiance to.

In many real-time strategy games, this would be achieved by working through a linear sequence of missions of gradually increasing difficulty and complexity, having an epic final confrontation that normally involves the deployment of one or more “super-weapons” before sitting back, relaxing in the knowledge of a job well done. And while Earth 2150 shares some ideas with typical examples of the genre - you still undertake “missions”, for example, and your equipment gets stronger as the game progresses - it’s the rather different approach to the campaign mode that makes this game stand out.

In short, the campaign mode actually is a campaign, as opposed to a linear sequence of missions. You start the game with a “main base” which is where your primary goals for the whole game - gathering resources, building a craft to launch into space and, eventually, escaping - are undertaken. As you progress, mission hotspots open up around the world, allowing you to undertake tasks in order to advance your own position and hopefully, in the process, cripple the other factions. The interesting thing, though, is that your main base carries on doing its thing while you are in the mission battle zones, and many missions require interaction between the units in the main base and the remote ones. There’s also an overarching time limit on the whole game as the Earth slips inexorably closer to the Sun, making the landscape get more and more hellish as time slides on.

There’s plenty of interesting twists on the genre that we don’t see often, too - a day-night cycle means that you have to take light levels into account, for example, as units with their lights on at night are more easily spotted but can move quicker. Then there’s the intriguing underground warfare, with a number of units able to tunnel through the ground to get to otherwise inaccessible areas - or even to burst up and surprise your enemies like some kind of sinister and heavily-armed jack-in-the-box. And we haven’t even mentioned the fact that you can build your own units, or split your screen in three to monitor several parts of the action at the same time...

This isn’t a game you’ll beat quickly, either. The “Escape from the Blue Planet” campaign will take you long enough - but if you crave more after saving your chosen part of humanity, the two additional campaigns - The Moon Project and Lost Souls - will keep you entertained for months to come. Top it off with an excellent map editor and some solid multiplayer modes and this one will certainly keep you busy, assuming some kind of horrible global disaster doesn’t happen first...

Click on selected thumbnail to enlarge