War Wind

To a contemporary audience that didn't play this game when it was new, War Wind is hard to recommend. It has an interesting world, its missions tie in nicely with its story and it seemingly has a sort of hero-based progression, but it's hobbled by design flaws that make it a chore to play. The biggest problem with War Wind is it's interface. A typical RTS revolves commanding units directly and ordering units or research at buildings. War Wind mixes it up by having ALL actions done by units- if you want to research or heal, you manually move a unit to the appropriate building, then order it to do so once it arrives. Units are hired rather than ordered, and instead of having lots of unit types, there is a template 'base' unit that is upgraded. While novel, the approach is very cumbersome. Ordering a new army from scratch requires a lot of micromanagement- moving the corret units to the right buildings then individually training and equipping them. If the unit cap was low this would make sense but you can field dozens of units, and outfitting them all manually is a chore. There are other odd choices too. You cannot select research, it is instead randomly assigned. Unit order menus float and follow units, so memorizing hotkeys is a must. Left click is used both for unit selection and attacking, so frequent unit deselection is common. Selecting groups always centres the camera over them so it constantly needs to be repositioned in the heat of battle. Pathfinding is very unpredictable. Finally, the four races are cosmetically very different but all have the same unit and building types, and roughly the same tech progression- just different names and sprites (which serves to confuse more than anything else). The stats are different so they're not identical, but it's far from the truly asymmetrical gameplay of Starcraft, released just 1 year later. There are a lot of interesting ideas in War Wind but playing the game itself is just too much of a hassle to recommend.

To begin this is from 1996. Inevitably compared to WarCraft but people forget another release that really contributed to this gem getting ignored- Command and Conquer. Everyone was focused on the Dune 2 successor when they should have been looking at what would become the basis of Blizzards entire economy. I put my name to the Gog Bring it Here petition- Insta buy. Again. The Bad >Ignored >Hard to find (and get working) >No soundtrack to DL with it. (I ripped it from my old copy) >The AI will be the reason Skynet fails to kill the human race when the machines rise. >'Guide Dang It' levels of hard Good >Some of the most involved world building to never spawn, books, movies, or 2 million sequels despite deserving the highest awards for originality from out of nowhere. >Hero Characters + Powers (war cries related to morale) >Units are recruited, upgraded and EQUIPPED >Each of the 4 races is UNIQUE. Plants/Dinosaurs/Space Sneks/ E.T. Monks >Flexible Strategy. Ideology applying itself to each. Ideologies like 'Guerrilla' Eeagra. 'Storm Trooper' ThaRoon. 'Ghandi' Shama Li Or 'Alamo' Obblinox. >Music is outstanding. >Asymmetric but linear missions with Unit import ( so upgrades DO count in the long run) >Animals/ neutral wildlife - there's an ecosystem here and you can hurt it and BE hurt by it. >Unit based tactics which unlike the missions are actually VERY flexible, Ambush beats tech, tech beats stealth, stealth beats ambush. Paper>Rock>Scissors >Loads of 'Find-ables' Such as vehicles, wandering high value warriors to recruit (might not even be your species so what your fire!) and my favorite, Bio Slag. >Stealth means you can sneak in - steal resources and bugger off. Hit and run style. Also possible to use native wildlife to harass enemies. >Voice acting is catchy and surprisingly not badly dated. (The Eaggra make adorable drippy trilling noises which serve to make them creepy cute) >Also Eaggra units start off as 'Scrubs' (lol) >Not Blizztard IP (Big plus) >FUN

Ok, listen. This one's not for everyone. I love it to death but it has it's flaws. It's easy to mistake it for a Warcraft clone too and it's most certainly not. Other reviews mention specifics already, but I also recommend finding some gameplay videos to get a better idea. It's purposefully slower and more RPG oriented than normal RTSs, as in, you have to "roleplay" your "town" and it's people a bit more, otherwise you'll have trouble enjoying your time here. In short, the good: great setting and weird, very original, gameplay. The bad: AI and fluidity of animations and movement are greatly subpar. If you want challenging, tightly crafted and balanced gameplay, you're in the wrong place. If you fall in love with the setting and enjoy playing around with the unusual mechanics, it makes up for all the problems. Style, it doesn't lack. I, for one, welcome our new purple psychic worm overlords. DZON DZON!

I'd buy this game all over again just for the atmosphere and the unique characters it creates. Not everything is explained and the controls are different than what we might be used to in a modern RTS, but don't let that discourage you from getting all you can out of this wonderful, unique game.