Being a big Warcraft 3 fan (and later a DOTA addict
) I'm shocked at how well the controls translated to the gamepad. They won't allowed the high level of APM and micro that elite players are used on the PC but for the rest of us, they should serve quite well. Certainly looking forward to my first RTS on a console. Oh and those cutscenes are amazing!
It's clear that the control feels good and that I liked for a while the demo but I feel like there is something missing to the game. The game clearly miss depth in regard to gameplay mechanic.
I'm not a RTS connoisseur, at first I had fun with the campaign I never played a Halo games and it's a great introduction to the ambience actually. Here not much complains.
Then I tried the skirmish mode, same here at first fun easy going controls, shortly I was pretty happy with the game mechanic... at first. Basically I started by creating/gathering as much resources as possible while updating critic technologies and keeping my "defensive towers" (I don't know the proper english name but every fortress has four) as advanced as possible and with time adapting to encounter(game AI) development. The I create the most potent unit and go crush the encounter. Fun at first as the game "feels" good.
At some point I got bored and tried to be more sneakier/faster.
I like the convenants and I decided to make the most of special units/stealthy ones.
First I planed to go against a still underdeveloped base, I had something like 7/8 characters. I splitted them in two, enabled "camouflage" and I went for the defensive towers first using a attack/retreat pattern and then took the base easilly with really few (if any) causalities.
Then I thank it might be fun to go as early as possible try to take a "potent" base so I created <20 units and move to the base planning to split them closer to the base... How wrong... On my way I faced some tanks and others vehicules, I had well enough brute force to kill them and did but it proved impossible to organize my units on the flight. The Ai proved to be messy while dealing with +20units there was basically groups of 3/4 focusing on a given tanks and the others messing around/getting shot. I tried to grap some and reaffect them but as the vehicule were sometime moving and so my troup it proved inefficient.
I suffered way too much causalities too the point I think I had to retreat.
During this time the human managed to counter attack with huge spaceship and I got killed! Damned at normal difficulty it's the only time I died.
I will have other tries but I think that there is something missing in the way you manage your troups and it's clearly sad especcially if you consider how good the controls feels.
Clearly I think the controls may have support more complexity and it could have allow to greatly improve the gamer control on the game. The two left triggers are not that useful and should have been affected to other functions imho. One function comes clearly in mind and would helps so greatly in regard to the game mechanic:
The right trigers allow you to select all units in sight and to between your different type of units, the tiny left triger should allow to split a given type of selected units into 2,3,4,x groups accordingly with the number of time you type.
I'll play again with the demo but I think it won't be for me as there is not much to dig.
