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- Act of war direct action move camera movie#
- Act of war direct action move camera upgrade#
- Act of war direct action move camera full#
It’s true you can rotate the camera for a better vantage point, but no matter how you dip and rotate you can’t seem to find a truly satisfying angle on the action. The action is well done, visually exiting even, but why the developers chose to hide half of it behind buildings is beyond me. In Atari’s defense, this does add something interesting to the strategic aspect of the game, but its one key flaw (it partially obstructs the action) is a real head-scratcher.
Act of war direct action move camera upgrade#
You still build a base, pump out troops, and upgrade units, but you’ll do so in the middle of dense city sprawl. The first thing you notice about Act of War (in one of its small diversions from the beaten path) is that the game focuses on urban combat. The developers should have given players the ability to resize and move the action box around. Unfortunately, the pop up box covers a large part of the screen, sometimes covering an area you’re focusing on. It acts to reinforce important plot points and draws the player in. In an interesting twist, when important events occur, an action box opens up displaying the event, presenting a much more dramatic take on the action below. The in-game scenes actually feel much more natural and are integrated into the game and story quite well. With an engine this powerful, it’s actually surprising the developers included a video component at all. Some are done using the in-game engine, and the game is the better for it. While I admire Atari’s try at an old trick, execution on this front leaves a lot to be desired.įortunately for Act of War (and consumers), not all story elements are presented through video.
Act of war direct action move camera movie#
This, combined with uninspired acting, sets a tone for these movie sequences that the rest of the game doesn’t recover from. The problem is the casting and direction, as well as the acting, is below par, even by B-movie standards.Īs an example, the sequence that plays during installation, which introduces the main conflict, begins to circle around the actors in the scene, but rotates for far too long. The story is primarily told through movie sequences played between and sometimes during the mission. If you’ve played Westwood RTS games, you know exactly what to expect.
Act of war direct action move camera full#
And if you can shrug off its deficiencies, real-time strategy nuts should find more than a few hours of fun here.Īct of War brings back something we haven’t seen for a while in an RTS– full motion video. At its worst, the game is brought down by questionable presentation and a feeling of deja-vu.Ĭomplaints aside, what Eugen Systems has borrowed from its peers has been done fairly well, even if it does seem a bit cut and paste. It’s a glimpse at what’s in store for the future of strategy games, and Atari is undoubtedly working this asset into a new title as we speak. Unit veterancy? Check.Īt its height, the game sports one of the best graphics engines in an RTS to date. It’s the tried and true formula though and through. There is no drawing outside the lines for Eugen Systems, no sir. (Have you SEEN the bargain bin at EB lately?)įor good or bad, Act of War: Direct Action is one of these homogenized RTS games. We’re now to the point where differentiation has boiled down to small subtle changes in a game model that has been fully developed for some time now, and it’s apparent many publishers are once bitten twice shy. This monster is “Blizzwood,” the illegitimate son of Blizzard and Westwood, a behemoth of status quo that the industry, like the countless schoolgirls in your favorite horror flick, just can’t seem to run away from.
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Now, developers and publishers have caught on to us. We demand innovation, creativity, originality, and we’ll even give a new game its day in court, and like we were to the smelly kid in the second grade, we’re still frightfully quick to shun failure (poor kid).