Perimeter
Futuristic Real-time strategy for your PC
Tags: Perimiter Categories: PC Previews, Previews
Posted by David Hinkle on Apr 20th, 2004
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In the distant future, fleeing Earth are 9 giant city-like ships called Frames. This exodus is guided by a race of beings known as the Spirits. These Spirits guide humanity to a new dimension in look of a new homeworld. Centuries go by and bring no new homeworld. With no physical proof, some begin to question the Spirit council and decide they wish to go back. Others decide they wish to continue the journey, while another group keeps its intentions to itself. This split into factions brings a war upon humanity. This is where you come in, taking charge of each faction spanning 30 campaign missions. Multiplayer will be conducted on custom maps in 4 player combat.
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Gone are the days of having peon after peon chop wood and mine gold. Instead, they decided to simplify the resources by making everything depend on energy. One acquires energy first by terraforming the land around. Terraforming land lets you flatten out spires, create trenches, or raise flat land into mountains. Flat land can have energy extraction cores (gradually extracts energy from the land) or any other building object placed. This not only is good for creating structures, but can also be used defensively to create geographical obstructions for your enemy.
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Energy’s biggest use is going to be for perimiter shields. When activated, they protect your base with a vast blue bubble, destroying anything that comes into contact with it. While being the perfect defense, it also has its disadvantages; the biggest one being no troops of yours may enter or leave while activated. Also, it will heavily tax your energy supply, so don’t expect to have that baby on all the time.
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Nanotechnology is probably the most interesting feature in the game. What it allows you to do is basically upgrade troops on the fly. If you have 20 soldiers and you want to create an officer, then merely select 10 soldiers and watch as they morph into an officer. This will definately make battle and navigating the landscape a lot more interesting. Say you have a force of troops and you send them off toward the enemy base, but there is a chasm in the way. Simply research the flying troop area and you can morph your soldiers and fly across. This is something I am definitely going to look forward to when the final game releases on the 21st next month.
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One of the other cool little additions is planet-specific, natural disasters and inhabitants. Look forward to earthquakes, giant worms, and a giant face (known as the ’spirit of the planet’) that moves around the planet at will to wreak havoc on your base. Also, the natural inhabitants of each planet can either hinder or aid your progress. Of course, the natural inhabitants aren’t very human-loving, but some of the nanotechnologies allow you to take the shape of alien troops and officers thus making you automatic allies with the natives.
Controlling almost 500 units at once, the graphics engine created for this title is one of the most impressive yet. Being able to render over 1 million polygons per second, it is no wonder ATI is using this title to showcase their Direct X9 capabilities later this year.
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Tags: Perimiter
Posted by David Hinkle on Apr 20th, 2004 and is filed under PC Previews, Previews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
