Perimiter
When bald people ruled the universe
Tags: Perimiter Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Sep 23rd, 2004
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Perimiter (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Strategy | No | ||
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After playing Peremiter for a while, I came to a realization: There is nothing I like about it. Not a single part of this game stands up to say “Even if you hate everything else, you’ve gotta’ like me!”. This is probably the most thoroughly unenjoyable game I’ve played in a long time. Not the worst: Truly terrible games are at least enjoyable in the entertainment of seeing how riduculously bad they are. No… This game decides to forgo truly awful and settle for Merely “boring” and “unpleasant”.
The box says this is “Real-Time Strategy Reborn”, and if nothing else I must give them credit for trying a few original things, namely in the way resources are gathered. The game goes for a “terraforming” theme, and virtually any spot on the map can be terraformed and have a power generator built over it to generate power. For surrounding structures (Much like Starcraft’s Protoss Pylons).
Also unique is the “peremiter” of the game’s title, a force field your power generators (called “energy cores”) can emit over their outlying areas, which acts as your primary source of protection. Players have to be careful in its use, however, as it sucks up energy like crazy. This was most likely to balance out the fact that, with seemingly limitless resources, you’d never run out otherwise.
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Those two points of originality are the best thing the game has going for it. The in-game graphics, aside from occasionally cool stuff like the peremiter itself and the warping landmass, are nothing to write home about, and seem to suffer framerate issues on even the lowest settings (and this is on a machine that plays Doom 3 just fine and dandy). This is probably largely because the game was made to be able to zoom in really close to the action if the player chooses to, which may look cool, but is functionally not very useful.
To make matters worse, the game’s FMV would have been hideous a half a decade ago, and the character designs are atrocious. Unless you have a thing for ugly bald people, boxy spacecraft, or generic-looking bugs, this game won’t hold much interest for you visually. The sound is equally annoying. Combine annoying music with generic sci-fi sound effects, and you have it in a nutshell.
The gameplay itself would be mostly un-notable if not for the lack of information plaguing the game. My energy cores are losing power. Why? My unit won’t terraform an area I told it to. Why not? Crap like this is far too common.
 |
One area early on in the game has you escaping a planet that’s collapsing. As I tried to figure out what I was doing, I was notified that one of my energy cores was under attack. Checking on it, I could not find any problem. After repeating this three or four more times, the thing collapsed. Later, upon zooming in close, I found the culprit: I was being “attacked” by small cracks forming in the crumbling dirt of the planet. While this seems logical on a planet crumbling to pieces, the information is relayed in such a sloppy way that it becomes outright confusing.
This coupled with the game’s other problems makes it just plain un-fun to play. What few original ideas this game has are crushed by this complete lack of fun, and not even an army of ugly bald people could save it.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ It has a few original ideas + A few graphical touches look cool |
6.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Lack of explanation makes the game more confusing than it needs to be - Underwhelming and often annoying presentation - Just not fun |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| If this is "real-time strategy reborn", someone should have had an abortion. | |
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Tags: Perimiter
Posted by Jake McNeill on Sep 23rd, 2004 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. 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.
