The Horde
Adam
I picked up this game last night and played it for several hours.
Here's a review of the game, or atleast what I have seen of it.
This game is described as a pseudo-SimCity game with action elements
thrown in. I wouldn't really agree with that statement. In fact,
there isn't much town building at all. You can only plant trees, buy
cows, build walls and fences, or dig pits. As you plant trees and
buy cows, you get more money, and attract more citizens. The town gets
built automatically, and you don't even get to see it happening.
Here's how it works. The game is divided into seasons, obviously four
a year. The seasons last 2 real-time minutes, which is displayed as a
small hourglass. After each season, the hordlings attack. The hordlings
come in several varieties, and they eat all your stuff, including cows,
crops, and citizens. This is where the action element comes in. While
these little red monsters pillage your town, you have to chase them around
and kill them with your sword. Most hordlings are killed in own sweep of
your sword, Grimthwacker, but there are alot of them at once and they are
fast. They destroy things quite quickly, and trying to kill them all before
they eat too much is very hectic and not at all easy. During this part of
the game, you are only fighting and everything else stops. When all of the
hordlings have been killed, the season ends and a report is displayed,
listing all of your assets and losses to the horde. The next season then
starts.
At the beginning of a new season, your town will be bigger, assuming you
are doing well. This just happens automatically, which I do not like.
The game would be better, in my opinion, if you controlled the building of
the town. I'd like to place my own roads, houses, crops, etc. instead of
having them just appear like magic. This lack of control makes the game
somewhat simplistic and not very strategic.
At the end of each year, you have to pay taxes, and you are taken to a
screen that is supposed to be a store, where you can buy different items
to help you in combat, like bombs and a teleportation ring. You can choose
to buy something, save your game, or just start the next season.
Another improvement I would make is to throw out the season concept and make
everything happen in real time. Instead of having a building mode and an
action mode, the game would be more interesting if the attacks came at
random while you were building. As it is, there just isn't much excitement
since you know when the hordlings will strike again.
In defense of the game, the graphics are really nice. The horldings are very
cool looking. It's fun just to load to a saved game, and let the hordlings run
loose on your town and just watch 'em destroy it. They belch, smile, and rub
their stomachs after eating your cows and citizens in one bite. Watching this
is more fun than playing the game.
All in all I would say it is a cool idea, but there just aren't enough details.
This game is more for children I think than stategy game fans. It's worth it
for the visuals, but in my opinion the game play is just not there. I'm taking
it back for a refund, well atleast after I play it for a couple more days. :)
Comments welcome,
--
Adam Vernon. "Eat, drink and be merry,
gar...@wam.umd.edu For tomorrow we die." - DMB