Hey guys. For a multitude of reasons. I didn't really give Ecliptic the time it deserved. See, it's an RTS game, and as I've said before, I'm not a fan of RTS games. That combined with an unusually overbearing workload today and a general bad mood on top of a lot of factors lead me to quit the game after my first defeat, which came totally unexpectedly in the middle of the game where I thought I was doing everything right. Continuing would have caused frustration that I really don't need right now.
The problem I have with most RTS games is that they give me this worthless feeling like I should be helping the characters on screen rather than just ordering them to their deaths. A majority of the time, be it because of lack of virtual currency or resources or just waiting for x thing to recharge for y seconds, all I can do is sit back hopelessly and watch as my forces, my men, my only chances for success...are destroyed. Maybe this is a clever allegory for real life, but I play video games to escape from the monotony of the real world, not to revel in it.
See, this is why I liked Base Invaders so much. It let the player intervene without having to wait. It cleverly avoided generating that hopeless feeling through its game mechanics. Ecliptic, if anything, only accentuates the feeling more than other games by making no visible attempt to cover up the fact that all you can do is order men to stand in the line of fire.
Moving away from the tonal aspect of it, the game isn't that great from a design standpoint. The controls, while I appreciate their lack of need to explain themselves with some kind of map, don't give you the feeling that they're so inherently supposed to. What was the name of that feeling again? Um...oh yeah, CONTROL. Maybe if I had toyed around with it for longer I might have found some way to use the controls better, but I'm going to go ahead and fall back on the old "if the game doesn't intrigue me from the beginning, I'm not obliged to wait until it gets interesting" argument.
Aesthetically, it's okay...passable. I mean it's not ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but it advertises itself as having "cutting edge graphics technology." This isn't a very easy claim to substantiate when I can count the number of polygons on each character.
It's pretty clear that I was in a bad mood when writing this, so maybe Ecliptic isn't as bad as I think it is. All-in-all, though, I wouldn't recommend it even to RTS fans. If you are an RTS fan, chances are you've already purchased a Total War or Starcraft game and therefore have experienced far better than anything this game can muster up. There's nothing special about it. It's just another RTS.
That's all for now. Until next time, stay strategic.
Links
Total Wat, more like:https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25910
