#The riftbreaker reviews full#

One of my favourite parts of playing this game is the speed at which you can get structures up and running.

#The riftbreaker reviews full#

As there is a full day and night cycle you should also keep tabs on the time of day, especially if you rely on solar power. You can also see at a glance how effective the sun and wind are at any given time.

The basic minerals and power levels are shown on the top right including your current output and stores.

The many elements of base management are presented to the player in such an easy to process way, it frees you up to enjoy making strategic decisions. These missions don’t add a huge amount of variation and I think this could be one aspect ripe for improvement in any sequel. There are often a few smaller missions to take on before settling into a bigger version of the new biome, such as scouting for samples in order to track down bigger resource nodes.

As you might imagine these will be integral to building better technology as well as constructing the rift gate required to get back to Earth. Once you have the necessary buildings up and running you will have the ability to rift jump to other biomes on the planet in the search for new materials. In this way, the game does have a subtle element of guidance which is appreciated considering the sheer number of structures and equipment you need to consider. I also like the way that some of these paths are closed off until you have arrived at that part of the campaign. In Riftbreaker each point on that research tree is a tangible and exciting option that will give you something new to try, it’s almost overwhelming. I’ve seen many games where the research trees are massive but in the end, it doesn’t amount to much more than an elaborate set of stat boosts. As the game progresses the research options open to you become greater, from thermal geysers, bio-electric plants to nuclear power stations (and plenty more). Wind turbines are more reliable but if the wind stops blowing just as you get attacked what then? You could actually burn Carbonium as a power source, but this is also a vital building material. Sure solar panels are very efficient but only work in the daytime and will also be scuppered by fog, volcanic ash or the setting sun. This is where your first strategic decisions come into play because you cannot rely on one form of power. Power is a vital element to the running of your base and without it, everything just grinds to a halt: including your defences. After this, you will go on to fashion the usual set of structures such as walls, wind turbines and defence turrets. The Headquarters is the first building you create and must be protected at all costs. Like any good RTS, your first job is to acquire resources and then start turning these into structures that will eventually form your first base. As you rift into a new zone you will send foliage, fauna to the afterlife in the most spectacular fashion: think the Terminator time jump but a little more messy. This game works so well due to a number of clever design decisions by the team at Exor Studios.

However, in this game the only unit you take direct control over is Mr Rigs and therefore some veteran strategy fans might be getting a little worried at this point but let me set you at ease. The creation of units that the player can then command is seen by many as a fundamental part of any RTS and indeed it is in the conventional sense. The term ‘real-time strategy’ was actually coined by Brett Sperry in the promotion of Dune 2 way back in the early 1990s. It seems to me that the team at Exor Studios have been paying attention to these lessons when designing their own offering. The latter title also showed how a clever UI could make commanding hundreds of units a breeze. It also had a huge mech that acted as a mobile HQ and this same idea carried on in Supreme Commander. In 1997 Total Annihilation was released and it gained a huge following due to the wonderful unit design and flashy explosions proving that visuals could enhance an already well-trodden formula. Then defend your new digs against enemy attacks and eventually decimate your opposition with a larger or superior force. The basic premise has always been the same gather resources from the environment while establishing some sort of base or settlement. Over the years we have seen many variations of this genre, from the Command and Conquer series, Age of Empires and Starcraft to name a few. This was absolutely fine of course as the magic of RTS games is how they play: as Dune 2 so effectively illustrated. Real time strategy games have been around since the dark ages of gaming, back when a few well-placed pixels were considered the height of graphical wizardry.