Dune: Spice Wars is for strategy die-hards more than Dune fans
Dune Spice Wars is a real-time strategy that misses the mark for newcomers, but might win over strategy enthusiasts.
Iron Harvest review: Real-time strategy with feeling
Delightful design and a heartfelt campaign clash with unpolished mechanics and a paltry selection of content.
Final Assault to Hit European PlayStation VR Shores Next Week
At the end of March real-time strategy (RTS) title Final Assault finally came to PlayStation VR, but only for North American players. Developer Phaser Lock Interactive has recently confirmed that the title will now make its way to the European PlayStation Store in a few days.
The studio made the announcement via Twitter, locking down Tuesday 12th May for the launch, expanding the player base for those all important multiplayer matches.
It has been a little while coming, with the PC VR version released almost a year ago. As VRFocus learnt from an interview with Phaser Lock Interactive’s CEO Michael Daubert, the delay was down to trying to make frame rate, easily achieved on PlayStation 4 Pro, not so on the original PlayStation 4. This did mean sacrifices had to be made such as unit caps.
All the work has meant that both PC and console players can face one another, pitting their WWII forces in battle. Offering both single-player and multiplayer modes, Final Assault is a tabletop style RTS where players can select from six divisions, each with its own specialised ground and aerial units.
Looking down on the battlefield, players can quickly drop troops down whilst individually or group manoeuvring jeeps, tanks, and artillery to take over or reinforce strategic positions, call in planes to patrol the skies or execute airstrikes on enemy troops. Or when they’ve unlocked their top tier armaments assault the enemy base with bombing runs and other heavy weapons.
When reviewing the original PC version of Final Assault VRFocus said: “There’s plenty to love about Final Assault. Providing a leaner less complicated approach to RTS gameplay, most fans of the genre apart from the die-hard stalwarts should find there’s enough depth and reply value to keep coming back for hours on end.”
Phaser Lock Interactive isn’t stopping the franchise there, with more content and updates planned for the near future. Plus the studio is also working on a new project with a focus towards PlayStation VR and Oculus Quest.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Phaser Lock Interactive and its VR projects, reporting back with all the latest news.
‘Final Assault’ Early Access Review – a Charming & Engrossing RTS on the Rise
Virtual reality has absorbed a number of traditional mouse-and-keyboard games and turned them into something that can truly only exist in the medium. And while Final Assault, an online multiplayer real-time strategy game, takes some pretty tried and true classic RTS game mechanics, it also expertly blends them with more than a few VR-specific control schemes pioneered in the studio’s air traffic-control game Final Approach (2016) to a more explosive (and personally satisfying) effect.
Final Assault Early Access Details:
Developer: Phaser Lock Interactive
Available On: Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR), Oculus Store (Rift)
Reviewed On: Rift, Vive
Early Access Release Date: February 19th, 2019
Note: This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game only at its current Early Access state and will not receive a numerical score.
Gameplay
Much like a League of Legends, Final Assault features a measure of automated combat, where ground troops automatically spawn at your base and march down specific lanes to your singular enemy. Enemy towers slow down forward advancement, and there’s also loot drops too, but that’s where the comparisons to LoL stop, as the game is decidedly a more traditional RTS in the sense that you choose which units to spawn and when, and send them out into the world tactically with the aim of destroying your enemy’s standard defenses and (hopefully) their base.
The action isn’t always in the lanes though, so you have to be careful to watch the wide swaths of the bits in between, which make for tempting places to set up long-distance artillery and anti-aircraft to further eat away at the enemy’s units and structures.
Getting the right mix is a constant struggle. The enemy pushes for air superiority and strafes a whole group of ground troops. You counter with mobile anti-aircraft guns and a few tanks to protect them from cheaper, but still effective land units. The enemy rushes in with a couple tanks and resumes, upgrading to bombers to take out that cluster of mobile troop carriers you were reserving in the back corner. It’s the sort of frustration we’ve all felt in classic RTS games, but something about seeing it all from the perspective of Godzilla makes it that much more hectic and immersive.
Controlling units is simple. You can send them to specific spots on the map, or draw a specific patrol order with your finger, represented by green dots of lines.
Creating a closed loop puts the plane, tank, or other unit in a holding pattern so you can patrol the area for whatever comes your way—just like in Final Approach. I found this particularly important with planes (no surprise there), as I would fill the sky with a swarm of basic fighters, tasking all of them with their own covering patterns to create a tangled net of air defense.
Sometimes ground units would get stuck behind each other, and were unable to logically resolve their diverging pathways to keep moving forward, although this only happened maybe once or twice per game. It still irked me to find a critical artillery unit uselessly parked sitting behind a troop carrier near my base.
A big factor in winning the match is claiming random loot drops, which parachute in from time to time in clearly marked parts of the map; money is automatically accrued at the same rate for both players, making it a game of spending your dollars wisely for the best mix of armor, airplanes, and both offensive and defensive vehicles, and those loot drops can mean all the difference.
You can view your status bar and also select all of these from a hand-held menu that you can activate by gripping the trigger on your non-dominant hand. The menu works very well, letting you physically select and cancel units; since purchased units roll out of your base near-instantly upon selection, you have to decide carefully.
At its current point in Early Access, you can choose from either American Allied forces or German Axis forces, with each character possessing their own top-tier gear. If not properly countered though, it usually means a swift end to the battle. Think tactical nuclear bombs and near-invincible tanks. But because the whole battlefield is visible (no ‘fog of war’), you can see your demise coming straight at you, necessitating tactical spending, unit movements, on-the-fly countering, and as many loot drops as you can control and collect.
Higher-tier units are accessed by removing expensive locks in your hierarchy, so while the enemy is spending carelessly on a massive number of cheap units, you could save up for the massive bunker-busters depending on how much faith you have in whatever standard defenses are left on your side. How you spend your money seems to be the only thing you can hide from your opponent.
Three PvE difficulties exist currently, with the last ‘Special Forces Mode’ putting up a pretty serious fight. While a campaign mode is in still the works and not available in the EA launch version, for now the bulk of Final Assault’s gameplay is currently rests on the game’s cross-platform PvP. I wasn’t successful in finding a PvP match on launch day, so I can’t speak to the game’s online multiplayer yet. I’ll be updating this piece as soon as I can, although I would expect it to follow my typical online RTS playthrough: I get beaten to a bloody pulp as faster players push for the best stuff using tactics I’ve never thought of before.
Only three maps are available at the moment, although grayed-out blocks indicate at least nine more coming leading up to its March 2019 launch out of Early Access.
Immersion
Final Assault’s miniature world is nothing short of charming. Although your focus is invariably drawn to the battle ahead, looking out over the vast and beautiful countryside really shows off the studio’s knack for creating an engrossing diorama-style atmosphere.
I wish I could say the same for the voice acting though, as all of the faux-German accents sounded just plain bad. Of course, this is only a small part of an overall astounding job at creating a game that ticks all the right boxes in terms of solid gameplay; it’s certainly something I hope is changed as the studio flushes out the game’s feature set in the coming months.
While the game’s locomotion style doesn’t offer the most immersive way to take in the world’s environment (more on locomotion below), the fast-paced nature of the game and reliable controls basically ensure you’ll be fully locked into every second of the match. I can’t help but think that some kids in the future really won’t know what it’s like to spend their days building up Lego forts and knocking them over in a pretend Hot Wheels race gone awry. It’s all here: the tiny soldiers marching to smash the enemy, toy tanks rolling to drop points, the airplanes doing their impressive dive-bombing runs on guard towers.
Comfort
Movement is based on a ‘grab the world’ scheme, letting you move in any direction by simply shifting yourself where you need to go by grabbing the grip buttons on your motion controller. Although some maps are fairly small, I mostly found myself sitting in my office chair and grabbing the world one hand after the other to move forward bit by bit. Getting the hang of this takes a little while, both in terms of how to position yourself accurately while in the heat of controlling your army, and how rapid you want to move versus how rapid your brain will physically let you.
I didn’t really have comfort issues with the control scheme after playing for an hour straight, but as I got better and better at the game I started to instinctively push back from moving around at the speed I knew I needed to achieve to manage everything on the hectic battlefield. That said, I never had that deadly flop sweat that precedes a nasty bout of artificial locomotion-induced nausea, aka ‘sim sickness’.
Snap-turn is available, although I rarely used it, instead favoring a front-facing lateral movements to get a good view of everything.
Conclusion
I walked away from Final Assault feeling that all of the basic ingredients were there to make for a truly engrossing and fun game. The addition of a campaign mode though, which is promised to release sometime between now and its March 2019 launch, will make it much more appealing for players like me who would rather play offline. That said, I’ll definitely be playing more on the game’s road to launch.
Note: This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game only at its current Early Access state and will not receive a numerical score.
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WW2 RTS ‘Final Assault’ to Leave Early Access Next Month
Phaser Lock Interactive, the studio behind VR titles Final Approach (2016) and Twisted Arrow (2017), are bringing their WWII-themed real-time strategy game Final Assault out of Early Access with their full launch next month.
Update (April 25th, 2019): Phaser Lock today announced their cross-platform RTS is heading out of its short stint in Early Access on May 16th for $30. The game is launching on Steam, Viveport, and the Oculus Store, and supports HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows VR headsets. PSVR support is also on the future road map.
The full game’s features include:
- Story and skirmish campaign modes
- US and German Divisions including heavy armor, airforce and infantry units
- Cross-Platform PVP multiplayer with leaderboards
- Customization of Units, Flags and Player Avatars
- 14 unique maps from the icy lanes of the small village of Kleinstadt to the brush-covered battlefield of Hill-512
- Cross-platform PvP between HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality
- Spectator Mode that invites players to enjoy the game outside of Virtual Reality
The studio says users should expect more maps, more units, more game modes and new campaigns coming to the game post-launch.
In the meantime, check out our Early Access review of ‘Final Assault’ to get an idea of what’s in store. The original article announcing the game’s Early Access follows below:
Original Article (February 13th, 2019): After a slight delay, Final Assault is now set to release in Early Access on Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR) and the Oculus Store (Rift) starting February 19th; it was previously slated for it’s EA debut on February 12th. A PSVR version is also in the works that will allow cross-play with all supported headsets.
The game’s Early Access period is said to last a short three months before its official launch in April. At launch of Early Access, the game will include both cross-platform PvP and PvE, and will see a total of 12 maps unlocking along the way.
Built from the ground-up for VR, Final Assault blows you up to the size of Godzilla, tasking you with commanding land and air units into enemy territory for interactive, dynamic battles. Much like Final Approach, units are controlled by drawing paths for precise, direct combat.
“We are focusing on the PVP right now and bringing Campaign, customization, and other game functions closer to launch. With the PvP, we feel that the more people playing in early access will allow us to balance the units/maps along with improving the AI for Campaign and PvE,” Phaser Lock CEO Michael Daubert said.
We’re currently testing a pre-release version of the game, and will have our full report coming before launch of Early Access next week.
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RTS ‘Astraeus’ From ‘Darknet’ Developer to Land on Vive, Rift & PC June 7th
E McNeill, an indie developer behind strategy games Darknet (2015), Tactera (2016), and Skylight (2017), announced his real-time strategy game Astraeus, an Oculus Go launch title, is coming to HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and PC on June 7th.
In Astraeus, you play as an AI who’s awakened on an asteroid mining control ship after the captain’s death. Filling in for the now deceased captain, you take command fulfilling critically important mining missions, requiring you to build a network of dozens of bases and command thousands of mining rigs as you attempt to corner the market, or eliminate the competition.
Astraeus, McNeill tells us, was originally prototyped for a VR development reality show, the VR Developer Challenge, where it won first place and a $20,000 prize.
As a launch title for Oculus Go (also available on Gear VR), the Steam version will support for Rift, Vive and include a non-VR build for traditional monitors.
Astraeus will be available at a 10% launch discount off the usual price of $15. You can follow along with the game on Steam here.
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VR RTS Brass Tactics Gets New Details, Free Brass Tactics Arena Announced
Virtual reality (VR) gamers that love a bit of real-time strategy (RTS) action will be happy to hear that Brass Tactics is finally getting some new confirmed details. We’ve got information on the price, length, gameplay modes and more – in addition to the announcement of a free introduction to the game, Brass Tactics Arena.
The announcements will come as a relief to anyone who has been waiting for Brass Tactics for a while, as it was delayed last year.
Hidden Path Entertainment’s Brass Tactics has 6+ hours of story campaign, more than 20 maps and three gameplay modes. You’ll hear your opponent’s taunts as you direct the flow of battle with your hands.
Pre-orders for the game are open now at $24.99, and the game will launch on February 22nd for $39.99. You’ll be able to customise your units and army to play the story campaign, with dozens on unit types and upgrades to use.
Other gameplay modes include a single player vs AI mode, an online competitive mode, and an online coop mode. The game will have more than 20 maps to play across its variety of modes, keeping the scenery fresh for a long time.
Brass Tactics Arena has also been announced, which will be completely free for players. It will allow players to play unlimited online competitive, cooperative or vs AI modes on a single map, and still offers dozens of units and upgrades to customise your army.
Brass Tactics Arena will act as an excellent introductory demo to get players interested in the videogame, but can also provide hours of entertainment, as long as you’re satisfied with a single map and no story mode.
Brass Tactics Arena will launch ahead of the main videogame on February 15th, but players can register for it on February 12th.
We’re glad to finally be getting some concrete details on the videogame after the delay. When VRFocus previewed the game, we said; “Brass Tactics is set to feature a single-player campaign and co-op, alongside the shown one-on-one multiplayer which should add enough scope for a good replay factor. As long as Hidden Path can added enough maps and in-depth upgrade options, the title should satisfy the demands of even the most die hard of RTS players when it arrives this year.”
Stay on VRFocus for all of the latest news on VR videogames and more.
Hands-on: ‘Skyworld’ is a Charming Turn-Based Strategy Game With Fast-Paced Real-Time Interludes
Skyworld, a turn-based strategy game from Arizona Sunshine (2016) developers Vertigo Games, was initially introduced to the world as a demo during HTC Vive’s first public showing back in GDC 2015. At this year’s Gamescom, we got a hands-on with the ostensibly near-finished game, which should be releasing soon if the developers want to hit their Fall 2017 launch date.
Looking down at the round playing board, a wooden table already populated with various resource-gathering buildings set around a giant mountain in the middle, I was pitted against game designer Paul van der Meer in a quick skirmish that took me through the basics of the game’s 1v1 combat.
In a 20 minute demo, I was introduced to the game’s TBS ‘Overworld’, or the game board seen in pictures and the initial 2015 teaser trailer, and an RTS potion of the game that lets you battle with various units that you can summon in real-time (mana permitting).
While in the Overworld, where much of the game takes place, you can pop up a variety of menus, including a satisfying lever that lets you flip the board over mid-game to reveal a space for upgrading structures and increasing the power of your units.
Represented by your standard playing cards featuring offensive and health points, these unit cards can be used in an RTS mini-game, or what the developers called a ‘General Battle’, where each side’s solitary generals clash on a separate game board from the Overworld. Destroying the enemies castle in this mode results in continued free rein for your general, a 6-inch model that you can move around the game board to take over new land so you can set up new resource gathering structures, make more units etc and eventually conquer the Overworld. The opposing side’s general then must wait until the re-activation timer runs out.
The majority of my time was dedicated to playing the RTS-driven General Battle instead of fiddling with game’s resource management-focused TBS Overworld, but my hunch is having the two combined, even with only two lanes open for attack around the round board—left or right, as it were—creates an interesting twist on the classic turn-based strategy game that is bound to strike a chord with fans on the genre. Motion controls add a bit more physicality however, like the wooden mallet that lets you demolish your own buildings to make way for new and better ones. You can also count on plenty of satisfying levers and steampunk-ish machines abound.
The game will feature two teams to choose from, good and bad, although I was told that currently there are no differences outside of the visual aspect between the two, which includes identical abilities for your General Battle cards and Overworld structures and units. The developers maintain this can change however in the coming months before launch. I was also assured that while there are many game boards to play on, that they will all follow the same basic design of containing a centerpiece structure that essentially creates two lanes of attack.
An interesting bit in all of this was the social aspect. Standing (or sitting, you decide) across from your opponent’s avatar is a natural way to play a game like this, but because the game board is round, and you have the ability to rotate it to get a better look at the action, you inevitably end up standing next to each other to get a good view of what’s going on, creating and interesting social dynamic when you don’t know who you’re playing against. The developers insisted some anti-griefing measures would need to be brought into place so you couldn’t, say, wave one of your many menus in front a person’s face or get too close to someone for their own comfort. While your menus appear as ghostly outlines so your opponent doesn’t know exactly what you’re up to, it could still be annoying in the wrong hands.
Finally, I was told that online crossplay between HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets will be possible, and that all three versions of the game will launch simultaneously on their respective stores. It’s uncertain if Skyworld will suffer the same fate as so many other games boasting crossplay, i.e. the lack of communal friends lists that makes it hard for friends to easily get together and play. We’ll be keeping our eye on Skyworld as it heads closer to launch.
We’re here at Gamescom all week, so check back for more coverage and hands-on articles with all of your favorite upcoming VR titles.
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GDC 2017: Brass Tactics Combines Real-Time Strategy With Oculus Touch
The studio behind popular strategy games Age of Empires II and Defense Grid 2 VR (Review: 8/10) have found success in the genre before, but now Hidden Path Entertainment is developing a brand new title for VR headsets. We went hands-on with the new game, Brass Tactics, at GDC 2017 and found a fun new approach to a classic genre in VR.
The core vision behind real-time strategy game Brass Tactics comes from Age of Empires 2 lead designer Mark Terrano, who is founder and chief creative officer at Hidden Path. The VR version of the studio’s earlier Defense Grid 2 converts the intricate battlefields of the traditional tower defense game into a highly detailed tabletop diorama that can be explored up close. It is immensely satisfying to see these kinds of rich and bustling miniature worlds floating in front of you. Games like Landfall (Review: 8/10) from Force Field continue to push these kinds of miniature-scale games forward in VR. Both those titles, however, are built for gamepads. While we rated each as being great, you can only do so much with that interaction approach in VR. This is where Brass Tactics comes in, which uses Oculus Touch controllers to let you control its clockwork mechanical units.
UploadVR Games Editor David Jagneaux and I initially commanded our armies from opposite ends of a very large battlefield spread across the surface of a table. The height of the table can be adjusted by pressing grip buttons on both controllers and raising or lowering them.
To move, all you need to do is press the grip button on one hand and pull. It took a minute to get acquainted with this approach of getting around but I found it very responsive and comfortable. In just one play session I was getting good at skimming across the surface of the map to move from spot to spot with a single tug.
And it may have been my speed that ultimately crushed David’s attempts to mount any sort of serious defense against me. You grab structures to place them on the battlefield so you can summon more troops and try to press onward.
At one point David and I encountered each other in the middle of the map and I felt a surge of adrenaline at the sudden realization he was micromanaging the same portion of the battle. I immediately rushed off to gather more troops and send them back to David’s location.
The game also offers a catapult feature in the corner of the map you can try to dial in and manually bombard a location. I found it more useful to manage my armies and direct them to key locations that David either wasn’t paying attention to or didn’t understand how to defend.
Brass Tactics from Hidden Path Entertainment is slated for release this fall with single player, player vs. player, and cooperative modes.
Tagged with: Age of Empires 2, brass tactics, defense grid 2, Hidden Path Entertainment, real-time strategy
Hands-on: ‘Brass Tactics’ is a True Tabletop RTS with All the Classic Trimmings
At Oculus’ off-site GDC demo booth we saw Brass Tactics, Hidden Path Entertainment’s new real-time strategy game coming exclusively to Oculus Touch after their hit tower defense game Defense Grid 2 Enhanced VR Edition (2016). Filled with a bevy of miniature structures and multiple toy soldier units, the little tabletop world promises to deliver familiar RTS gameplay in a VR setting.
Putting on the headset, Brass Tactics immediately recalled a familiar design aesthetic, something that took me a second or two to recognize. The clockwork castle gyrating. The spinning brass gears. “Aha, it’s the opening to Game of Thrones,” I remarked aloud. “That’s exactly what we were going for,” responded studio founder and CCO Mark Terrano, also known for his role as lead designer on Age of Empires II (1999).
Getting a brief taste of the game, I was introduced to the basic units; archers, warriors, steampunk-ish legged tanks, flying units called ‘wasps’–all of them covering the classic roles found in RTSs. The full game will however feature multiple technology upgrades to choose from and 18 units (3 base units with 9 total upgrades) to keep things interesting.
Called ‘the keep’, your little clockwork home base starts you out with the basics, a warrior-producing building and an archer building. From there, you send your few minions out to capture the nearest node, where you can then choose from a number of structures displayed by turning your hand palm-up and looking at it like a wrist watch. These structures will not only produce the game’s all important offensive units, but also hold the node so ore-gathering miners can automatically spawn and start generating spendable coin for your next unit upgrade.
Although it at first felt a little overwhelming, my opponent wandered back to his corner of the board and started firing a manual catapult at some of my most forward units. Looking to my side, I saw one of my own. Aiming left or right, pulling back a few audible clicks and launching a flaming boulder can wipe out an entire group of lower class units like archers.
As a rule, you’re only as good at RTSs as you can pay attention to everything on the board and manage all of your units. The faster and more accurate, the better. Using Touch you can quickly move around the battlefield by grabbing and flinging yourself in any direction. Lowering or raising the table to your chosen level is the only other way to physically alter the board, as zooming in and out isn’t an option. I found this adequate for the size of the board, as it wasn’t too big to be unmanageable and necessitating a wider view. While it’s small enough for you to see everything on the board as it happens, the board is still big enough though to drive you crazy with all of the lanes that your opponent can exploit to capture ore-producing nodes.
Matches are 25 minutes long, although I was unplugged from my 1v1 battle prematurely. Besides 1v1 online battles, there will also be a 1 player campaign, and a ‘co-op versus AI’ mode available at launch in October 2017.
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