 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
You’ll notice that the graphics are somewhat primitive, though in about 1998 they’d have been state of the art. You can see for yourself in the screenshots provided by Enemy Technology. I have been unable to figure out how to take screenies myself from within the game, but these are representative of what you will see. The graphics are a form of 3d, and the overall design reminds me a lot of Microsoft’s Mech Commander series in that you are supposedly controlling individual units from orbit, in a sort of command console. Unit control is accomplished from a panel of buttons on the right side of the screen. You can mouse-click to select individual units, shift-click to pick up groups of units, and drag-select large groups of units. The one problem I have with this is that I have not found a way to create combat action teams, as you can in C&C or in other similar games such as Eidos’s old Warzone 2100. In Warzone in particular, one could assign several units to the keyboard numbers 1-9, and then by selecting the number key, pick up an integral group of units all assigned to one command unit. It saved drag-selecting large numbers in a melee, and kept things organized. I of the Enemy tends to get a little disorganized in large firefights, and the only thing that saves you is that the artificial intelligence is generally good enough that allied units will not just stand around when the enemy is in their line of sight. The other problem is that you are apparently limited in how many units you can drag-select at any one time. That causes problems when you’re trying to extricate your army from a firefight and withdraw in an orderly manner. If I have organized combat teams, I can pull the teams out one at a time, and this has kept my army from getting slaughtered in Warzone more than once.
The control over units is quite good overall. You can set up patrol points for defense units, and I wish that was something every game in the genre allowed. You can command a unit to hold the line, to move, to move with weapons free, all the other usual actions. The only problem here is that you have to hit the button on the right side of the screen every time you select a unit to get it to execute the last action you have selected. An example of how this can be a problem is where you have left units at your base, and they are attacked while you’re concentrating on your maneuver units out in the field. You have to click the unit back at base to select it, then click “fire” to get it in weapons free mode, then click the target. That’s cumbersome for the player in a real-time, fast-moving firefight. A better solution would be able to have the units in free-fire mode or weapons-hold mode by the control panel, then be able to have them move with a simple mouse click on the playing field without having to fiddle with the control panel first! I kept getting forward scouts ambushed, then when I selected my reserves to move in I’d click on the screen and they wouldn’t move! It was, of course, because I hadn’t clicked the “move” button on the right side of the screen first.
