- Gemini Wars, PC (published by Dark Prometheus)
- Publisher: Camel101
- Developer: Camel101
- Released: June 8, 2012
Introduction
Once again I enter the bridge, as a starship captain, in one of the many RTS space simulators. This time its a game from the all most unknown game developer Camel101, who is an self funded and independent game studio.
Ready to hear the roar of the impulse drive engine boosters, throughout the vast universe. While crushing my enemy’s armada. Building an empire of wealth, colonizing planets and raising gigantic orbital shipyards and research hubs. Who wouldn’t feel like the emperor, of a great federation and conquer all the known universe?
Gemini wars got lots of it all, but then again lack much of it all as well. They have some fine ideas and thoughts a lot of things seen a million times before. So, whats new? And is it playable or just several hours of time consuming nonsense?
How does it taste?
The graphics of this game are great (though I wish there was more options in the video/graphics preferences) the atmosphere in the game are dynamics, the planets rotate, far out you can see a nebula of stardust, slowly floating around. The texture of the space structures and ships are pretty well done. As you enter a fight with the other factions you see the chunks of your destroyed spaceships, float around. That gives the game a nice touch of realism.
The music in this game straight on, like other games in the genre. It fits perfect, to the game. When a enemy ship enters your perimeter, the soundtrack changes from the relaxing and ambient tunes, to a more fierce and harder battle oriented track. At first that makes perfectly sense, but starts to get annoying after 20 times, the enemy just scouting through your lines and ain’t engaging you at all. At first it makes you some kind of paranoid and later or just don’t care anymore and end up with a half destroyed mining colony, before you notice that they started attacking you.
The in-game sounds of Gemini wars works perfectly, with minor bugs like which side lost ships and when a enemy fleet are detected, but when you pan around you find no one near you systems.
The interface in this game are pretty simple. Point and click. Its easy to find your way trough, the menus. Easy to enter the game and in-game its as simple as any other games. Its simple and theres no where you can go wrong, when building you fleets or ordering your ships around space. The only thing that I misses, is that then ever you want to select a ship to built is that it doesn’t have a info tag on it
What’s about the game
You enter the role as Captain Cole, a USF officer who’s been away from the battle for some of 3 years. You job is to command the USF army, against the Alliance. Your human counter-faction. throughout a sixteen mission single-player campaign. Like other games its all about mining for resources, building a production plant for you starships, researching new technologies and the missions are mostly escort and defend, seek and destroy missions, but what many other RTS space games lack, this game got a really nice story. Between each mission you are able to enter a briefing screen, to give you some background story and orders from your superior. Another screen gives you the choice to see how many of the in-game achievements you accomplished. You got one for the GTN News, to give an extra touch of history and plot. The same goes for the “galaxy map” that gives you info about the next star system. They created I nice little detail in the game. Which means that you can jump from one galaxy to another, by controlling warp/worm holes. That gives you the opportunity to fight several systems at the same time. It gives you the upper hand if you are controlling both sides of the. So you can travel, as you pleases but they can’t enter you side of the system, before destroying you warp portal and replace it with their own.
The Final Verdict
Even that Camel101 did a great job, creating this game there’s still some downwards.
The game is really nice mix of good story line and fine graphics. With some minor bugs. We can only hope they fix them, with some new patches. No game is perfect.
At first it may look rather boring, but the longer I play, the more I get attracted to it. Its easy to pick up and master and after the two tutorial missions you’ll get the hang of it. That said it hard to keep the long term interest in the game. After the first 4 missions its looses its strategic variety and many of the missions looks the same. The difficulty of the game ain’t that hard and it gets pretty obsolete to make the bigger choices and be tactics. Its all build, defend, build, defend, build and then destroy over and over again. The computer AI rarely attack and when it does its with no greater impact. The AI could need a fix that one. The skirmish and multiplayer solves that problem, though I hardly found any players to challenge, in the multiplayer, but maybe they show up and give me a good fight someday.
If you like the space strategy games I don’t think you will be all disappointed. Its a playable game, not for the whole winter, but at least some weeks. If they played it as multiplayer.
And I am sure that we see more from these guys again. As a first timer in Sci-fi RTS, they did one hell of a job.
– I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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