Elements of War

Elements of War trailer for those truly unconvinced.

Alright! It’s time for some tactical gameplay in a brand new real-time strategy (RTS) with weather manipulation. Elements of War is set in a grim future where modern warfare takes place in a desert town near you. By controlling factions of up to 9 units of their respective genre; infantry, vehicles or next-gen vehicles, players need to thwart the evil “Ravens” in a 12 mission campaign, complete with lengthy cutscenes.

This battlefield is adequately displayed on screen, with some very nice visuals and details. Unfortunately, it is also riddled with inaccuracies, such as the weak collision detection, puppet-like characters, non-existent lip-syncing and playhouse terrain destruction. It’s fun to see your units plow over terrains, such as fences and trees, but that quickly turns laughable as everything falls over as if made by cardboard.

Weather effects in Elements of War. Though I'm pretty sure C&C did that 10 years ago.

Still, there’s thought put into presenting a decent tactical approach needed for a decent RTS. Units each have their own strength and have an additional special attack that can be used for specific reasons, such as a homing missile or some tear gas to force infantry out of cover. And by only allowing 9 units and presenting currency as winnable ‘tactical points,’ it’s also necessary to come up with an attack plan. The interface might not be the best to facilitate this, but at least it’s an attempt at something new. And lastly, each map offers different types of gameplay and needs to be approached by holding certain points, going for cover and so forth.

But the moment the inane tutorial stops without clarifying much and the actual gameplay starts, all falls apart. Starting with the annoying mouse jitter, tested with 3 different mice and 2 different set-ups, this only is a glimpse of the annoyances ahead. The camera is generally lacking in whichever setting it’s placed and getting a clear overview of the action or threat is near impossible. Units also only cry out taking fire, but only an inaccurate map indicator offers any direction, which is none. Additionally, the campaign is glitched to no end. This is especially true, but not limited to, the crippling linearity that requires 1 specific action before continuing. In the second mission, I spent 5 hours decimating everything on the map, because 1 APC went rogue. As it was mandatory it got destroyed to proceed, it took a fine comb across the entire map to get the next objective. At that point, I already encountered and destroyed the upcoming objective cutscenes, rendering the soldiers’ surprise to be idiotic.

OMFG Captain! It's those things we already destroyed 2 hours ago! What are those?

Oh, but then it got worse. Starting mission 3, units now also included air combat. And that’s when everything went to hell. Barring the mouse jitter, units in general are completely devoid of intelligence regarding movement, if moving at all. The controls from the game are completely unresponsive and multiple clicks are required to get some movement or actions from units, if any.  More than often, clicking reverted to simply deselecting. So, when a helicopter started pelting, it was impossible to intercept it even if this is a very sluggish game. I took the copter down at the third try, but that only resulted in my weakened forces getting destroyed by sitting around at the next junction.  And that’s when I had to quit before launching my PC out the window.

I could go on and on with a ton more details on where the game fails, but the reality is that the unresponsive controls equal a game that is completely unplayable. I’m sure there were still a ton of units with unique abilities and the weather aspect was going to be worked out more, but no one should suffer to that end to reach that goal. It was also possible to get skirmish battles going outside of the campaign, but why would anyone want to have their units not respond there as well?  Sitting around and watching units getting picked off, because they simply aren’t sentient enough to even return fire is unforgivable for any game and the list of these things is endless. Elements of War can get one point for a good idea and one point for at least trying to make it appealing, but other than that an unplayable game can’t really muster any points. You can't rate something that doesn't exist and I now wish that this promising title didn't. It takes a special kind of game to get me to rage quit, but Elements of War accomplished that mission. And what a dubious honor that is.

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Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed. (@Daavpuke)