Perimeter – PC – Preview

Anyone who has played RTS
titles on PC knows the general concept … build a house or two, create workers,
make armies, overpower the enemy, win the map. Yeah, yeah … we’ve all been there
done that, and it just seems like so many RTS titles that come out nowadays just
follow suit with all of the other ones that come out.

 

Well, now Codemasters and
Russian developers 1C are looking to add a little change into the mix with an
upcoming RTS title called Perimeter, which remains similar enough to RTS titles
to not have a huge learning curve, yet it does some different things to help
make it a little more than your standard, run-of-the-mill RTS title.

 

The game’s sci –fi story
starts off with a bizarre looking map which looks more like a DNA strand than an
interstellar chart, and you quickly find out that planets in this system are
collapsing on themselves and being overrun by competing enemy colonies and
creatures known as “the Scourge” (insect like monsters created by human
nightmares). Your job is to get your people through a number of jumps to get to
the one inhabitable world left before getting destroyed or having an opposing
race get to the planet first.  

 

Perimeter opens up with the first few levels kind of
teaching you how to play the game, and has a nice learning curve to it. The
mission objectives are simple things like building towers to feed your main
frame (colony base) with power or generating soldiers to fight off small armies,
then it starts to get a little more difficult as you move on. Overall, controls
consist of standard left-click, right-click selection and movement, which makes
it easy to just pick up and get into if you’ve played an RTS game before, and
there is a good amount of generators to create various humanoids, like soldiers
and engineers, defense weaponry and shields, and even vehicles that can do a
variety of jobs. Also, just like most RTS titles, you can only build buildings
on flat ground … which brings me to my first unique discussion about the game. 

 

OK, show of hands … who remembers the SNES game Populous?
For anyone who maybe doesn’t, part of your abilities as a deity-like player was
to flatten out mountains or raise up lower level lands to help your people plant
crops or build buildings. Well, Perimeter allows you to do the same, which
becomes kind of fun in itself. As you build your little futuristic colony, you
can also Terraform the land around what you build, allowing it to flatten out
which gives you more room to operate or build more structures. It also allows
you to work on maybe building things around your Frame, which can help offer up
some defense on it so it won’t get destroyed.

 

Another cool feature (and probably the most impressive
one) about Perimeter is the addition of what is referred to as “Nano
Technology”. Units that are created and sent out to the field normally have only
one type of job in games like this, but in Perimeter, the ability to change
unit’s jobs is presented to allow for more flexibility for the given situation.
Basically, the three basic unit types (soldier, officer, and technician) can be
combined provided you meet the right requirements to form new things to help
give you a strategic one up on the competition.

 

For example, you can create a handful of soldiers, three
commanders, and a specific building that allows all units to liquefy, meet in a
ball, and then emerge as a Sniper vehicle. While it does force you to watch your
energy when creating buildings to make sure you are making the right ones, it
also gives an obvious amount of leeway to letting you try different ways to get
out of a tough situation or try to overrun an enemy quickly.

 

The graphics and sound for Perimeter are coming along
nicely, with some sharp techno tracks and decent voiceovers to listen to.
Visually, the look of the game has a very futuristic feel to it, and while only
65% complete so far, it still has some really great graphics … especially as you
literally sit and watch a world deteriorate in front of you or watch your little
insect like Brigadiers swarm around to Terraform the land so you can build more
stuff. Pretty impressive …

 

RTS fans should really keep an eye out for Perimeter, as
it does enough of the same as we’ve seen before to make it easy to get into, yet
does enough different to really make it stand out as a fun title that won’t have
you doing the same thing that you did in the last strategy game that you
bought.