Elements of War

[ 1 DVD ]

• Published by : Kalypso
• Developed by : Lesta Studio
• Genre : RTS

It doesn’t take long for another RTS game to be released on the PC. In a holding pattern for what seems like forever ago, studios have been churning out RTS titles, adding twists to the concepts, updating graphics, and attempting to streamline gameplay. While Elements of War has an interesting concept, if you plan on playing it, prepare to feel like you are stepping back in time ten years.

I say Elements of War has an interesting concept because it does -- a great one: in the near, semi-apocalyptic future, technology has enabled the use of weather control to be used as weaponry (part of the reason for the current world-state in the game). Elements of War also give us a few futuristic options as far as vehicles and weapons, and while this is all very cool, at the same time it is also grossly disappointing.

Elements of War is a heavy mix of contemporary military technology with futuristic accompaniments (power armor for example) thrown in willy-nilly. We have some realistic vehicles, weapons, tanks, and marine-talk, and all of this is satisfying, because it would have been awesome to have an RTS so deeply detailed in a marine / military culture, even in a futuristic world. However, it feels as if the designers relied on ‘realistic’ when their imagination ran out on futuristic designs. It feels like they didn’t have a grasp on mixing the two worlds subtly, or started out with one and decided to add in the other.

The biggest plague of Elements of War, is that it simply feels outdated. If you were to find a sales bin of under-par CD-ROM games in 1998, Elements of War might be in there. The graphics are choppy, wonky, and ugly. There are no excuses here – even for an indie studio, the game looks like it came out of a high school 3D animation class. Whether lacking budget or care, the look of the game is insufferable. Along with a camera that jerkily moves across the barely detailed and absolutely blah battleground, there is little to no detail on anything. Action icons are hideous and akin to early 90s adventure game symbols, while the maps look like they might have been pulled from a flight sim from the same era. Particle effects are nearly non-existent and completely flat.

The controls might be almost as bad. Nothing is smooth or easy to do. Selecting army units is frustrating, attacking feels nonsensical and infuriating, as you click madly to get your squad to attack an object. As far as movement, I often found my units running some crazy route instead of a direct way to their target over and over and over again.

Maybe I was missing something… some ingenius, slick way to control my units and get things running smoothly. Unfortunately, no solution was forthcoming, and I wasted too much time just getting annoyed. With a bland, nearly useless opening tutorial mission (that I couldn’t find a way to skip even if I tried), I still learned nothing. Call me impatient, but I am a gamer, and there are much better RTSs out there that are actually worth learning EVERY single intricacy, and this was not one of them.

As far as the gameplay, there are some nice ideas in Elements of War, as it is heavily focused on skirmishes – focusing on playing one or two vehicles instead of having to deal with managing a huge army, and the streamlined resource management was nice. The really cool aspect of the game, however, was the weather control – utilizing weather to your advantage. Unfortunately, it seemed kicking up dust storms and rain only took away from any real strategy. On top of this, they are completely lackluster and feel more like really big special weapons with one purpose each (slowing down troops or causing an area of mass destruction), instead of adding complexity for strategic use. The weaponized weather effects are like that button in bullet-curtain shooter games (like Raiden) that you press when things get bad so that everything on the screen dies at once. It's fun for a while, but it gets boring really fast.

Elements of War includes two modes of play: campaign and online mode. With both modes you get to choose three different factions. Unfortunately, none of these armies have a good or memorable story. Online mode enables players to play a series of PvE missions across 16 maps, but they are only able to choose between USA and Russia for these online missions.

All in all, Elements of War just feels too clunky and outdated, and while the intentions and the main premise were good, you will probably have a hard time finding any kind of entertainment in it.

System Requirements :

Operating System: Windows XP / Vista / 7
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 3000 MHz / Intel Core Quad 2400 MHz / AMD Athlon 64 6400+ or better
RAM: 2 GB or more
HDD: 4 GB or more
Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 / ATI Radeon HD 4700 or better