Innovation is a funny old thing. Take Maelstrom. One glance at its list of features would be enough to have even the most hardened of cynics polishing a Classic Award in anticipation. But while it may be an RTS brimming with clever ideas, it fails to fulfil its potential on so many levels.
Set in the near future when corporations have all but overthrown the governments of the world, it's your mission - as the 'Remnants' of humanity and its armed forces - to thwart the armies of Tesco and Asda before they forcibly build express supermarkets on every nuked street corner. At least, that's roughly the gist of it...
Later on, an alien race turns up, which is when things really start to get interesting, but by that point, it's a case of too little, a little too late.
POOR EXECUTION Masquerading as an impoverished man's Ground Control II, Maelstrom - like a child prodigy who turns to booze at the age of 12 - throws away much of its potential on a collection of misjudged and sub-standard choices. These include an infuriatingly clumsy interface, along with poor camera controls compounded by a lack of building transparency - often leaving your troops out of sight at key moments.
Couple this with brain-jarringly annoying incidental troop dialogue, and one of the most bizarre third-person shooter sections we've ever seen, in which you control a hero unit and fire what can only be described as a pea shooter at enemies who never miss their target. All of which is criminal when you consider just how much potential this game has.
However, after a tedious start, you do slowly start to uncover a multitude of quality features, including many great terrain and weather-altering options, which imbue the game with a solid spine of originality. There's also a myriad of superbly diverse vehicles, destructible surroundings (admittedly with somewhat exaggerated physics), quality day/night cycles and some top-notch hero abilities.
Maelstrom is certainly interesting, but it just lacks that magic spark needed to transform a collection of ingenious ideas into a thrilling RTS experience. Innovative? Certainly. Thrilling and essential? Not quite.
Martin Korda
// Overview
Verdict
Ambitious but flawed
Uppers
Plenty of innovation Huge unit and faction diversity Great use of terrain and elements
Downers
Atrocious interface Laughable third-person shooter features Too many missions feel overly flat
what the hell is going on why are these computer games all about the most units = win what happend to caring for your units like some of the old games i used to pull my hair out if i would lose a decent now its just click buy and who buys the most wins no skill at all big blur and cant select right units now. i dont like the look of this at all looks very messy o well
I have to agree with humorguy on this - the review does seem to swing around quite considerably at the end. Although maybe that's just the stage where you get used to the UI and start seeing beyond the frustrating parts.
I'm a big fan of the RTS genre, but so far nothing has even come close to the way Dawn of War (and it's subsequent expansions) plays.
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Plenty of innovation
