For the vast majority of you that weren’t suckered in to getting Playstation Plus, Swords and Soliders becomes available to you on the Playstation Store today. For those of us that do have PS+ however, we’ve had it for eight days now. Here are ten quick thoughts on my time with the game and whether or not it’s worth your $9.99.
1. Man this game is food obsessed. It’s like Borgan from Lunar 2: Eternal Blue or the cake eating guy from Vanguard Bandits bad. I’m also pretty sure Blackbeard never fought the Vikings but what the hell, it’s a video game.
2. You can choose between Vikings, Aztecs and the Chinese for your armies. Considering two of those cultures are long since dead and one still owns a huge chunk of America, I know which one *I* took to start with.
3. The graphics do nothing for me. I mean they are shiny and all, but really it’s like a 2D sidescrolling tower defense game rather than a real RTS like something I would play on my PC. Since this is the core of the game, it left me cold.
4. I DO like the tribute to the 1960s Batman TV show in the game though. Nice use of a logo.
5. I like the idea of using one control stick for troops and the other for spells, but in practice it’s a bit clunky and counter-intuitive. The game never felt quite right in my hands with the DualShock3. It also slowed things down from the much faster click click click rate of a PC RTS. I think out of all the consoles for this to be on, the Wii would handle this type of game the best thanks to the Wiimote’s ability to work most like a mouse. Hell, it’s been on that system for over a year now. If you’re going to get it, you should probably do so for the Wii or, better yet, your PC.
6. The Chinese have teleporting bomb hucking monkeys. That’s… different.
7. The game tries to be funny, but when all three campaigns rely on the same joke about everyone being food obsessed it runs a bit thin, and quickly. Variety is the spice of life. Ho ho ho. See, I made a food related pun while complaining about the food motif in the game. Ironic or hypocritical – YOU BE THE JUDGE.
8. You get three different modes for ten bucks: Campaign, Skirmish and Challenges. So if you like the demo, you’re at least getting your money’s worth. Three bucks a mode isn’t too shabby.
9. At the end of the day, the entire campaign can be beaten just by using your gold farmers, the most basic troops, your first attack spell and your healing spell. There’s no real strategy to the game. You can overpower your way through the game with ease, especially since the enemy is always gracious enough to let you make the first move. Ho hum. No strategy or challenge in a RTS makes this an easy thumb’s down for me.
10. Should you buy this? Definitely not. Get the demo, see what you think of it and only then if you like the game, should you start to consider picking it up, and even then go for the PC version as the PS3 controls just don’t hold up very well. I should warn you the game never gets challenging and it really is dull as all get out, so your ten dollars is better served on other PSN titles. But hey, at least Playstation Plus subscribers got it first, right?
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