Scripted events and added reinforcements are common in the co-op missions which, like many dungeon-crawlers, feature randomly generated maps based on various environments. Every player is guaranteed the same drops for completing the goals-no ninja looting. For more immediate rewards, you can receive standalone items for beating bosses and completing goals in levels, and equip your units with these items in later battles. In between battles, you also have access to RPG-like skill trees that allow you to boost your units' stats and abilities as you earn experience gems in battle. In a useful bit of UI design, when multiple units are selected, you are given an ability bar that contains all of the combined abilities of the individual selected troops. Medics should be kept close to crucial troops, while sniper assassins should be positioned towards the back, on high ground.
There is a definite focus on micromanagement-you aren't going to want to simply have your entire force selected and right click along. Gameplay here is similar to what one often sees in early RTS missions, pointing and clicking along with a finite troop count, but fleshed out. Players start in different locations on the map, but eventually meet up and progress together. There is no resource management in these missions. A mission briefing gives an idea of what to expect, providing context for the most appropriate units to choose. As you work through the single-player campaign, you unlock additional co-op missions that support up to three players hopefully, a few of these are available right out of the gate, with no need to unlock.īefore a co-op mission begins, each player builds a force from a given number of points.
These missions serve as the somewhat logical extension of a property RTS games have always shared with most PC dungeon-crawling RPGs: the point-and-click control scheme. What I did see was the game's more unusual mode, its take on a cooperative play dungeon-crawler.
I was unfortunately unable to see any of the single-player mode, but representatives promised I could get my hands on some full preview code in advance of the game's planned March completion. In the single-player mode, the humans and mutants team up to drive back the aliens and find a way to stop the plague. In time-honored RTS tradition, the humans, mutants, and aliens serve as the game's three opposing factions. To my surprise, in certain ways it draws as much from Diablo as from StarCraft, giving the game a unique angle that should help it stand out among its more typical competitors. This game takes a very different tack to that one its videogamey premise sees aliens attacking a far-future Earth where an extraterrestrial shard has turned much of humanity into mutants, and a global plague threatens to dessicate the planet. That's not to say I had any actual preconceptions, but I've been shown countless similar-looking RTS games over the years, and let's just say it can frequently be hard to tell them all apart.Īs it turns out, WorldShift is being developed by Bulgaria-based Black Sea Studios, responsible for 2005's well-received Knights of Honor. Many of the upgrades become available after defeating enemies and completing missions, but the most powerful relics can only be acquired by teaming-up with a friend to take on the game's most harrowing adventures.I have to admit I had fairly average expectations going into a demo of PC real-time strategy title WorldShift earlier this week. WorldShift does away with traditional technology trees, instead offering gamers a variety of items and relics that allow for on-the-fly alterations of each playable race. All three factions are vying for the precious resource Xenolite, and the single-player campaign takes players through an 18-mission campaign that unravels the secrets of Shard Zero and the plague it unleashed.
WorldShift is set thousands of years later, when all of humanity resides in five mega-cities, plague-addled mutants roam the wilderness, and hostile aliens have invaded. In the 21st century a giant, plague-carrying asteroid dubbed "Shard Zero" crashed into Earth, decimating the planet. WorldShift combines traditional real-time strategy gameplay with RPG-style multiplayer boss raids as gamers controls one of three factions in a desperate struggle to take control of Earth's dwindling resources.