I picked up 8-Bit Armies after seeing TotalBiscuit’s
coverage on it a few years ago. He wasn’t particularly complimentary of the
game, but I remember at the time thinking that it looked interesting and I
thought I would give it a go.
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| In the beginning, there was a base... |
8-Bit Armies is a real-time strategy game, which, despite
its name, has a more Voxel art style than 8-bit. It was developed by some of
the people who had worked on the original Command and Conquer games, and it
shows in its gameplay! You build your bases, collect your resources, buy your
armies and use them to attack the enemy. The campaign mode features 25 missions
that scale up in both difficulty and the level of units you can produce, and
with the game almost solely focused on its gameplay, the story is minimal. This
is your base, those are your enemies, these are the buildings you need to
destroy – the rest is up to you.
Some questions were raised about the game only releasing
with one faction – the Renegades. This creates the obvious issue of there being
absolutely no differentiation between what you can do and what your enemy can
do, with the exception that your enemy can build slightly more advanced units
at certain points in the game. At the time of writing there is another faction
in the game – the Guardians – but they don’t feature in the base campaign at
all, and as it was downloadable content I have yet to play it. This might seem
like a hinderance, but on the other hand it did stop any situations where one
side was able to win the battle because they had something their opponents didn’t,
which led to a more balanced if less interesting experience.
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| The map design isn't particularly inspired... |
The game handles well. The mouse controls are fluid and
responsive, and there is a selection of hotkey commands that you can use as
well, though you must go into the options menu to find out what they are. The
feedback that you get from the game gives a good idea of how well you’re doing,
whether you’re under attack, which buildings are being attacked and which have
been destroyed. And the battles can be good fun as well, with the units
responding quickly and dynamically to orders, though for some reason they won’t
try to defend themselves if they’re being attacked by an enemy out of their
range. The level design is a little symmetrical for my tastes, but 8-Bit Armies
was developed with multiplayer in mind and some of the later levels introduced
an extra level of challenge, such as allies you must keep alive, and the
potential for your resources to run out turning the battle into a war of
attrition.
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| A chaotic battle rages on. |
The graphics are pretty good; the Voxel art-style isn’t to
everybody’s taste, but the game looks bright, colourful, and clear. The only
exception is that you can’t rotate the map; the would have been fine for a
top-down view but the isometric point of view we have here makes some of your
units a little difficult to see if they’re behind buildings and hills. The
sound is good as well; the guns, explosions and voices do what they need to do,
and the soundtrack is on par with the early Command and Conquer games; I
understand they’re by the same composer.
Is 8-Bit Armies a good game? Difficult to say. Mechanically,
it’s very competently designed. At its most basic level it doesn’t present a
huge challenge, but extra parameters can be added to all the levels if that’s
what you want. But people wanting a huge variation in factions and mission
styles may want something more from this. I should say that my experience with
the game is hardly complete: haven’t experienced the more difficult missions,
the multiplayer modes – which includes a co-op campaign – or even the DLC. I’ve
beaten the core game, and that is enough for me for now; I can always go back
to it later if I want. I enjoyed my time with it, and if you’re a fan of
classic RTS games, there’s a better than decent chance that you’ll enjoy it too
– but there may be other options for you.
Final Score: 3/5:
Worth a look.
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