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GROUND CONTROL MAC/WIN

GROUND CONTROL MAC/WIN

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Game in this Genre
Review: An awesom game frequently overlooked. Ground Control didnt get in the spotlight or receive much attention due to market problems upon development. This game is definately more deserving than 95% of other games in its class(no lie). Superb graphics, plenty of tactical/strategic options and an intuitive interface and the unit's move inteligently(like their supposed to).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best... period.
Review: Forget Earth 2150, this is the game to buy. Don't let people scare you into thinking you need a major system to run this game. I bought Ground Control and it ran "out of the box". Now, when I bought the game I didn't have a great graphics card, and only 64M RAM but the game ran, ran well, and looked decent enough to be very playable. I recently upgraded to a mid-level graphics card, added 128M RAM and now this game is unbelievable. The detail in graphics is incredible, the playability is superb, and the story-line is second-to-none. Get it, play it, enjoy it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I love this game. I'm not going to say much except for this: I have seen people review his game..., saying there is no "replay" option after playing missions and that you can't play as the Order (bad guys, supposedly) NOT TRUE, DANGIT! You CAN play as the Order, after completing the Crayven Campaign. Replay? Of course! Bottom right corner on the HUD for your next missions' planning! ...

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good Strat
Review: Ground Control is a good strategy game for you strat fans. Great graphics,units, and interface make it very enjoyable to play. The only reasons I gave it 3 stars instead of 4 or 5 is the fact you cannot save the game between missions. If you are and hour or more into a mission(which can happen) and get whipped, you have to start all over again. Sure this is more "real", but it does get annoying after a couple of times. The other reason for 3 stars is the pathfinding of the units is not great. They also will not respond to your commands readily under fire. The Apc(main repair/command vehicle) is the most stupid of them all. It does not respond readily to repair commands when you need them most. Just a couple of problems, but overall well worth the money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Whiners need not apply...
Review: This game is absolutely wonderful, truly an amazing acievement by Sierra. The graphics are incredible, with heavily detailed unit models, wonderful effects, and very beautiful environments. The gameplay as well is great. Some gamers profess that it is limited because you cannot build units in the game, but this is a feature that forces you pay close attention to strategy. It is clear that the single star reviews that have been given to this game were submitted by people who really couldn't handle the focus on tactics. The best evidence of this is the one reviewer who says that Earth 2150 is a much better game. I have played Earth 2150 to death, and can say with absolute confidence that anyone who believes that this is one of the better RTS games out there has no idea of what they are talking about. That game is only about the worn-out tank rush, and in several missions it even tries to copy the "no unit building" idea of Ground Control, with pitiful results. In skirmish mode, once weapons of mass destruction are researched and built the game is practically over, with whoever fires first being the winner. Also, the game has so many missions that require you only to collect and store resources for future missions that by the end of the game you will pray that you never have to play another one. If you have ever played Earth 2150, Ground Control will be a welcome change from resource tedium. The object of GC is smart, tactics-heavy gameplay, so only buy the game if you have the intellect to handle it. Ground Control is true RTS (Real Time Strategy). Earth 2150 is true RTB (Real Time Boredom).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Game!
Review: I only recently managed to acquire a computer capable of running this game and finally went out to get it after much anticipation. I have not been disappointed. It has a story that, if a little unimaginitive, I found to be quite enjoyable. As for the gameplay, the focus on tactics and effective use of your limited units against almost always numerically and technologically superior foes rather than constructing a hoard of disposable units was quite refreshing. The game's AI is generally great, occasionally it does some stupid things but I have encountered this in every game I've played. The normal difficulty can be quite punishing as the AI is very unforgiving, but this is a refreshing challenge. Also, I have found that in many levels the most obvious path is not always the best, often there is an alternate route to an objective that is less heavily defended. The use of terrain is quite important and the enemy knows this as well. One occasional annoyance is that sometimes you will get on the high ground and attempt to fire on a target below only find yourself unable to, however, I usually encounter this when I try to fire at something directly below a cliff face that I am sitting atop. Thus, I chalk this up to added realism, my tanks being unable to depress their guns sufficiently to assault the target. The solution to this problem is simple, just use artillery or other mortar style weapons. Another excellent feature is you are required to use combinations of units, going with all one type of unit can be a recipe for disaster. For example, one mission I deployed nothing but heavy tanks incapable of defending against air attacks, the AI then was able to slaughter my force with its ground attack aircraft and I could do nothing to defend my poor tanks. If I have any qualms it is that the tanks are somewhat ineffective against infantry, which is highly unrealistic, but I see the reason they did this as it helps keep the game from degenerating into a tank rush (infantry, bombs, or artillery in order of effectiveness are generally the best defense against other infantry). A very enjoyable feature I found was that midway through the game you switch sides, this is refreshing as some RTS games make you play as simply one side throughout. Though the side you switch to has overall better technology it is at a point when the other side (which you were previously on) has the upper hand, thus you still have a challenge. The graphics are also top notch and the totally free roaming camera are both nice features that simply serve to enhance an already great experience.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Buggy game...
Review: This game is fun if you can get it running. That's a pretty big if though. On 2 computers, I couldn't get this game to run on windows 98. On another computer, the briefings had problems. Then, there are the performance problems on some cards that run other games just like it fine. I downloaded all the patches, but no go. ... ... ... Everyone has real mode CD-ROM drivers! Download the demo, or borrow a copy before you buy this game.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The sad thing is...
Review: The sad thing about Ground Control is that it could have been great. The game in and of itself, though, isn't. Regardless of how beautifully the sprites are rendered, or how great the specular lighting is, the game at its core has to be what counts. Well, folks, there ain't much at the core of this game.

This is not to say the game is _all_ bad. The graphics, for example, are top notch. Take an artillery piece and force fire at the ground during a night mission. You will truly experience what graphics cards are for. The camera control is one of the easiest I've ever seen to negotiate. The sounds are good, too. The unit designs are just plain cool; works of art that someone put a lot of thought into. They look...just right: like the ships in Homeworld, they just look real. They impart a certain something into the game. These things I won't deny.

However, the game's "pro" list ends right there-if you take the outer panels of a BMW and strap them onto a Renault Dauphine, you may have an externally beautiful thing; nonetheless, the capacity to get past the driveway without stalling is somewhat more important.

Thankfully, I never had any of the stability problems others have reported with Ground Control. I never got the CTD or the lockups or any of that. Given that my computer runs only about half of the games out there, that isn't at all bad. If you have concerns about getting the game to run, discard them. It's what happens after the opening cutscene has cleared and the single player campaign has started that you realize what _exactly_ you've gotten yourself into.

The missions are one long, repetitive chain. Some of them are near impossible to beat, yes. I won't claim that this game is too easy, just that it isn't good. But, they're all the same. Kill all of the evil religious fanatics (which have been...er, tastefully portrayed as rather cruel and vicious looking, which is of potential concern to those who don't believe that religious folks are paranoid wackos) and either the mission ends at that or! You get to capture an alien artifact by: destroying it. 30 missions is really far to long for a game that could have compressed all of its actual substance into 4.

Some of the elements really aren't _so_ bad. For example, the musings of your character are fit to make you fall off your chair laughing. Listening to her as she whines at the end of EVERY SINGLE MISSION gets kinda annoying. The characters by themselves, of course, are so unlikable that I've destroyed my characters vehicle for fun. By which I mean, telling my heavy Main Battle Tanks to put holes in it. There also isn't a skirmish mode, which I personally don't like, and which _is_ a failing of the game, but not so much as to render it unplayable. The AI is stupid when it isn't impossible to beat; there isn't a middle ground. The manual talks a lot about using strategy and terrain, and high ground, and all of that. That's funny, in a way, since in Ground Control it doesn't work. If you try to use the terrain, you're setting yourself up for trouble, since the enemy doesn't and they make you realize why. Rommel or Napoleon couldn't use terrain to their advantage in this game, though they both were military geniuses. For example, in one mission I tried to shoot down at enemy troops in a valley/canyon style depression. Most of my shots missed; _they_ shot back up at me and took out two tanks before I pulled back. Oddly enough, I lost yet more tanks when I _joined_ them in the valley and we just fired at each other from a straight perspective. (Nuclear weapons are also 'fun'. The "very powerful" things that you have to be given special permission to use. Hah! A pathetic spritelike wisp floats up from the ground...And Suprise! that's it. I've wasted 6 bombs without destroying anything before. But I digress...)

The simple, un-escapable fact is that Ground Control just isn't fun. The missions are repetitive to the point of tedium and the fact that there's no in-game save feature means you have to play the whole [repetitively tedious] mission again if you fail it. Earth 2150 is a much better choice. The graphics and sound, for example, are roughly on par and the gameplay is captivating. You actually want to _finish_ the game. The missions are varied and refreshing, and you feel like you actually have control.

The fact that this game does not let you build your own units on the spot is a mixed blessing. Personally, I like being able to build units, but as my friend pointed out, its not really very realistic and tends to degenerate the game into tank rushes (Ground Control, by comparison, _doesn't_ allow unit construction and degenerates into tank rushes). The dropships you use give it a kind of neat "Starship Troopers" kind of feel. At the same time, though, I'm not entirely sure that 10-unit skirmishes really captures the FEEL of a major war where the objective truly is "Ground Control." There must be other commanders out there, waging war against the evils of...religion, but we don't see that. In fact, the entire operation seems to be based out of one ship, and to the best of my recollection the only other commander we see is Major Thomas, your Fun and Friendly crackpot who shoots at hospitals for fun and sounds like a bad John Wayne impression.

I personally would recommend against buying Ground Control. There are better ways to use that money. For example, putting it in a pile and burning it. It's certainly more fun and is liable to last longer than it takes to install, play, and then (inevitably) uninstall this game from your hard drive.

Actually that isn't quite fair. If you want a game that's pretty but has nothing to back it up, go for Ground Control. Make videos through a 'TV out' port and send them to your friends. A lot of reviewers here give it a 5/5 or something close to that based on those graphics. Personally, the requisite for those stars is "how fun is it." Not graphics. So, a word of advice: don't expect to get more out of this game than good screenshots. And in all seriousness, Earth 2150 or even C&C: Red Alert is a much better buy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Good Game only for good Computers
Review: To all people going to buy this game. While this is a great game if you have tried the demo, it is not the greatest game to get the full version on. I had ordered the game from amazon and had downloaded it onto my computer. When it did not play / activate, I proceeded to the website where they had many patches to fixes problems (bugs) for the game. I had downloaded the patches and applied them to my computer and after a long time of trying It still didn't work, so I returned it. But hay if you think this review is bull, then feel free to learn the hard way for yourself, But I atleast hope it works for you

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fast, Beautiful, and Intelligent. A dream date for wargamers
Review: Every aspect of this game shines. The units have personality. The art is fantastic. The storyline in singleplayer is rich. The music stands on its own, outside of the context of the game. The net play is lighting fast to get into. Enjoy this game before the dust settles on its technology.


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