Planetary Annihilation

[infernovia]

Rob, I saw your review on IGN:

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/17/planetary-annihilation-review

 

I am actually really surprised by the score, but my biggest gripe with this review is that you didn't mention the shared army option. This alone takes care of a lot of issues as you get used to the game and it really makes the multiplayer approachable to everyone.

[Aaron]

Oo, is that shared army as in that old StarCraft mode where multiple players control one force? If that's in that would be brill.

[Yalk]

Yes, you have 2 separate commanders and both need to be taken out for a victory or defeat. However, You should really only do this when your familiar with your gaming partner. If the two of you aren't in sync with each others play it is pretty easy to run your economy in the ground, communication is fairly important. You shave everything and can control everything, inadvertently taking units or resource flow that your team mate needs more is a problem. 

 

 

However, I honestly wouldn't recommend the game to anyone at this point. It has too many unit balance issues and un-resolved problems, not too mention the screwy camera movement around planets. They seem to have stopped any real development passed a certain stage in development and then called it done.

 

 

Listen to the 3MA episode on it, they pretty well pick apart all the issues I have with the game... 

[infernovia]

Yeah, I would highly recommend playing it with someone you are friends with (and have some sort of voice communication). And I agree with the above, communication is super important, but that's part of the fun in learning the game. You can parcel out roles/zone of controls really easily and the game doesn't demand everything from you as a result. You can more easily manage one/two fronts rather than 4-5 that can start happening (plus the economy, plus the production).

 

I completely disagree with Rob when he says the UI isn't intuitive enough. I honestly can't think of a better way to do the UI. But he is still right in the sense that it is very difficult to keep track of multiple battlefields, and that's why this game is much more enjoyable when played with a shared army. This is especially true in the beginning where the new interface, the spherical maps, the unit controls, the economy can completely throw you off.

[Gaizokubanou]

Screwy camera killed the game for me.  Every time move your camera around it's rotation changes.  To see this, just swing your camera in clockwise circle and watch it start to tilt on its own.

 

And this is coming from a $120 backer... I really wanted to get some money's worth out of it.

[infernovia]

Hit N to stabilize to North. 

[Gaizokubanou]

Hit N to stabilize to North. 

 

Does it lock the camera or do I have to press it to re-orient it?

[infernovia]

There is another lock to north option in the settings, but I just use N to re-orient. I usually don't need more than that.

[Gaizokubanou]

Ok so there is a way to lock to north.  Thanks.  I'll give it another shot.

[Reyturner]

Has anyone played the Titans expansion? I haven't played since beta and I'm wondering if it's pulled anyone back in? 

[Gaizokubanou]

I have it installed and will try it sometime this week~

[Gaizokubanou]

Ok I just gave it a spin for like 20 minutes and so far my impression is way better now that it actually has a tutorial and all that.  It doesn't hurt that very first thing you get to control in the tutorial is a titan, which REALLY gives this game kind of a 'The Little Prince' vibe as far as visual goes XD

 

Downside is that it just crashed due to running out of memory (8gb with 3.5gb on gpu)?  Kinda odd that the game would crash like that.

[Brett E]

I backed the game because I loved Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander but I found this game just too overwhelming. I have no idea what's going on when most of the battlefield is obscured and enemies can attack from any angle then add in into planetary conflict and nope I was out. As you may have guessed I was never a high level player on the previous games.

 

A tutorial is nice and they added a single player to the original game too so maybe it's time I gave it another shot?

[Gaizokubanou]

I think so?  They made some changes to planet formation so now it has more impassable terrain which mitigate the problem of "you are on a sphere so expect attack from everywhere" problem.

 

Edit: looks like I'm barely scrapping by on the memory side!  Minimum is 8gb so... time to upgrade I guess since I'm pretty dang impressed even by the tutorial thus far.

 

Better music, better graphics, better performance (minus memory crash, game runs silky smooth!), better mechanics, definitely worth taking another look at I think.

[riadsala]

I'll give it a shot when I get a chance (just now the PC is getting repaired). On the topic of titans, I also need to give Sins:Reb another shot and see how that turned out. I didn't really like the balance or AI with the release version (thought it was a def step down for a brilliant series)

[infernovia]

"Better music?" It's different, but imo, worse. The original had a sense of aggression that I sorely miss with the newer relaxing songs/remixes.

Titans is pretty cool. If you really only played the original game in the beta stage, just give it a try now, it's a lot different. A lot of the improvements were already in the base game, but what are you going to do. First impressions.

As an avid player and as someone who constantly played a lot of hour+ long FFA team games, I will state that I think it's way too geared towards offense now in the late team stage of the game. But I really like the new units and it has a lot more flavor now. The orbital game is a lot deeper than before with tanks and siege orbitals. The 1v1 is more defensive thanks to the platforms and the maps so even non-team players can see late game units.

I will give everyone the same advice though, if you can play with a teammate that you can talk to, the game is way more fun. Way more engaging the Sins.