From the minds that brought us Rift, Trion Worlds, comes an upcoming MMORTS (Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy) game called End of Nations.
The world is in trouble. The global economy is failing, people are starving, governments are hanging by a thread. All seems bleak for the little blue planet we call Earth. That is until an organization says enough is enough, and does something about it. With their advanced tech, and resources they take control, and fix what is broken. Giving food to the hungry, (add more), but all this comes at a price. This new regime decides its time to shape the world in their image and take over the governments of the world, and declare themselves the “boss”. This doesn’t sit well with many of the established governments but with so many of them on the verge of extinction what are they to do? Rally together and fight that’s what. With the remaining armed forces of nations across the globe, they band together a resistance movement to stop this threat of world domination.
We had a chance to test the latest closed beta event of the game, and we were pretty glad at some of the things we discovered.
The game starts off by allowing you to take command of specialized units of either the Resistance, or as the Order of Nations, the faction trying to re-shape the world in their own image. What separates End of Nations from a-lot of other RTS games is two things. One the PvP component is MASSIVE. You could have 28 vs. 28 players on one map. Yes we said 28 vs. 28.
The other is that the game contains elements thrown in. You aren’t just building bases to allow you to obtain resources, and new units to bring into battle. You can spec out each of your units differently making them as unique as you want. For example you can have one of your anti air units be more focused on damage per second (DPS), or be more of a tank holding down the front line, while another can be more of a healing unit. This opens up a whole new way to play RTS games in our eyes. Its not just you rolling out one specific unit type after another, but choosing which unit (s) in a class of units at your disposal you want to use in specific battle situations.
The game also has what they call Commander Abilities. These abilities can be defensive, and offensive attacks that can lay some serious hurt on an enemy, or help out a friendly unit which is in serious need of help. These attacks include carpet bombs, death from above satellite based beam strikes, etc. They determinately can help change the tide of battle.
Other then the two specific abilities we mentioned above the game plays like your typical RTS. You command units to attack single targets all at once, or have individual units attack specific targets, build command points, and facilities to obtain resources, etc. Overall we were pretty please at how the game ran. We experienced no hiccups, slow downs, etc. Choosing a battle to hop into is a breeze. Just select any mission on the world map, to join the quene, and wait for start of match.
Visually the game looks pretty good even for a beta. Its not on the level of Starcraft but it is not that far off. Again this is a beta we wouldn’t be fair in judging the game’s visuals without seeing the full retail version, but what we saw was pretty decent.
Judging on our experience in the beta the full game looks to be extremely promising. With the game said to be free to play there isn’t any real reason, to us, why any RTS player wouldn’t at least take a look at End of Nations.
We will be bringing you our full review of the game once it is released.
Lata gamers!
