Nostalgia is one of those rare things that can be at the same time sweet and woeful when we find ourselves alone with it. Many of us are pleased to think about our invaluable and long-gone years, and the videos and photographs to endure us there as well, they talk about what happened once, but it will never repeat again. Books, films, cartoons, games created by masters also gradually took their place in our lives and became a full -fledged property of joyful memories.
So, unexpectedly, I decided to remember this game: the war in the distant past, about Original War.
This RTS appeared in a rather amazing one for surprises 2001. How can one forget the first film of the very unsurpassed trilogy of “The Lord of the Rings”, a movie with such an overstated quality bar that not a single series of films and even a new trilogy about the hobbit could surpass it? Or as about the last fantasy: perfume inside is a real computer miracle with so unimaginable graphics for that time that it looks with a bang even today! And that year I first met the Original War, a strategy that turns all my ideas about RTS to this day.
In general, it would be worth noting how diverse this genre was with its unchanging formula that underlies each of them. Nowhere else, I have not seen so many variations of gameplay and a mechanic, so that the creators can stand out against the backdrop of competitors: KKND, TOTAL Annihilation, Age of Empires, Dune 2000, Starcraft, Warcraft, Stronghold, Supreme Commander, The Lord Lord Of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth, Dark Colony, C & C, Generals, Red Alert, Warhammer 40000, World in Conflict, Spore, Star Wars: Empire At War … and many of them are similar. Each of them had its own unique character, each gave completely different impressions with a relatively similar gameplay-someone focused on the plot, someone on epic, someone on a scale, and someone on speed and reaction. But here I have never seen a strategies like Original War.
Of course, I could first call her “a game about how the Americans fought against the Russians” and you would immediately have a bewilderment. But, like many other masterpieces, Original War will open before you gradually. Yes, she will still remain a strategy about how America fought against the USSR, but these are not our friends familiar in history, but countries of an alternative future with developed technologies. Some patriots of whom went in turn to a distant, most-hand past, when dinosaurs were considered extinct, but a man in the image of a furry monkey barely rose to his feet. And in this strategy you are not allowed to endlessly order people in the barracks, because they were sent to the past in such a large number. And all of them are mortal and each of them has its own face and name ..
Well, it has become more interesting and Original War is no longer like Red Alert?
This game was the brainchild of Altar Games, a company, from the Czech Republic and amazed me literally every minute. She welcomes you with an atmospheric video, where someone-I think some kind of geologist-finds ancient drawings in a dark cave, on some of which prehistoric people fought off a large saber-toothed tiger. Then, having examined several similar drawings, the geologist highlights the lantern of the man -made creation where a couple of combat vehicles attacks on mastodon. Then you get on the menu and hear the unforgettable main theme of the game, combining three styles of the three main factions of Original War, after which you are free to go towards two exciting stories.
In the course of the passage of campaigns, you will notice how Original War is amazing the imagination with the number of details. For example, people are the most important and important resource of the player, divided into a number of categories:
1). The main characters. Each story has its own protagonist and any mission will end with his death. John McMillan from America and Yuri Ivanovich “Burlak” Gorky from the USSR. Soldier and mechanic; capitalist and communist; A supporter of thieves who pushed into the deposits of priceless fossils in Siberia, and a proud defender of the Motherland. Despite these definitions, in no case do not think that I am writing about them as a villain and a hero. No, each of these stories is good and each of the protagonists will appeal.
2). Important plot, non -game characters. These are commanders of the warring parties, each with their skeleton in the closet.
3). Minor characters with a unique noaccount-casinos.co.uk/ person, name and voice acting. If you take the Mass Effect as an example, they are an analogue of our Sopartians, who are easy to lose, but who can continue to open up and share their thoughts if you take care of them. There are quite a few of them and each of them has their own remarks, but, as I mentioned, they can die in the first mission at the first meeting. Their faces are best worked out and easily remembered.
4). Characters with unique persons and a name, but without important replicas and with a changing voice. Yes, the latter is a strange consequence of the random generator, which affects the game of some things. Each fraction has several male/female votes templates.
5). Passing. Characters made using an intra -game designer, which differ in each mission with a new passage of campaigns. In fact, it is your army that will consist of such people if you lose all characters of 3 and 4 categories.
6). Monkeys. The only alternative to replenishment of manpower in your army. Voices are the same, but the faces and names of the generator also change them.
Each of the people, including protagonists, can work in four main specialties: scientist/doctor, engineer/builder, mechanic, soldier. Plus, each fraction has an additional military profession: sniper (America), mortar (Arabs), grenade launcher (USSR). Quite entertaining fact that doctors can also heal the wounded animals. It is enough to knock down the Arab rider from the mastodon and treat the beast, as in your vicinity, the hairy ancestor of our elephants will begin to roam and make noise.
Thanks to the separation in specialties, in the game people have pumping skills, which is why the importance of preserving the fighters becomes more noticeable. Throughout the campaign and depending on the actions on the base and the battlefield, your experts grow in the level and at the end of the game become real professionals: a level 10 soldier can easily destroy equipment under the control of a computer, and at the same time, a level 10, if there is a heavy tank, is able to take out a whole detachment of more unprepared opponents.
By the way, about cars. The only mode of transport in Original War is ground, without planes and ships, which could only complicate the already difficult gameplay of the game. This is a rather important component, which can significantly strengthen the possibilities of specialist people. For example, the creation of a truck will facilitate the work of your engineers, and also increase the supply of materials to the warehouse, and the crane will accelerate the construction of buildings and improve them. A powerful tank with a high -tech gun and heavy armor will turn your mechanics into formidable power, before which even professional soldiers cannot stand.
Each machine is made at the factory if there are resources, mechanics, appropriate technologies and outbuildings. The construction of each vehicle is planned in an entertaining designer (not visual), thanks to which you can put different types of chassis, guns, engines and controls.
Like in many ways, the developers approached the technique with the same thorough attention. The first electrical engines on solar panels are bought by their availability, but they quickly discharge and require reloading. ICE – a reliable workhorse, which should be periodically refueled, otherwise your mechanics will have to push it to the nearest warehouse in the wrong situation (no one, however, prevents you from making a couple of trucks and loading them with fuel for refueling equipment right at the front). Advanced sybiritic engines appear in the later stages of campaigns, providing the technique with an endless supply of fuel.
The fraction is also not deprived of all kinds of weapons and each of them has something special. In the game for your tanks there is a whole arsenal of weapons, many types of which will have to be studied in laboratories: machine guns (light, medium, paired), gatling; light, medium, heavy guns; Missiletes, lasers, flamethrower, time slowdown, sybiritic missiles (local analogue of nuclear weapons). All guns have their advantages and disadvantages, and for each there are certain goals. The chassis also varies seriously: patency, armor and versatility completely depends on its type. It should be remembered that not every engine is suitable for all chassis. Here, the creators showed special ingenuity and for America came up with an interesting concept of the chassis, which are special wheels that can transform into caterpillars. And they presented the “hippos” to Russians – robotic Gromadin, which can only be built outside the plants.
The type of management initially offers options with the obligatory availability of the driver (whatever one may say, but even in the later stages such machines will dominate the others), but over time you can produce equipment on a distance and even with the presence of AI.
All missions of both campaigns are quite diverse and do not always offer the complete destruction of the base, as it was in the more famous strategies of those years. For example, one of my favorite missions for America (penultimate in their campaign) may seem strange at first glance: you play for the same John Macmillan and go along the road, when he suddenly hears the radio broadcast and gets out of the car. You have every right to ignore this program and move on, spending less than a minute of time on the penultimate mission. But, at the same time, you can go in search of a transmission source and discover an abandoned American base. Well, how to say, abandoned, in fact, here you will find a girlfriend of the protagonist, Joan Ferguson in the company of a couple of monkeys, who is trying with all his might to fight off the Russians. So, only with the presence of two people you have to restore the performance of the whole base and defeat enemy forces. This is an amazing mission in its ingenuity and I in no case do not advise you to miss it. The construction of this mission in the event of the death of a girl in early missions also occupies me very much, which I have never seen, because I always felt sorry for losing my fellow soldiers. Most likely, John will have to lead this base in complete loneliness ..
In addition, the missions are full of unexpected turns. Some of them may seem impassable and will require remarkable ingenuity and patience from you before you find the gap in the enemy defense. In many of them, the classic “rash” will turn into a complete disaster for you with the coolest tanks. And I will not forget to say that in each mission there are additional tasks, the implementation of which will provide you with some advantages in the subsequent passage. It will be especially interesting for people who prefer high difficulty in games and want to end them with the perfect result: with the complexity of the “master strateg” to obtain all four medals, you will have to complete not only all additional tasks, but never really load. In the event of an error, the death of people creates a difficult dilemma: to lose due to their indiscriminateness at the end of the mission a couple of favorite specialists, whose faces and names you remembered by heart, but get all possible medals, or re-start again?
I, like the game itself, strongly recommend that you start with the American campaign. She is much more fully revealed by the main character and the situation in the world so unfamiliar to him and us. The fact is that John shares his opinion between some missions, simultaneously sketching the events and people important for him in notebooks. The Russian campaign is deprived of such briefings, unfortunately, you will learn more about the heroes themselves in the process of missions.
Sometimes you will be given the right to choose, adding to the campaigns non -linearity, up to the point in order to enter into an alliance with the scientists of the opposite side almost at the end of both campaigns in order to find out all the secrets of the time machine and its connection with Siberian. Kill a person, take him prisoner, or let him go, which can affect the future on some other characters, as one of the examples. I remember in one of the last missions for the Americans how the enemy commander was the first to get a sybiritova bomb and decided to notify me of this. In response, you can lie that you also have such a bomb and get a little time to try to build it actually, or to attack the enemy commander. He, of course, will try to figure out this situation and send scouts to you. And, having learned that you do not have this rocket, he will be happy to launch his warhead right on your main base.
Small details lie in the graphic performance. The visual component is simply magnificent. Bright, saturated, but also soft color scheme looks especially attractive after installing a special patch at high resolutions. The only permission provides the game of 18 years ago The illusion of Remaster, models of landscape, buildings, people and technology were made so qualitatively. There is also some destruction: explosions of sybirite bombs burn the ground and trees, and the explosive wave lays entire forests. Unsuitable places overgrown with grass are crushed if they stand in the path of your soldiers and technology. Being untouched, they gradually overgrow, but in the case of constant movement there are trails and roads form.
The sound part of the game is also made at the height. Musical compositions in each of the fractions differ dramatically: if the Americans have more modern, electronic motifs, then the Russians are particularly distinguished by harmony. The surrounding sounds, such as the singing of birds and the murmur of rivers envelop, create the right atmosphere, which at any moment can be interrupted by the work of muffled machines, volleys of heavy guns and rocket explosions. The voice acting of the characters is made with proper quality: most characters have their own voices and dialogs, while many of the voices are selected in accordance with the racial belonging of a particular character! And although Russians are also talking in English here, thanks to their famous, in games and cinema, you can always distinguish the speech of Americans and advice.
Be that as it may, it is an amazing game and an unusual, amazing strategy in its little things, which I recommend to familiarize all lovers of this genre. Of the shortcomings of the Original War, I would call the absence of the third Arabic campaign that could better reveal this ambiguous fraction, as well as free missions on various cards against AI, which was originally attended by Starcraft, Warcraft, Dune 2000, C& C, C&D., which would provide the game with greater reigree. Of course, you can fight with other people in the multiplayer (if he is working now), but still a sketch for such a game would have come in handy, all the more so, for lovers of single passages.
I believe that all these disadvantages would easily have corrected the sequel, but, because of the players complete inattention, the Original War, obviously, did not bring proper profits, and therefore this franchise has forever remained in oblivion. Against the backdrop of the current remasters of famous strategies, this would be an ideal return of Original War, but, unfortunately, Altar Games, which also produced a series of UFO during these years, was closed in 2010, which put a cross on the further fate of this game.
Thank you all for your attention!
P.S. And, if you want to join the Original War, the first thing I advise you to install a special patch for good work on modern computers and high resolution:
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