Stronghold 3 Games Review Collection
1
Comment
Stronghold 3 Games Review Collection. Release Date: Q1 2011 | Exclusively on: PC | Genre: Real-Time Strategy | Publisher: SouthPeak Games | Developer: FireFly Studios. Despite Stronghold selling hundreds of thousands of copies, it's surprising how few people in North America have heard about the franchise.Stronghold 3 Games Review Collection
Maybe it's because hardcore PC strategy games have generally fallen out of favor with gamers stateside, or perhaps it's because Stronghold 2 was so critically panned that people didn't give it much of a chance, but the team behind Stronghold 3 is out to change your minds. Taking the game back to its roots -- i.e. making a game more like the critically acclaimed original, as well as making it more accessible -- the team hopes to win over the hearts and minds of strategy enthusiasts all over again in 2011.
Stronghold 3 is, just like the original Stronghold, essentially a kingdom simulator, placing you in control of a territory in a medieval setting. Players strive to keep their castle alive by maintaining the efficiency, happiness, and growth of their population. The peasant population construct buildings, process raw goods, and maintain the army for the keep. Basically, without peasants you are nothing but a king with a crumbling kingdom, so you must take good care of them.
Stronghold 3 has a few things that build upon the original concept, though, and is far from just a re-release of the original game. Physics are a huge deal in the new game, with buildings crumbling as they're destroyed, and enemies responding realistically to gravity as they're killed. Traps also use gravity now, with things like rolling logs gaining additional power when used on a sloped surface.
Castle building has also advanced in Stronghold 3, with a new engine that makes it as easy as clicking and dragging where you the mouse want to build. Players can essentially draw walls, adding bastions and other defenses with just a few clicks. Likewise, houses can be dragged and dropped anywhere around your keep, changing their visual appearance and growing larger simply based on location, not relying on the player to click the proper buttons. The whole point is to make the experience more user-friendly, and from what it looks like so far they're well on their way to accomplishing this.
Firefly Studios is waiting to reveal more details about combat, but the company did give us the first word on how the game's online community will function. In the U.S. the game will be distributed via Steam, and players who want to will be able to log into the Stronghold 3 website, where they can enable several online features. On top of being able to upload and download player created scenarios, the website will offer players the option to use Google geotracking to find other players in their geographical area, allowing them to track their in-game stats compared to their actual neighbors. It's a pretty great idea, and seems like it should go over well with the pre-existing Stronghold audience -- who's still playing and participating in fan-made online communities to this day.
In the end the primary thing the developers at Firefly Studios seemed to emphasize to me in their demo was that Stronghold 3 is a return to form for the franchise. They know they disappointed their fans with Stronghold 2, and this time they're keeping their goals within their grasp (unlike last time where they tried to make their own game engine from scratch). It comes out next April, and we're promised a closer look at some of the game's mechanics well before then, but for now it seems like fans of the franchise have a lot to be excited for.
Maybe it's because hardcore PC strategy games have generally fallen out of favor with gamers stateside, or perhaps it's because Stronghold 2 was so critically panned that people didn't give it much of a chance, but the team behind Stronghold 3 is out to change your minds. Taking the game back to its roots -- i.e. making a game more like the critically acclaimed original, as well as making it more accessible -- the team hopes to win over the hearts and minds of strategy enthusiasts all over again in 2011.
Stronghold 3 is, just like the original Stronghold, essentially a kingdom simulator, placing you in control of a territory in a medieval setting. Players strive to keep their castle alive by maintaining the efficiency, happiness, and growth of their population. The peasant population construct buildings, process raw goods, and maintain the army for the keep. Basically, without peasants you are nothing but a king with a crumbling kingdom, so you must take good care of them.
Stronghold 3 has a few things that build upon the original concept, though, and is far from just a re-release of the original game. Physics are a huge deal in the new game, with buildings crumbling as they're destroyed, and enemies responding realistically to gravity as they're killed. Traps also use gravity now, with things like rolling logs gaining additional power when used on a sloped surface.
Castle building has also advanced in Stronghold 3, with a new engine that makes it as easy as clicking and dragging where you the mouse want to build. Players can essentially draw walls, adding bastions and other defenses with just a few clicks. Likewise, houses can be dragged and dropped anywhere around your keep, changing their visual appearance and growing larger simply based on location, not relying on the player to click the proper buttons. The whole point is to make the experience more user-friendly, and from what it looks like so far they're well on their way to accomplishing this.
Firefly Studios is waiting to reveal more details about combat, but the company did give us the first word on how the game's online community will function. In the U.S. the game will be distributed via Steam, and players who want to will be able to log into the Stronghold 3 website, where they can enable several online features. On top of being able to upload and download player created scenarios, the website will offer players the option to use Google geotracking to find other players in their geographical area, allowing them to track their in-game stats compared to their actual neighbors. It's a pretty great idea, and seems like it should go over well with the pre-existing Stronghold audience -- who's still playing and participating in fan-made online communities to this day.
In the end the primary thing the developers at Firefly Studios seemed to emphasize to me in their demo was that Stronghold 3 is a return to form for the franchise. They know they disappointed their fans with Stronghold 2, and this time they're keeping their goals within their grasp (unlike last time where they tried to make their own game engine from scratch). It comes out next April, and we're promised a closer look at some of the game's mechanics well before then, but for now it seems like fans of the franchise have a lot to be excited for.
Categories:
Game Info,
Games Reviews
If You Like This Post, Share it With Your Friends & Peers
1 Comment:
The game is some kind of fail.
Post a Comment