Infested Planet is all about the flow of this dynamic give-and-take, back-and-forth, thrust-and-parry, feint-and-regroup, upgrade and counter upgrade. Other real time strategy games are battle lines smashing into each other, often won by sheer force or snowballing advantages, messy, fraught with loss. Infested Planet is a dance.
This is a pretty awesome little realtime strategy game. The capture-and-hold elements along with various upgrades have kept it interesting while the constantly-overwhelming-feeling gameplay has stayed entertaining. 15hrs in and one level left to go. It has gotten pretty challenging, but not unfairly so (with upgrades and money flowing in regularly from side missions). I bought this while it was on sale on steam and it is my most played game from the steam summer sale so far.
A great strategy game that has you fighting thousands of aliens per level. Take hive after hive that becomes a much harder task as time goes on as aliens mutate and can become much stronger!
The point is fun, and that's something Infested Planet has in spades. Blasting aliens is inherently enjoyable thanks to responsive controls and some satisfying sound and visual effects.
Aliens and soldiers meet again in Infested Planet, making for a various and good enough game to make you come for more, but not enough to leave a mark.
Realtime strategy/Tower defense mix at its best. The campaign is very absolutely terrific and some missions are very very hard to handle. Absolutely worth its money if you can live with simple concepts and simple graphics.
Even if I cannot properly play RTS due to frantic multitasking, I enjoyed the first missions of Infested Planet. It's hard to do a fair review of the game since the pressure was too hard to actually explore all the options the game had to offer (unlike classical TD)
One interesting aspect of the game is that the alien nests have spawn blobs and tower with a visible range, so if you're cautious enough, you may approach your target being undetected (otherwise, a steady flow of critters will converge to you).
Another design aspect of the game is that the alien behavior clearly looks like liquid flow, so it sometimes appears you're dealing with rivers going wild (or plumbing issues). I feel there is some kind of hidden gameplay here, but wasn't able to access it.
All in all : a good RTS if you appreciate being pressured from all sides ;)
To get it out quickly ... yes - Infested Planet is fun!
It captivates the feeling of man vs. critters (like Starship Troopers or similar) well.... but does it in a slightly monotonous way. And i do not mean "boring" - i mean that there are not too many winning strategies; you apply one and the same tactic over and over again - with only slight adjustments based on the randomized layout of the map.
What i do miss is a little (which translates to a huge... ) more customization.
- more weapons that really offer different tactics than a slow paced grinding through the enemy hordes
- kind of more personality to the player soldiers ( a bit like X-Com ) ... so that you may actually CARE for them. Like leveling them up slowly - choose specializations on certain weapons - but still keep them vulnerable enough, even still of course allow perma-death (a high level char dies - you get a newbie recruit back of course)
- better AI - an AI that exploits obvious gaps in the players defense .. an enemy that does not just become more buffed up and numerous - but smarter.
- more atmospheric look ... the design, while functional is not pretty... nor does it offer any kind of immersion. It is just a little too "flash" like.
But even if i can think of many improvements (which are all but based on my personal taste) - the game still greatly delivers. There is a sense of progression and improvement of power through purchased buffs. There is real difficulty that is still managable.
On a sidenote - for a game that dwells in splatter - there is not enough splatter from killing the bugs!
Infested planet is an RTS that revolves around a quite simple concept. Aliens spawn in countless numbers and you kill them in equally countless numbers. Stuff dies by the veritable bucket loads. I am all for gratuitous violence but the fact that it is completely unending sort of dulls you to it by the end.
The game itself is quite simple and figuring out how to exploit it is even easier. I jumped right into the games skirmish mode, which pits you against the AI in a randomly generated level. I played intermediate AI the first few games until I learned how to play and then tackled the abyss (which is supposedly the hardest difficulty). The game takes forever as you slowly wade about knee high in alien entrails trying to reach your objectives in levels that all look and feel the same.
I beat the hardest difficulty on my first try in under an hour. The AI is a complete let down as it simply applies mutations at random on a very predictable schedule. The game also doesn't have a whole lot to hold your interest. Everything takes too long and all the while things are dying and you know what? It doesn't matter, because stuff is always dying. Your marines die and respawn just like the enemies, you can sell everything you make for 100% refund. It's hard to actually lose too- everything you do can be changed later. The biggest problem I notice is that the game-play is very flat in that their are no moments of immediate all or nothing importance or even moments of greater importance. If the aliens take a point, you haven't really lost anything, if you lose a marine it doesn't matter. It would be like playing warcraft with a food cap at 10 and an opponent who only builds peons to send at you.
Its a straight forward, time consuming experience that left me uninspired. In all fairness though many may enjoy this. The pace is slow enough to keep up with whats going on and there is always the option of pulling back and reassessing your plans. If you like methodical, plodding, strategy, this might be your thing. If you are hoping for a high action, necessary split second reaction, tightly balanced play, and an opponent who always throws something new at you... You probably should keep playing SC on the ladder.
I hope they add more to it. I don't really plan on playing it unless they do.
Not fun, dumb AI for both the aliens and the marines (the base they respawn at is the closest linearly so one wrong step can set your reinforcements a minute of walking away if they respawn behind a wall), very little general choice in what to do. Attack-move nearest nest, capture, move on, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, uninstall.
SummaryInfested Planet is a tactical RTS, giving players the command of 5 soldiers and pitting them against a swarm of 100,000 aliens. To defeat this numerous enemy, players will have to employ their entire arsenal of weapons, buildings and technologies. Constructing everything from artillery cannons to heavily armoured minigun specialists, the...