Published by Sierra Studios
Reviewed by iceVic on 8/30/00

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First Impressions:

Graphics:

Ground Control's graphic engine is very powerful. It renders all of its in game 3D terrain realistically. Mountains have both soft, round slopes and shape ridges. Tall trees can cast dark shadows for units to hide below. Thread vehicles yank snow dust as they roam across the game's polar region. The most impressive visual in GC is the artillery fire. Shells and hot plasmas are lobbed high into the sky and drawn huge arcs before pointing down and devastate all things below. By fully utilizing the visual information, a player can make some tactical decisions unique to Ground Control only (more on that in Gameplay section). Units in GC are also rendered down to the very detail. Tanks' muzzle flashes are very realistic; spent shell casing ejects from the ejecting mechanisms that rise from the hull after each shot; gun barrels recoil after shooting. Heavy Artillery shells yank dirt and dust from the impact zone. All installations and buildings are true to its (supposed) real world scale, and the development team put some nice touches on most of the buildings. Zooming down to the ground level and peeking into the underground access tunnels can reveal moving trucks busy ferrying cargo; some heavy cannons even have real time smoke trails dissipating after the high velocity shells. The camera position of Ground Control is also worth mentioning. Player uses the keyboard's arrow key to adjust camera location, and use mouse to "tilt" the viewing angle up and down, left and right. Since Ground Control features varied terrain elevations in most of the missions, players can also use the mouse wheel (or the page up/down key) to adjust the camera's height. All Crayven units change seasonal camouflage according to the different theaters of deployment.

One down side, Ground Control is a resource hog. Systems with older generation video cards and pre-Pentium II processors will have a hard time keeping up with the sheer amount of environmental rendering along. There are reports of GE Force 2 users getting overheated by increasing the detail level to the max. According to Massive, GC's detail tab is set to be "ready for the next generation hardware" and current users are susceptible of overheating their video card if they try to increase the detail level too high. I tested the game once with only software rendering, and found it very slow even on 640x480 with many features turned off. My PIII 500 just can't chunk out enough polygons to fill the screen. I found a few slowdowns with my TNT2 on 1024x768 when more than 30 units combine with explosions appeared on my screen at the same time. Other than the steep system requirement, GC is a graphically impressive game that has a great camera system that helps the gameplay.

Sound/Music:

Ground Controls' soundtrack is nicely recorded. Most of the characters' voices are true to their personality and believable. Crayven troops fight for combat bonus and military ranking, thus they tend to sound like professional soldiers mixed with a "mercenary" attitude. On the Order's side, the "faithfuls" do and die because of their ideology and the sheer amount of will to fight. Deacon Stone's voice is a great example of this, as the player can truly feel the reason behind his every tone change and the sheer will for things with "spiritually correctness" behind his every word. Major Parker's voice is also good, as she is a battle-hardened commander who truly cares about her troops. Some of the voices are a little over the top, as the order units' responses for attack are usually like "cleansing the area," and "attacking the unworthy." Funny as it seems, most of the voice acting still manages to fit the theme quite appropriately. On the weapon and unit engine noises, they are nicely done and quite realistic. Most of the weapons have their unique sound of fire. By just listening most experienced players can tell what kind of unit is attacking them.

The music department is another area where GC shines.Ground Control has some of the best music tracks in RTS games. Unlike the techno music found in Star Craft and Earth 2150, GC uses its array of military-style music to accompany players to their final objectives. The tones of most missions are inspiring with the feeling of doing something really grand, but they also radiate the feeling of loneliness on the vast land.

Gameplay:

Single player games in GC involve lots of tact. Charging or rushing with all units always leads to destruction. Some missions involve bringing mass destruction to enemy bases, and as almost always is the case, the enemy base is heavily defended. Stealthy players can use their commando units (there are only two types of infantry for each side, but they remain very useful throughout the game) to sneak into the base in the shadows and blow up the base's power generator. Once the base is out of power, all automatic defense cease to function. If players prefer to blow up anything that is not part of terrain, they can bring in their artillery squads and destroy the emplacements in a few volleys.

In many missions, intelligence is the key. Mission briefings only provide basic information and prediction for an operation. To gather intelligence on the battlefield, players have to issue recon vehicles for their assault squads or assign infantry groups as commando units, during the "equipping squad" stage before mission (In the game, you will have five basic squad-types range from infantry, assault armor, support armor, and last the aerodynes; in each group, two to four types of units are available for selection), so they can use their superior range and perception to spot and locate enemy forces and installations once they arrived on the battlefield. After the squad selection and equipment screen, the player's command vehicle (can repair and heal friendly units) and the rest of the units are deployed on the tactical map via dropships. Each unit has a set amount of view range, stealth, and perception. Generally perception is used to spot enemy units. The higher the perception a unit has, the easier it is for that unit to acquire targets. On the other hand, if a unit has very high stealth, such as the Order Templar infantry, then a unit with low perception and medium view range, such as the Crayven double-barreled Heavy Terradyne Grizzy would have a hard time spotting the Templars unless they are extremely close and firing. With these things in mind, tactics like positioning a commando unit on top of an elevated position and using its superior view range/perception to direct artillery fire becomes an essential part of many missions.

With morale issues in mind, units in GC react to enemy fire realistically. Armor units under fire travel slower, and infantries tend to keep their heads down. Giving suppressing fire with artillery or even infantry can disrupt enemy unit formations and decrease their efficiency. In Ground Control, once players click a particular unit, the entire squad is selected, and the player issues command only to the entire squad from movement to special abilities. Sometimes it is good to select several units at once and issue different formations while moving (from box, line, to column), but when only one unit is badly damaged, it is impossible to use that particular unit's repair module without letting the rest of the squad using theirs.

Even though both sides use ground forces the most, air units are still very deadly and do great damage when there are no anti-aircraft units or fighter jets around. Too bad the air units cannot land to be repaired by the command vehicle nor do they carry repair modules, so they require lots of micromanagements to prevent their destruction (most of later missions are littered with several anti air batteries on mountain tops) whenever there is something that can target air units. Even worse, both sides' anti air units are deadly efficient in doing their job, so the power of air force is much neglected by many players during the single mission campaign. The reason why players do not want to waste their units is due to GC's innovative unit ranking/experience system. Veteran units do more damage, shot with more accuracy and gain perception bonus. It would be extremely frustrating to lose a seasoned "level 5" blood veteran squad at the end of a two hour assault mission (remember, no saves allowed!).

Enjoyment:

I thoroughly enjoyed Ground Control. Its great camera angle lets you watch and direct action from any point of view. Also the tactical sense it brings to the RTS genre is very refreshing. After some long mission, I can take pride in not having to save (well, can't) a single time, and that is some great feelings to have.

Multiplayer:

Strangely, by taking out the base build/defense in order to discourage rushing, Massive got exactly the opposite: In most of the "drop in" games, players can get replacement squads shortly after the original's destruction, but since there is no need for building, and there are always replacements, most players select the basic powerful offensive tanks and start rushing each other's control point. Even though correct use of artillery can destroy an entire area of enemy oppositions, their effects are still "too slow" according to the "tactical deathmatch's standard." The standard Internet game is more traditional in the sense of GC single player, but for several days straight there haven't been too many people playing it. For those who have little time to spare and want some GC action, multiplayer is where you should look into. On won.net, people are generally very friendly and helpful to new players. The first time I played a helpful player coached me through the game, telling me which units to bring and what to do. The rest of my multiplayer experience has also been very good, as most players are playing for fun, not for domination. Also the quality of gaming condition is worthy of pointing out. Several times I played (drop in games, third party servers were hosting) there was little lag even on my 56k modem. My ping is usually at around 150, sufficient for most RTS games.

Overall Impression:

One area where Ground Control may lose its appeal is its difficulty. There are no game saves. Some may found this option add up the intensity of the game as it forces player to think before committing troops to any given command. If the player butchered the attempt, the only way to turn back is to restart the game. But toward the end of the game the missions get much longer, and some can even last for hours. Then the save option would become appealing not to those who want to save before any major action, but also to the people who want to save their progress and finish up later. Many users have complained about the lack of saving feature, but Ground Control will not be the same if there is one, as its realistic fundamental concepts will be lost.

Again, nearly all missions are nicely scripted, other than a few of the "Alamo Situations." And the main problem is still the sheer length of those missions. Sometimes I just want to go to sleep after an hour of intense ground controlling, but there is still one more objective to finish… should I leave or should I continue to play? This game can be bad for health and definitely not for those who want to have some 10 minutes fun, unless they look at the multiplayer games…

Marketing Efforts Towards Women:

Generally speaking, Ground Control isn't a major Sierra product, and it shows in its marketing effort. Most of the advertisements have not point out the difference between GC and the other RTS games. Sure, from the screenshots on PC Gamer's two page ad I can conclude the game look pretty, but it didn't explain about the camera system, the unit selection and experience system… these are the main potential selling points that GC has, yet Sierra hadn't mentioned them besides the proclamation "An Adrenaline Rush of Real-Tim Action and Strategy." On the positive side, there is at least one strong female character in GC. I would suggest you check out my Digital Women review of Major Sarah Parker to find out more.