Rating of
2/5
Super Spammy Spam Fest
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/27/15
“Swords & Soldiers” was the inaugural game released by Dutch Indie developer, Ronimo, for Nintendo’s WiiWare service. “Swords & Soldiers HD” (“S&SHD”) is the PC port of that original game with high-resolution textures and an exclusive DLC entitled “Super Saucy Sausage Fest.” Normally, I’m not a fan of Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games, but I’m always on the lookout for an RTS title that will change my mind (about itself at the very least). The side-scrolling action in “S&SHD” caught my attention in some early screenshots, leading me to believe it was different from the typical RTS embodied by “Warcraft” or “Age of Empires.” “S&SHD” IS very different from those games, but not in a positive way: Instead it distills RTS gameplay to its very core and reveals exactly why I’ve never been captivated by the genre.
Presentation
“S&SHD” does indeed have HD graphics. The art direction, however, doesn’t really warrant them. The game is built entirely in 2D using flat sprites and looks like the typical free online Flash game in every way. Character designs are kind of iffy and vaguely racist in most cases, while the character assets themselves only feature a few frames of animation.
The audio is also fairly simple and unimpressive. The only noteworthy sounds that stuck with me from the game were the Adam West “Batman” inspired scene change sound and a few of the things individual units say when they’re created. These quips are somewhat reminiscent of the things new units would say in old ‘classic’ RTS titles, but those older quips were so amusing I’d use them for my Windows system sound effects.
Story
“S&SHD” follows the entirely fictional exploits of three incredibly stereotyped nations of people: Vikings, Aztecs, and Chinese. The “Super Saucy Sausage Fest” DLC adds another faction of Vikings led by a butcher who appears as a supporting character in the basic Viking campaign.
Each of the four racial factions (including the Meat Faction) has a short campaign consisting of 10 missions. Each campaign can be completed in around an hour, as the individual missions almost all take less than 5 minutes.
The campaigns try to be funny, but never really succeed. Each faction leader is obsessed with something – the Viking with BBQ, the Aztec with big chili peppers, the Chinese with toys, and the Meat with… meat – and the story campaigns detail a short series of intertwined mishaps that cause these factions to squabble with each other as they travel the globe in pursuit of their obsessions.
Character development is fairly thin outside of the faction leaders’ odd quirks and the large number of racial stereotypes presented. I don’t find racial humor to be offensive, like many ‘gaming journalists’ do, but I still think it’s a lazy way to go for cheap laughs. In the end, there is very little that is memorable about any of the campaign stories.
Of course, the campaign is just a vestigial limb, hanging withered from the back of the game. This backseat nature of the campaign is obvious from the fact that the game badgers the player to switch to multi-player after playing a couple of story missions.
Gameplay
“S&SHD” distills the RTS genre to its very core, and reveals that core to be nothing but solid SPAM. The player is given no ability to direct or command units, but must simply complete missions by creating units and upgrading their faction’s tech tree. Tech tree items do not stay unlocked, but must be reacquired in every mission. Occasionally the game mixes things up and limits the tech tree or adds a few cross-faction options, but for the most part, playing “S&SHD” involves unlocking the same upgrades and creating the same units in every mission.
Wait, did I say, ‘Creating the same units?’ I meant, ‘Spamming the same units,” as that is really the only gameplay in “S&SHD.” Any ‘strategy’ in this RTS title takes place in the player’s mind before actually starting up the game, deciding the best order to unlock tech tree items and figuring out that it is always best to max out Gold harvesters before doing anything else. Once in the game, most missions devolve into spamming every unit as it comes off cooldown as long as there is Gold to fund it. There are a couple of gimmick missions that differ significantly from the game’s standard battles. However, these still don’t feel like part of a proper strategy game, but instead like puzzles where there is exactly one solution.
“S&SHD” is controlled entirely with the mouse, with no optional hotkeys. The player simply scrolls across the 2D battlefield by mousing to the edges of the screen and activates spells or creates units by clicking the appropriate icon at the top of the screen. Unlocking new units and spells via the tech tree causes those icons to slowly expand into place beside the others.
While the three main factions do play very differently from each other, the difference mostly boils down to the game’s magic system. While Gold and Magic both accumulate automatically (in most missions) at a slow pace, adding Gold harvesters speeds up the rate of production. Likewise, every faction has a method of increasing their Magic regeneration rate, but these vary greatly. Vikings simply speed up their natural Magic regeneration, Aztecs sacrifice their own units for Magic, and the Chinese build Buddha statues that increase Magic regeneration as long as they aren’t destroyed. The fact that Vikings have the simplest Magic regen scheme makes them rather powerful, while the Aztecs are perpetually short on Magic due to the fiddly nature of trying to sacrifice a specific nearly-dead unit while he is standing in a cluster with a bunch of other identical units.
Overall
“Swords & Soldiers HD” is a not-terribly-funny parody of both world history and Real-Time Strategy games. The super-short single player mode is almost a mercy to the solo player considering how boring an repetitive the game is, while the ‘strategy’ should more appropriately be called ‘SPAMegy,’ since that is what the player will be doing for 90% of the game. The other 10% is, unfortunately, trying to figure out the exact quantity of limited resources and exact timing to use to solve very non-strategic puzzles. In this way, “S&SHD” embodies both styles of strategy game that I can’t stand: The ‘There is Only One Solution’ style and the ‘SPAM Units to Win’ style.
Presentation: 3/5
Story: 2.5/5
Gameplay: 1.5/5
Overall (not an average): 2/5
