Hybrid RTS and tactics game Warzone 2100
Version: 3.1.1 Web: http://wz2100.net
We know LXF readers like to blow stuff up – virtually at least. Fire safety rules at your local hackspace may prevent you testing your quadricopter bomb delivery system. We know you also like to use the “little grey cells”, to blow up the enemy in clever and strategically satisfying ways. What, then, could be more perfect than the type of RTS that demands strategy and tactical thinking?
Start it up and you’re greeted with a filmic soundtrack that’s made for a bigger speaker system than your laptop carries. While the previously proprietary Warzone2100 was GPLed at the end of 2004, it was another four years before the soundtrack and film licensing was clarified to enable distribution.
After an (accidental) nuclear armageddon, you are part of three reconnaissance teams, looking for technology to help the reconstruction, when you come under attack from other organisations. Players work their way through the teams, discovering that the enemy is controlled by a selfaware computer virus,
Version 3.1.1 incorporates many more small changes than such a minor number bump would indicate. If you last installed Warzone2100 from the LXF90 coverdisc, it’s time to update. The iViS 3D graphics engine supplies
“It’s fun, but you get to think as well as be trigger happy.”
a great UI, supporting all the expected zooms, pans and rotations of the player’s view of the battlefield. Keeping an eye on your sensors for enemy units, players co-ordinate attacks, and each level has a time limit on the mission which, combined with resource limitations, demands strategic thinking to go with the tactical approach to battles. In short, it’s fun, but you get to think as well as a chance to be trigger happy.