One thing
I must say right from the start. I like explosions. The bigger the better and
they have to be nice and loud. When I send a squadron of fighters to destroy an
enemy I expect to see a beautiful bright flash of eye candy. While battling
through O.R.B.’s tutorial mission’s explosions take the form of a sort of
television static instead. The obliterated ship just breaks up into hundreds of
tiny gray static balls and vanishes. For newcomers to the genre this may sound
unsatisfying, but it is necessary to battle through the beginning tutorials in
order to master the single player campaign. Don’t worry though. Once you
graduate past the tutorials you will be rewarded with beautiful graphics
complete with bright explosion effects and cool ship design.
Okay now that I’ve got that out of my system let me say that O.R.B. is just
like Homeworld in many respects. It is an RTS set in 3D space. You must harvest
resources and build military units in order to conquer your enemies.
Military units can become increasingly deadly by researching technology and
building prototypes. From there Capital ships will become available yet very
expensive. Unfortunately resources aren’t very plentiful from map to map.
A recon vessel will scan the area and find any asteroids that have useful
material. Then you must build a mining colony and have freighters haul the good
stuff to your HQ. All standard stuff. However since there are precious few
resources the campaign portion of O.R.B. becomes a methodical click fest.
Each mission you’ll race to get to resources before the enemy. Then you’ll
have to run and gun with your fighters until all enemy ships are destroyed. Of
course the computer always manages to get the upper hand. At least in the
beginning. Then I slowly wield my mighty attack squadron with such cunning that
I eventually decimate every unit who opposes my forces.
Problem is, controlling all of your units can get a bit itchy. If you
mastered Homeworld than you will not be intimidated by O.R.B.’s gigantic
learning curve. In fact if you played through Homeworld, O.R.B. will probably be
a walk in the park.
For the rest of us there is a lengthy tutorial that becomes a must play. It
will introduce you to all of the basics from ship building and resource
management to manipulating the amount of manpower your fleet has and military
conquest. Manpower is necessary to perform your research or to have pilots for
you ships.
Once you get the basics down it is easy to issue commands to your fighters
and other vessels through convenient drop down menus. The research tree while at
first seems complicated is actually very intuitive and manages to explain each
new tech. There is one menu in particular that allows you to control and keep
track of all your units. This menu can be brought up by pressing the F2 key. It
will become your very best friend. Through this screen you can even link up any
number of ships to a hot key to create armadas. Very nice. Very nice indeed.
Unfortunately the vast majority of the single player campaign feels
anti-climatic. It is still good don’t get me wrong, but at times gameplay begins
to drag. Thankfully there is an excellent multiplayer component, which
Homeworlders might want to jump right into. There is also an option to download
an unsupported editor, which I did not do, but it is a welcome option.
Gameplay: 8
Very high learning curve, but there are detailed tutorials available to play
through. The control system and drop down menus remind me very much of Homeworld.
When battle begins however manipulation gets very confusing and you will have to
flip between a beautiful 3D world and a lackluster 2D map.
Graphics: 8
Impressive ship designs and beautiful asteroid filled space scenes within the 3D
world. The 2D map isn’t much more than a black grid with different colored dots
to represent your ships.
Sound: 8
The music is actually very well done, and it is action oriented so if you go
from mild resource collection to a hair raising battle the music will alter
accordingly. The voiceovers were kind of cool I thought because your units
respond in their native tongue. Some gamers might not like this but I thought it
added to the ambience and the idea of being in a different universe.
Difficulty: Hard
As I said there is a gigantic learning curve for new comers to this type of
game. If your have experience with Homeworld though don’t even give this a
second thought. The games are very similar.
Concept: 5
Two warring planets do battle to control the system. It has been done before
but when you defeat the first campaign the second civilization is unlocked and
you can play through with them.
Multiplayer: 8
Good times here with team play custom team logos, skirmish mode and you can
set resource points and randomize the amount of asteroids available to harvest.
Overall: 7.5
O.R.B. is a good game with high production values. The program is very
stable which is a welcome point that seems to be overlooked by a lot of games
these days. Overall it offers a bit of a diversion from most RTS titles that
take place with ground battles. Unfortunately it is missing that little
something under the hood that could’ve made it a blast.
