I had to wait a day after playing this one so I could collect my thoughts. So, yeah.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Review:
I could make a couple introductory paragraphs to give some extra explanation of the gameplay of Golem Wars Classic, but I feel that this screenshot sums the whole thing up pretty accurately:
Mobs. Lots of mobs.
Each of the five players endlessly spawns their choice of zealots, marines, or zerglings. Each path has two upgraded forms that are unlocked after a certain number of kills for that player, but all three paths are upgraded simultaneously and the players can switch between them at will. Allowing this is a fairly risky move for a game developer because, with a spawn rate as high as it is in Golem Wars Classic, the players could instantly adjust their strategy to counter whatever the enemy throws at them. This inherently limits the strategic flow of the map because a winning strategy through unit choice will be very short-lived. In this case, stagnation and stalemate will dominate the map.
However, Golem Wars Classic doesn’t even get that far: even though the players can instantly switch their units, there is no reason for them to even want to. Sure, each path has different stats, such as life and DPS, but the huge problem is that all of the units are, in mass numbers, almost exactly the same. And mass numbers of these units are all you will ever see in this game. Even the zealots vs. marines matchup, for example, is basically no different than zealots vs. zerglings because of the zealots’ charge ability. Worse still, the upgraded forms of the base units are even more alike and bland, and are all ranged. There isn’t even a rock-paper-scissors element going on; just pick your flavor and send mass amounts of it at the enemy. This boils down to a nearly complete loss of unit strategy; formations and ganging up on a single target are just about the only things you can do with your mobs. Essentially, this is a huge let-down and causes the game to become fairly boring as time goes on.
This is just about the only type of battle you’ll see after the 5-minute mark: a reenactment of the Battle of Verdun. It’s fitting that those siege tanks in the bottom-left corner are doing most of the damage to my troops.
The best opportunity to kill off a player is right when you reach the next tier of mobs while your opponent is still trying to reach it. A mass attack with your higher-tier units will decimate his inferior technology because each tier is amazingly strong compared to the previous set. There’s no real counter to a higher-tier force other than just trying to get your own high-tier units as soon as possible, since focus-firing is useless when the game spawns absurd amounts of units for you to deal with.
If you don’t gang up on a single player or take advantage of the tech gap, the other main way of achieving victory is using some sort of strategy involving the super golems (the timed-life bonus spawns you get after every tier-up) or combo golems. Siege tanks seem to work the best because they alone deal splash damage, which is unbelievably powerful in a game involving mass amounts of crowded units. In fact, just about every other non-cloaking 4-piece combo golem is absolutely useless after tier 1. Even if the 6-10-piece combo golems were added in, I doubt the players would be able to field enough of them to make much of a difference in combat. The end result of this is a lack of any viable strategies, save for the very few I have mentioned. For obvious reasons, this makes the gameplay become quite bland, ultimately causing the map’s entertainment value to shrivel away.
The line of artillery is an effective strategy, unlike the use of most of the other 4c golems.
On the plus side, there are several dozen 4-piece combos and 9 super-golem spawn groups (2-3 different units per group), which adds up to quite a deal of unit variety. Many of the combo golems have different abilities and, of course, wildly different stats from the base units, which is a nice bonus. The problem is that most of the combo units are fairly useless. There are so many available, but it’s not possible to spawn many of them. Also, the basic mobs are, for all intents and purposes, the same after tier 2. Because of this, there is very little reason to get combo golems of any type except for siege tanks and whichever units can kill siege tanks the most quickly. On the plus side, the combo golems have a ridiculous amount of hit points, but they also generally do not have that much killing potential (except for the siege tank because it has splash damage). As a result, the combo units are somehow boring despite (or possibly, because of) the fact that there are so many of them. This doesn’t bode well for the rest of the game, because at this point the combo units were the last hope for Golem Wars Classic to be interesting to play.
On an unrelated note, this map actually does have a computer AI; any computer slots will “think” and actively play against you, mass attack, spawn combos (at least, I think they do…), etc. However, they are easily defeated by even first-time players. Still, having AI support is a very nice inclusion to any map, even if their skill level is pretty basic.
Why does this whole terrain setup even exist when I can just click one of the command card buttons instead? Also, mass-attacking is often pointless when you can select 255 units at once, though it does help with the lag, a bit.
There are a few miscellaneous problems in Golem Wars Classic, the most notable of which is the massive amounts of units being generated at all times. My computer can smoothly run the game at all-ultra settings, but this map brought my system to a crawl after four players each had amassed 200-300 units and battled with them. For instance, the pathfinding algorithm used by StarCraft 2 is truly excellent but is very demanding, as a thousand moving and attacking units engaged at once will render the game nearly unplayable if your CPU currently costs less than $250-$300 USD. Even just having the units in the game at all (even if they are unmoving) will lower framerates after some time. Another annoying issue is that some golem part combinations don’t actually make anything. Some of the combos are missing, so when you throw together some random combination to see what you get (out of boredom or something), you could simply get nothing.
This map has an idyllic goal to live up to, but it’s blurred and warped by poor execution.
To summarize this whole review: Golem Wars Classic doesn’t need a content patch; it needs a gameplay overhaul. On paper, this map seems to be a sure hit and a wonderful map. In practice, it just falls flat on its face with gameplay which I would describe as somewhat repetitive and fairly boring. The map was interesting at first, but then it all just melted away into blandness. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that the gameplay dynamics of this map are practically nonexistent. Even a rock-paper-scissors hard-counter kind of gameplay mechanic with the base units would be a huge improvement. Redoing the combo units to make them all useful would be nice, but they should also be trimmed down in number. I’m done typing about this map; Golem Wars Classic at least has some good production values, but it needs some major improvement in the areas that count the most.
RATING:
Bronze: This map is decent, but rough around the edges or somehow lacking.
@DarkRevenantX:
Just dropped by to commend you on the effort you put into these reviews. It certainly is well written, interesting and the screen shots accurately reflect your thoughts well.
It would be better in my opinion if you handled all the reviews in this forum. Other people doing reviews have it marred when it comes to presentation and quality and being objective. I wont be surprised if friends or fake accounts attempt to give certain maps a biased review.
Anyhow, good work;)
I had to wait a day after playing this one so I could collect my thoughts. So, yeah.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Golem Wars Classic by Saeris
Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (C)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (C+)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (A-)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (B)
Flavor (Style, Charm) - (B-)
Replayability - [1]
Failures
Massive Lag - [-]
Missing Combos - [-]
Simple Strategies - [- -]
Bonuses
Artificial Intelligence - [+ +]
Many Units/Combos - [+ +]
Review:
I could make a couple introductory paragraphs to give some extra explanation of the gameplay of Golem Wars Classic, but I feel that this screenshot sums the whole thing up pretty accurately:
Mobs. Lots of mobs.
Each of the five players endlessly spawns their choice of zealots, marines, or zerglings. Each path has two upgraded forms that are unlocked after a certain number of kills for that player, but all three paths are upgraded simultaneously and the players can switch between them at will. Allowing this is a fairly risky move for a game developer because, with a spawn rate as high as it is in Golem Wars Classic, the players could instantly adjust their strategy to counter whatever the enemy throws at them. This inherently limits the strategic flow of the map because a winning strategy through unit choice will be very short-lived. In this case, stagnation and stalemate will dominate the map.
However, Golem Wars Classic doesn’t even get that far: even though the players can instantly switch their units, there is no reason for them to even want to. Sure, each path has different stats, such as life and DPS, but the huge problem is that all of the units are, in mass numbers, almost exactly the same. And mass numbers of these units are all you will ever see in this game. Even the zealots vs. marines matchup, for example, is basically no different than zealots vs. zerglings because of the zealots’ charge ability. Worse still, the upgraded forms of the base units are even more alike and bland, and are all ranged. There isn’t even a rock-paper-scissors element going on; just pick your flavor and send mass amounts of it at the enemy. This boils down to a nearly complete loss of unit strategy; formations and ganging up on a single target are just about the only things you can do with your mobs. Essentially, this is a huge let-down and causes the game to become fairly boring as time goes on.
This is just about the only type of battle you’ll see after the 5-minute mark: a reenactment of the Battle of Verdun. It’s fitting that those siege tanks in the bottom-left corner are doing most of the damage to my troops.
The best opportunity to kill off a player is right when you reach the next tier of mobs while your opponent is still trying to reach it. A mass attack with your higher-tier units will decimate his inferior technology because each tier is amazingly strong compared to the previous set. There’s no real counter to a higher-tier force other than just trying to get your own high-tier units as soon as possible, since focus-firing is useless when the game spawns absurd amounts of units for you to deal with.
If you don’t gang up on a single player or take advantage of the tech gap, the other main way of achieving victory is using some sort of strategy involving the super golems (the timed-life bonus spawns you get after every tier-up) or combo golems. Siege tanks seem to work the best because they alone deal splash damage, which is unbelievably powerful in a game involving mass amounts of crowded units. In fact, just about every other non-cloaking 4-piece combo golem is absolutely useless after tier 1. Even if the 6-10-piece combo golems were added in, I doubt the players would be able to field enough of them to make much of a difference in combat. The end result of this is a lack of any viable strategies, save for the very few I have mentioned. For obvious reasons, this makes the gameplay become quite bland, ultimately causing the map’s entertainment value to shrivel away.
The line of artillery is an effective strategy, unlike the use of most of the other 4c golems.
On the plus side, there are several dozen 4-piece combos and 9 super-golem spawn groups (2-3 different units per group), which adds up to quite a deal of unit variety. Many of the combo golems have different abilities and, of course, wildly different stats from the base units, which is a nice bonus. The problem is that most of the combo units are fairly useless. There are so many available, but it’s not possible to spawn many of them. Also, the basic mobs are, for all intents and purposes, the same after tier 2. Because of this, there is very little reason to get combo golems of any type except for siege tanks and whichever units can kill siege tanks the most quickly. On the plus side, the combo golems have a ridiculous amount of hit points, but they also generally do not have that much killing potential (except for the siege tank because it has splash damage). As a result, the combo units are somehow boring despite (or possibly, because of) the fact that there are so many of them. This doesn’t bode well for the rest of the game, because at this point the combo units were the last hope for Golem Wars Classic to be interesting to play.
On an unrelated note, this map actually does have a computer AI; any computer slots will “think” and actively play against you, mass attack, spawn combos (at least, I think they do…), etc. However, they are easily defeated by even first-time players. Still, having AI support is a very nice inclusion to any map, even if their skill level is pretty basic.
Why does this whole terrain setup even exist when I can just click one of the command card buttons instead? Also, mass-attacking is often pointless when you can select 255 units at once, though it does help with the lag, a bit.
There are a few miscellaneous problems in Golem Wars Classic, the most notable of which is the massive amounts of units being generated at all times. My computer can smoothly run the game at all-ultra settings, but this map brought my system to a crawl after four players each had amassed 200-300 units and battled with them. For instance, the pathfinding algorithm used by StarCraft 2 is truly excellent but is very demanding, as a thousand moving and attacking units engaged at once will render the game nearly unplayable if your CPU currently costs less than $250-$300 USD. Even just having the units in the game at all (even if they are unmoving) will lower framerates after some time. Another annoying issue is that some golem part combinations don’t actually make anything. Some of the combos are missing, so when you throw together some random combination to see what you get (out of boredom or something), you could simply get nothing.
This map has an idyllic goal to live up to, but it’s blurred and warped by poor execution.
To summarize this whole review: Golem Wars Classic doesn’t need a content patch; it needs a gameplay overhaul. On paper, this map seems to be a sure hit and a wonderful map. In practice, it just falls flat on its face with gameplay which I would describe as somewhat repetitive and fairly boring. The map was interesting at first, but then it all just melted away into blandness. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that the gameplay dynamics of this map are practically nonexistent. Even a rock-paper-scissors hard-counter kind of gameplay mechanic with the base units would be a huge improvement. Redoing the combo units to make them all useful would be nice, but they should also be trimmed down in number. I’m done typing about this map; Golem Wars Classic at least has some good production values, but it needs some major improvement in the areas that count the most.
RATING:
Bronze: This map is decent, but rough around the edges or somehow lacking.
I am the best strategist ever. Also, Hydras aren't really much cannon fodder, if I wanted to use cannon fodders I would have used Immortals.
how do we play