Ballistics Report

Pros

Sound. The orchestral score definitely has its moments, nicely accompanying the action. Unit command acknowledgements are crisp and articulate, while sound effects do a good job of portraying the situation at hand.

Straightforward Experience. Beyond some quirky camera rotational functions and 3D unit movement commands [unfortunately] native to 3D RTS games, it’s easy to dive headfirst into ORB and get a grasp of what’s going on around you. The fairly basic game experience allows for gamers to quickly grasp the game’s fundamentals and begin refining their own style of play.

Graphics... sorta While this isn’t an absolute pro, ORB’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde relationship with its presentation results in an overall positive experience. Brilliantly conceived backdrops and eerie FMV are offset by muddy textures and uninspired, boxy in-game models. This could’ve been so much more if the developers weren’t shy about taxing gamers’ systems.

Drilling A Hole

Outnumbered

Skirmish

Cons

Poor Scaling. The 2D map is very unattractive and does an average job at best of representing the action. This is unacceptable, as it’s much easier to control and navigate the game from the 2D map than the 3D map. In battles, it’s very difficult to manage a zoom angle that combines both practical functionality with a visually appealing perspective of the action. You’ll tend to have to sacrifice one or the other, and oftentimes, it’ll be the latter. The overall speed of units with the vast maps is inappropriate, injecting a dose of tedium into an already simple game.

Weak Story. ORB hardly breaks any new ground in the sci-fi space epic. While it has the undertones to be a brooding, religiously-fueled journey, the less-than-serious portrayal of the races and forced scripting ends up giving the player a much more “tell, not show” experience as opposed to the “show, not tell” method strong storytelling embraces. ORB’s approach, unfortunately, is not very believable or endearing.

Bland Gameplay.When you cut down to the chase, ORB is simply about matching your fleet up against your opponent’s. The only way to make the resource gathering and research parts of ORB simpler is to automate the whole experience. Unfortunately, the only other area left for the player to take part in is tactical combat. As the vast majority of units can only move or attack, there really isn’t much to do unless you love space-based combat. Even then, the one-dimensional nature of ORB’s units makes the whole experience wear thin quickly.

Asteroid Field

Move On Soldier

I Want It