The Beginning of the End

Sound Familiar?

While the story line of an RTS game is admittedly not of terrible importance, I found Warzone's to be remarkably unoriginal. Again, we can rely on the trusty box to help us out:

"In the year 2085 the collapse came hard and fast. Only a select few had the strength and intelligence to rebuild the world from the embers of a NUCLEAR holocaust. You were one of them. In 2100 the time was ripe to regain control over your ravaged planet. What you didn't know was that whoever started the collapse was out there waiting."

Scary stuff, eh? To put it bluntly, this is your classic machines-take-over-the-planet-through-nuclear-fire-and-cyborgs Terminator saga with some laser satellites thrown in for kicks. Maybe I'm jaded, but I had a really hard time with suspension of disbelief on this one.

Your turn, commander

So where does the player fit in? You start out as a *cough* commander leading and directing the forces of "The Project" (a pseudo-humanitarian military group, a la The Brotherhood of Steel). The game is centered in the former US, near the West Coast (where else would you find neat goodies like "Super-hot Flamer Gel Mk3" but in sunny California?) in uh … the year 2100. The primary resource everyone is after is crude oil, to keep their machines juiced up with power.

Our heroes, The Project

The Evil Dr. Reed, a.k.a. Nexus

The basic goal in single player is to scavenge the surrounding radioactive wilderness for lost "artifacts" from the former civilization. This is complicated by several competing groups with the same goal. (YOU are the good guys and they're…not so good.)

The mighty cyborg

Once you acquire an artifact, it must be researched, and then you can use and integrate the technology into your base and forces. The early game seems to focus entirely around acquiring the "Synaptic Link," a key technology that will allows the construction of cyborgs.

Unfortunately, everyone else's fanatic post-apocalyptic faction is searching for the Synaptic Link as well, and the competition gets pretty fierce. But fear not. Pseudo-good always triumphs over pseudo-evil, and the Synaptic Link will be in the hands of The Project faster than you can say "artifact recovered."