The war between the Crayven Corporation and the Order of the New Dawn is one of the most memorable RTS gaming experiences of my career. The original Ground Control presented a new, beautifully executed sci-fi gaming universe that taught us that base-building really isn’t necessary to churn out a decent action-packed title that doesn’t go overboard on tactics, strategy, and micromanagement options whilst also maintaining the presentation of a game sufficiently complex in strategic elements so as to warrant repeated playthroughs with different tactics. And now, the long-awaited sequel is nearly here! The following are my hardcore fanboy impressions after witnessing the joy that is the Ground Control II: Operation Exodus demo.

While the brief storyline pieces contained within the demo do not delve into the game’s background very much, the fragments I’ve picked up over the last few months of development indicate that Ground Control II takes place at quite a different time and place than its predecessor, and doesn’t directly have any relation with the original game’s storyline. The demo only includes a couple of training missions and a single campaign level, so more in-depth plot discussion will have to wait until a final review. The demo opens up with a pair of tutorial missions that are not only helpful and detailed, but also totally optional. The game will kindly give you a warning if you try to launch directly into the single campaign mission without playing the tutorial levels first, but will allow you to skip past the dialogue and not harass you further thereafter – something other games should take a lesson from. In any case, Ground Control II has seen a huge change in gameplay since the previous game in the series, something quickly revealed as the tutorial missions take off.

At first, many things look similar to that of the original game. The camera control interface felt mostly the same (though it’s been some time since I played GC), allowing me to roam the full 3D environment and get up close and personal with all of my units. There’s a new toggle available to switch between the “classic” camera mode and an “RTS style” camera, although I wasn’t able to figure out what the hell the difference was between the two after some fiddling. Movement is also handled in the same manner, with left-clicking done to select units on the battlefield, while movement orders are done with the right mouse button. Holding down the RMB will call up a vector line so players can determine exactly where his units will face when they arrive at their destination, and an overlay on the terrain indicates exact unit formation and positioning. But while these basic interface aspects will allow for old Ground Control fans to pick up on the sequel easily, there are also a bunch of new elements to take into account. One controversial choice is that the minimalist full-screen approach has been changed in favor of a large bar covering the bottom of the interface, littered with an assortment of command and interaction buttons almost akin to Starcraft in some aspects. I think a lot of the hardcore fans may see this as a bad thing, but I didn’t have too much of a problem adjusting to it – and in any case, there’s word going around that the final version may have an optional “fullscreen” mode implemented.

But one of the largest adjustments to the game seems to be the approach to tactics and strategy. In the original Ground Control, players managed their squads by selecting specific unit categories pre-mission (such as infantry, aircraft, tanks, etc), then did a little further customization to select specific vehicle types and launched. No more in Ground Control II, as players are given a basic “on the fly” briefing while the mission loads (and by a small cutscene intro), then are simply assigned a pre-selected array of units to get themselves started in the mission. No longer is the game about trying to make squads survive through an entire mission (or even an entire campaign, since units in the original carried over through missions and gained experience and medals) and using what you’ve got, but instead there is a drastic focus on trying to overwhelm the enemy with your own superior forces, capturing specific map objectives, and just gradually working your way towards the end of the mission. At least, that’s what I saw from the demo. Of course, players have far more than just what they start with available for use. A single dropship is provided just for the player’s use that can be called in at any time to drop off reinforcements he orders, scout an area, or just lay down some heavy cover fire. An integral part of the dropship system is “Acquisition Points”, which are used to purchase reinforcements to be loaded into the dropship, as well as upgrade the dropship’s systems (weapons, sensors, fuel capacity, etc), as well as call in special artillery strikes or recon drones. APs are slowly gained throughout the mission, but you really can’t hope to own a significant amount and call in the big guns unless you control landing zones and “victory locations”. While LZs are points on the map where you can order your dropship to land and disgorge troops (as well as offering their own little AP benefit), victory locations are simply areas that offer a boost to your available APs when captured – though occasionally, they come with small bonuses, such as, in the demo campaign mission, a radar position that can be used to track enemy troop movements. Dropping off troops aren’t all dropships can be used for though – several times in the demo I took advantage of the ability to manually issue orders to the dropship, which will actually stay on the battlefield and lay down support for as long as it has fuel if you toggle it over to “Stay” mode. This can be incredibly handy for a multitude of tasks, though I’d imagine having your dropship shot down would cause you to suffer from dire consequences.

While playing the demo, I managed to grow into the whole AP/dropship method of play fairly easily, though with some level of skepticism at first. Is the possibility of essentially sending in endless waves of units worth the tactical change? One thing that set the original Ground Control apart from other FPS titles of it’s time was that there was no base building or unit recruitment – what you selected pre-mission was all you got, and had to be taken care of. Now if a group of soldiers or tanks get taken out, replacements are but a few mouseclicks away, providing the resources are available. Offsetting this change is the fact that some units can get very costly in APs, so perhaps calling in “endless waves” of troops isn’t entirely possible after all, but this is still something I’ll be keeping a careful eye on once I get a copy of the final game. But there is also another reason to keep certain units alive; rank. As units get kills in combat, they’ll gain experience and level up, increasing their offensive capabilities. While I never really had a chance to see how far this can go in the demo, the tutorial stressed keeping experienced units alive, so I’m going to assume that high-rank units can make a huge difference in battle.

The different infantry and vehicles in the demo looked to be a rather versatile group, ranging from generic footsoldiers to the favored long-range artillery platforms. Basic grunts functioned as I expected, effectively serving as disposal infantry to cram down an enemy’s throat en-masse (again, I can’t help but think of Starcraft), yet they have a certain level of tactical flexibility due to their alternate mode, which causes them to crouch down and go stationary, yet allows them to launch guided anti-vehicle missiles that will seriously ruin the day of any tanks or aircraft in range. Yes, units now all have alternate deployment modes that trade off one aspect of functionality for the benefit of another. The artillery vehicles can switch to a stationary “deployed” state to fire off shells more rapidly, Siege infantry (like basic infantry, except marching around in big armored suits with gattling guns) can switch modes to enter a kind of berserker state, where they fire more rapidly but sacrifice durability, and snipers, the most effective anti-infantry unit available in the demo absolutely have to switch modes before they can even fire. There are a number of other toys to play with in the demo too, including a lightweight scout buggy and engineer trucks that can heal friendly units (as well as carry four soldiers for quick transportation), but getting a feel for how each unit balances each other out will have to wait until final, especially given the number of different factions the game is supposed to represent, all with their own unique unit types. One interesting change is that units are no longer represented by pre-assigned squads and groups (such as four medium tanks, or a dozen infantry), but are instead unique and individually selectable for deployment, causing the game to drift into a more traditional role of other RTS games by having players create their own squads and groups during gameplay via hotkey selection. This is all fine and dandy, except that there’s an upper limit on how many units can be selected at once (what the hell?), which makes it a huge tedious chore to try and move an army all at once without creating and jumping between several different groups, something I could see becoming an increasingly annoying problem later in the game’s campaign as larger numbers of units inevitably become involved in a mission. I pray this has already been caught and fixed for final, or at least an upcoming patch.

The difficulty of the demo was pretty solid and what I’d expect from the Ground Control series, with a variety of tactical problems to challenge the player without turning into a puzzlefest. The campaign mission involves trying to rush an enemy landing zone and securing an enemy shuttle carrying one very important person that had to touch down due to some oh-so-inconvenient engine problems, but blocking the player’s way are a number of bases and some very mean static defenses. The player starts off with a bunch of infantry, some snipers, an engineer vehicle, and one nice hefty piece of artillery to get the job done with, while the enemy forces have a large number of roaming tank/infantry patrols and effective control over all of the landing zones on the map. Assaulting the enemy strongholds and working my way through the mission wasn’t too complicated (just suppress the light enemy units while taking out the meatier defenses with deployed artillery), but actually hanging on to the landing zones I had captured proved to be a little trickier, thanks to the enemy forces that kept swarming in via dropships. The AI in the demo looked to be pretty solid, as every time I would split my main forces off to try and secure a secondary base, they would drop troops into one of their other landing zones and attack from the rear, re-securing the objective I had captured and making it tricky to move on ahead until I made sure everything behind me was either under my control, or annihilated.

But at the same time, the AI could still use a lot of work. Pathfinding for my own units seemed to be erratic, as while sometimes they had no problem navigating the game’s cluttered terrain, other times they would get stuck in each other or just refuse to move. Units close to one another tend to freak out a lot when issued conflicting move orders, and the lack of unit self-reliance (combined with the odd interface which makes it a little hard to figure out who exactly is under attack and where, compared to the original) made it tricky to co-ordinate counterattacks. Nevertheless, I’ve seen worse in other RTS games, and the enemy AI seemed to know what it was doing to some extent. This is another thing that I’ll have to reserve judgment for until final.

One of the most ass-kicking things from the original Ground Control was the graphics engine. Units and terrain elements were both superbly detailed and animated, and the ability to get right into the thick of the action with the camera made for a fap-tastic cinematic experience as tanks rolled smoothly across the terrain, kicking up piles of dust behind them and rotating their turrets to fire at a nearby enemy. Ground Control II carries on the legacy of a great graphical experience by putting some really nice pixel shader effects to work at rendering water, as well as setting up some beautiful terrain filled with cliffs, bridges, archways, and other neat features. But while the game looks great, I found a few niggles in the demo that brought the experience down a bit. One of the terrain types the player’s infantry units can enter for extra cover (this actually gives them a defensive bonus) are thick forests, but the trees themselves looked a little low-grade, and the terrain got strangely black and looked funny on areas where the forest ended and the open terrain began. I’ve witnessed some occasional strange clipping errors on several units, and my infantry in particular was commonly guilty of moonwalking and running in one direction while facing another (sometimes they would even run backwards to their waypoint, whilst executing the “running forward” animation). Loading times were also a little extensive, and the game seemed to page my memory a bit heavily at times. But from what I’m told, this singleplayer demo is actually several revisions old and still suffers from bugs not present in the final version of the game, so hopefully I’m complaining about nothing.

Ground Control II is something I’m definitely looking forward to playing, but after checking out the demo, my enthusiasm has been dropped a little. This looks to hardly be the same legendary title I played several years ago, and it almost seems like they took out much of the unique aspects from the original and threw in stuff from other, more mainstream games (I especially have a hard time approving of the bulky interface change). But at the same time, the demo is so brief that it is hard to get a grasp of how severely these design changes will impact the gameplay for old-school GC fans like myself in the long-term, and the potential is still very much there for a strong, exciting singleplayer experience – and I’m also looking forward to checking out the assortment of promised multiplayer modes (co-op!). Skeptical, and yet hopeful, I eagerly wait to see the full result of what Massive Entertainment has been working on for the last few years. Expect Ground Control II to be in stores by June 22nd.