The game's real meat lies in its co-operative mode, which places you on sprawling maps laden with challenging enemies both small and large alike. Many "boss" creatures litter these maps, each with their own unique little gimmick that often makes them extra-tough to take down, and requires you to work in tandem with any players you're teamed up for the best chance of victory. Gaining victory on these co-operative maps will net you rewards in the form of artifacts, which can then be used in the so-called "Ability Grid". This is a core element of the game which allows you to apply permanent bonuses to the units under your control based on which artifacts you have equipped at the time, or you may recycle artifacts you own for a chance of receiving "Xenoshards", which unlock other potential upgrades for your units. Artifacts can also be obtained from the game's single player levels, as well as the ranked competitive matches, adding quite a bit of incentive to keep playing.

The game has an interesting balance mechanic as well. At the start of a given match (single player aside) you get to pick which units you'll start with out with. You can choose a set of officers to act as the backbone of your army, and the select which grunts will make up your initial force. The game associates a cost for each type of unit, forcing you to pick carefully out of the limited points you have for deployment. The available units range from your general troopers, snipers, healers, melee specialists, and heavy (expensive) siege units, but the game also throws a few exotic units into the mix such as the Cult's "Shifters" which can randomly shield nearby units and spawn hatchlings for melee support, or the Tribe faction's Sorcerer, which can cast a wide range of spells for devastating effect.

So, you've got a bunch of collectibles, a decent range of gameplay modes and units, and more than a few challenges to overcome. What's not to like? Unfortunately, once the initial novelty wears off, repetition soon begins to replace it. Once you complete the game's marginal single player campaign and blast through your share of multiplayer matches, you'll either fall into the crowd that gets hooked and obsessively plays match after match with the hope of finding better artifacts, or become annoyed because your existing artifacts just don't give you the same punch as someone who has played the game for weeks on end, or from the frustratingly-difficult boss battles in the game's co-operative levels which typically set your units against a boss that has a bajillion hitpoints and dishes out the equivalent of a nuclear explosion in damage any time it attacks.

Many times I've banded together with a group of friends during a LAN party to charge forth and try to slay a given boss, only to be sent running 30 seconds later when our entire army had been decimated. You can freely call for reinforcements to get your entire original team back during these kinds of missions simply by hitting a button (following a very lengthy cool-down of course), but by the time you do that the boss in question would have regenerated all of his health again forcing you to effectively restart the entire engagement. Yes, it's challenging, but considering how the game slams you with engagements like this right from the very first co-operative level, you'd think it would have more of a transition period.

Between this and other little issues (the edition of the game I received for example was reliant on the TAGES copy protection system, which wasn't compatible with Windows 7 and required me to go hunting for an external update before I could even run it), the game's annoyances run pretty deep. It has its fun moments and the lush, detailed graphics and ragdoll physics are impressive, but I just wish it had a bit more to it—more storyline, more balancing on the co-operative missions (with a focus on plot over objectives like "run around and kill all the bosses"), and more reasons to keep playing the game.

I see Worldshift as a proof of concept for a multiplayer strategy game that has the potential to be something special, but it still has a ways to go before it actually gets there.