Although it has not been a greatly anticipated game (in fact, not at
all), Cryo Interactive has put in "their best efforts" to produce Saga:
Rage of the Vikings. This game has been thrown into the masses of
past and present real time strategy games to fend for itself and
fight its way to the top. Does it face up to games like Brood Wars
or will it perish like so many others?
I guess all I can say about the storyline is that it is quite humorous.
The funny part about it is that there is none. I searched long and
hard to try and find it yet all I was left with was the fact that it
involved vikings and a briefing of your mission objectives at the
beginning of each level. However, I didn’t let that put me down
and I strode forward irrespective of the lack of storyline.
With great excitement I slammed my Enter key and eagerly
awaited for the game to load. As soon as the menu popped up, my
smile fell to a frown. Staring at me was a muddy brown menu with
little variety added to it. The menu was not bright at all and made
a bad reflection on the game itself. The thing that I found
enjoyable was the music playing in the backround. It had a great
tempo and made you eager to get stuck in the game. I moved on
quickly and clicked on New Game. Once again I was horrified to
see a list of 25 map files , 8 of which were tutorial maps with
names like BASIC_01.sna and ICE.sna . I also noticed a multiplayer
directory with a handful of multiplayer maps. Once I was in the
game, considering I have a Celeron 300 (Over-clocked to 450 of
course ) – Matrox Mystique – 64 Megs RAM, the graphics were not
CPU intensive at all. As a result, the game ran quite smoothly. The
graphics were pretty dull and "cheap" though. Obviously there is
no 3dfx support in this game. The graphics department definitely
does not fare well against other games in this genre.
Saga is similar to Settlers 3, where your objective is to build up a
settlement , harvest resources, trade , gain wealth and destroy
anyone who opposes you. I didn’t like the idea of having ALL your
units, including warriors and other fighting units, joining the
peasants in harvesting and construction of buildings. The thought
of you best fighting unit, which you paid good money to train, on
his knees in the dirt harvesting resourses just didn’t seem right to
me. Another thing I noticed was the blistering pace at which your
units move and conduct their duties. My first thought was that the
game speed was too high, so I toned it right down and returned to
the action, but now my units were moving far too slow and small
tasks like picking berries took ages.So I had to make do with my
men sprinting across the screen like flashes of light. Soon I had
reached the point in the game where you face your enemy.
Rushing towards my base came a vicious warthog. Why he wanted
to flatten all my men and my settlement by himself I don’t know,
but my men swiftly moved in and literally made mince-meat of it
and sent it to the warehouse. A bit disappointing for a first battle.
Besides that, there were two things that baffled and irritated me to
no end. The first was the attempt of making the game seem more
realistic by having clouds pass by every 2 or 3 seconds. This was a
miserable failure. Instead you had large blotches of white zooming
by like fighter jets and blocking your view. The second thing that I
found incredibly baffling was the fact that you could control your
cattle! In one of the tutorial missions, you began with one cow. To
my amazement I could click on my cow and send him off
exploring or even get him to harvest some resourses. Funny
enough, the objective of the mission was to increase the cattle
from 1 to 2. My question is: How is it possible to reproduce with
only 1 cow?? But that is better left for Cryo Interactive to answer.
One good thing I found about the game was that there was a lot of
attention to detail on the buildings and the units. It’s not often you
see a software title with detail like this. Also, the movement and
smoothness of the units was really good and deserves at least a
"thumbs up" for it.
When considering the sound in the game, there are a mix of good
and bad things. Some of the bad things were the unrealistic and
high pitched sound effects. Chopping at trees sounded like techno
music on a pc-speaker and became very irritating. The game does
not support 3d sound or any other special sound engines. I also
found that there were a lack of sound effects and I spent most of
my time in silence. The best part about the sound is the unit
speech. This was very crisp and clear and certainly was given a lot
of attention to by Cryo Interactive.
The controls for Saga are your basic real time strategy keys, with
the mouse doing most of the work moving units, commanding
units, conducting trade etc. It also has a range of shortcut keys for
those who want to get things done quickly. Obviously there is no
support for gamepads otherwise it would make the game feel a bit
awkward.
Saga most certainly supports multiplay by offering IPX connection,
TCP/IP, Modem or Serial Cable connection. You can also choose
to take on the computer in a scenario map. This proves to be quite
fun and the battles are grand and very intense. The amount of
players that can play depends on the map chosen , but if you want
to, you could load up the map editor provided and make your own
battle ground for all your buddies to enjoy. The multiplayer section
of the game seems to be the strong point. Its fast, furious and
entertaining.
Saga: Rage of the Vikings unfortunately was a disappointment. I
expected a lot more. I felt that the multiplayer section didn’t let me
down and was quite superb, but that still can’t be the foundation
for the entire game. This certainly isn’t a groundbreaking game,
but if your CPU speed is unable to run the latest fast paced games,
then this might be a choice for you.
Highs:
Attention to detail
Great Multiplayer section
Unit speech
Lows:
Units move to quickly
Boring
Irritating
Not polished at all