It is kind of refreshing to find out that all of your fears can become manifest inside of a video game, and one that takes place as a strategy game in space. The concept of AI Wars is that man has finally gotten around to making computers smarter than themselves, and the natural course of action once this happens is that the new AI desires to kill all living things?starting with John Connors. The idea is that humanity is beaten back to a core planet and must make an attempt to both defend itself and finally defeat the killer AI while recapturing as many planets as they can, hopefully with the help from other players.
The problems with the game start the moment that the fairly thorough tutorial ends; the entire concept of the game is to play with other people online. The game even goes far enough to make it so that other players can’t PVP each other, making the only enemy the AI, but years of playing games on the internet have sort of built a massive and automatic mistrust of anyone I don’t personally know. There are modes that can tweak one way or another to make the game friendlier to being experienced alone, but it always ends up feeling like something is missing.
Other issues are that it has a ton of settings just to make up one match, most of which feel like they are never fully explained and could possibly be in another language. While most of the more important ones can be rather self explanatory, the only time that the game really shines is when the computer is putting up a rather fierce and aggressive fight. With all of the options it is kind of hard to figure out exactly where that dial is to make that one aspect burst through and shine.
AI Wars does do something things very well, on the other hand. The sense of scale and distance between objects in space is rather well defined when the random star ship war kicks off, and the computer’s difficulty can be cranked to a level of pure insanity that I am unsure how anyone would ever be able to beat it, which does make me fear for my life at the word ?Skynet?. There is also a plethora of ships that can be built at any given time during play, although many of them seem to have upgraded versions that are simply better than previous incarnations.
AI Wars is by no means a terrible game, and if you can convince several friends to purchase the title and play with them could very easily lead to an amazing and memorable time. The problems start when that environment isn’t present, though, as a game that is designed on the concept of “us versus them” holds less water when it is only “me quickly being killed by them”.
Not As Good As: Playing with a friend
Also Try: Sins of a Solar Empire
Wait For It: A complete pack
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