Planetary Annihilation Review

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by Arachnis, July 28, 2014.

  1. Arachnis

    Arachnis Well-Known Member

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    "Celestial Activity detected", that's what the game is telling us, when there's a planet about to hit another. In Planetary Annihilation, the name is what you get. You fight over planets with armies of nimble bots, sturdy tanks, quick airplanes, destructive naval forces, all-annihilating nukes and even lasers from space. But all that is being dwarfed by the game's trademark feature: planet smashing.

    Planetary Annihilation is the spiritual successor of the all-time classic Total Annihilation. But the strongest similarity you will find between those two games is the stream-lined economy, which people will recognize from other titles, just as Supreme Commander. Instead of spending your ressources bit by bit, you have a constant flow of ressource income, which in return requires a constant usage through building units from factories, defensive structures, radars, nukes and so on. What makes Planetary Annihilation different from any other game, is the interplanetary aspect in the game. You have the ability to build units floating around the orbit of planets, and traveling between them. And if that is not enough, you just grab an asteroid, build engines on it and send it to collision-course with another planet of your choice. The resulting annihilation is exciting to watch, and gives the genre a whole different dimension.

    But not so fast! You will start with only your commander, which is the head of your forces. You need to aquire metal and take care of your energy income. Those two resources are being used to create your army of destruction. The goal of the game is to destroy every other commander in the game. If your commander is the last to survive, then you will win the game. So you better take care of it.

    The gameplay is very basic: You build units and send them to the enemy base to fight for territory. Expansion is key in this game. If you're playing like a sitting duck, in other words "turtling", you won't make it far. To get an advantage over your opponents, you will have to have more resource income than they do, in order to build more units than them. It requires the players to be aggressive, which creates an enjoyable dynamic. But this also sounds like a numbers-game. And it's not that far from the truth. To win battles, the best method is to have a bigger army than your opponent most of the time.

    That doesn't really sound challenging in regard to making strategical choices, and indeed this is one of the biggest weaknesses in PA. In contrast to for example Starcraft 2, where it's all about building the right units at the right time, in Planetary Annihilation it's more about having everything eventually. I played over 200 hours of this game, and I can build the same units every game, and using the same buildorder every time, without running danger of doing anything wrong.

    You're playing on round (!) maps, and not on square maps. So gameplay is all about having enough units at the right place. Bases must be defended from all sides, which is a welcome refreshment from other RTS games. The navigation on planets is working quite well, although the navigation in the solar system lacks quite a bit. The view from space shows you all the planets, which are revolving around the sun in the current game. But it's not really as sharp and crisp as it needed to be, in order to get the necessary information at a glance. Also, there is no minimap, neither for the planets, not for the interplanetary map. It would've been really helpful to have at least some indication of what's going on between the planets, when fighting battles on the ground. There is PiP (Picture in Picture), which blends in a small window at the bottom right, which gives you the ability to watch the happenings from two perspectives at once. But it's really quite difficult to make out what is happening in a small window like that, especially when you try to use it as an interplanetary-minimap replacement.

    And that is another weakness of this game: overview. Sometimes it is really hard to find units, that you're looking for, or get an overview of what is really happening. With the 4th layer, the orbital layer, there are units flying above other units, and in many cases you will have to move the camera to another position in order to be able to select the units you really want to select. Also, fighting on multiple planets at once, on four layers each, can be a real pain. There are hotkeys, with which you can set anchors for your camera, between which you can switch quickly in order to not lose track of what is happening on one or the other planet. But this can be very overwhelming, especially to new players. This game is very micro intensive, even if you play on one planet alone. Playing on multiple ones only makes it more exhausting.

    Which is another weakness of this game: micromanagement. Instead of being able to build a factory, and having a preset choice of which units should be built, you have to build the factory, then click on it again, then set the waypoint, then say which units you want to build, then click on the infinite-queue button, and then do it again for every other factory. That is only one example of unnecessary micro in this game. Another one would be the possibility to assist buildings with fabbers. If you want to build 5 nukes for example, and you want them to build quicker, you will have to send fabbers to assist them. But you can't just select a group of fabbers and then tell them to assist the 5 nukes. No, you will have to select the fabbers and then let them assist each nuke individually. This kind of thing can consume a lot of time, which you'd gladly spend doing something else instead.

    The unit variety and balance are still lacking. But Uber has stated again and again, that this game will be continuously updated over the course of time, even (or especially) after release. This game at the moment seems more like a very good platform for modders and alike, and not like a "finished" product. And indeed, modders will have a lot of fun with this. But not only modders like it, many players have found their favorite RTS in this game, despite all the negative points that I've mentioned. And myself, I've spent over 200 hours on this. It is a very fun game, but it can also be frustrating and very demanding. It is not a quick, action-packed RTS like Starcraft 2, but more like a long, drawn-out RTS/4x mix, and more comparable to Sins of a Solar Empire. This feels counter-intuitive when thinking, that it wanted to be the spiritual successor of Total Annihilation, which had a very good gameflow. The interplanetary aspect brough planet smashing, but also makes the games last longer, than they should. You will find yourself very often in a long game, in a stalemate with one or more other players, being tired of micromanaging multiple planets and just quitting the game out of boredom. Don't get me wrong, this is a fun game, and Uber have shown, that they're qualified to make the best out of their idea so far. But there is still a lot, that is not polished enough, or simply missing. This game could've been much more, and maybe it will be in the future. So the best choice would probably be to wait a couple of months, and watch for the updates that Uber will deliver after release before buying the game.

    76/100%

    Review by
    Arachnis
    Last edited: July 28, 2014
  2. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    surprisingly honest and unbiased review.
  3. Geers

    Geers Post Master General

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    Why is this here and not Metacritic or something?

    OH GOD THAT SIG IT'S SO ODD! TOO ODD!
    emraldis likes this.
  4. Clopse

    Clopse Post Master General

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    Seems more like a troll post in disguise to me. Not sure how you think this is unbiased. Mentions features then says" but......" Doesn't mention galactic war, chronocam etc.

    If this was a proper review and then I seen a score of 76% I would have to re read it again to see why they gave it such a high score.
    Jaedrik and cwarner7264 like this.
  5. cwarner7264

    cwarner7264 Moderator Alumni

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    Quite a thin disguise, to be frank. I believe this is straight from the school of "I consider this game released because it has x in it".

    EDIT: It's also a rehash of his last lengthy and critical post.
    Jaedrik likes this.
  6. thelordofthenoobs

    thelordofthenoobs Well-Known Member

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    He didn't mention some of the features that are in the game but the score and the criticism seems valid to me.
    Also, he didn't mention every feature that one could complain about being missing...

    Well..not gonna start a discussion here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the reviews from actual journalists will end up giving similiar scores because of similiar reasons.
    bradaz85 likes this.
  7. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    Btw to OP as a FYI regarding assisting multiple nukes- you do know you can use area patrol on the fabbers?

    Nice and easy... Build an air factory (or several), set on repeat queue on fabbers and drag a nice big area patrol over location of nuke launchers.

    Now set a single adv fabber to build a load of launchers.

    The air fabbers will auto assist building the launchers, and also assisting the nukes. Sorted, virtually no micro :)

    Basically I think you need to re-investigate the use cases for area commands as you'll find there are many useful things you can use them for :)
    DalekDan and RainbowDashPwny like this.
  8. ikickasss

    ikickasss Active Member

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  9. Arachnis

    Arachnis Well-Known Member

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    I didn't intend on trolling. I just wrote a summary of what I've been criticising for a long time in this review.

    @clopse I didn't mention all the features that are in this game... but that's because I did it for free. If you want me to write a full-scale journalistic review, then you will have to pay me for it. :)
  10. jamiem

    jamiem Active Member

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    I would suggest trying different planets then. This is only true if you play the same planet types every game. There is no way to use the same build order and consistently win across all the types of planets. e.g. single lava islands, all water, etc
  11. thelordofthenoobs

    thelordofthenoobs Well-Known Member

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    These planets types you are mentioning indeed require a different strategy but they are very rare in the actual game.
    Usually you can conquer a lava planet nearly the same as an earth type planet, with the exception of the naval aspect being a bit different. But naval sucks anyways...
  12. RMJ

    RMJ Active Member

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    Yeah i kinda feel like all factories by default should be on limited.


    Then you should choose a ratio of units build. So like every second unit is a tank either third unit is something else.

    The production method atm is very clunky.

    I still want a priority system, so that i dont have to cancel stuff but just select priority 1 construction unit.

    Its the same when you queue up like 40 buildings with say 20 construction units, it only queues them up for the main guy, if that one dies, the other 19 just sits there, and your entire queue of buildings gets cancelled. THIS REALLY PISSES ME OFF sometimes. having to requeue and micro all those buildings up again.

    Queued buildings should be able to exist on their own, and you could just assign constructions units to them.
  13. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    ah.
    I hadn't seen that one.
  14. Arachnis

    Arachnis Well-Known Member

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    [qdon't "tatsujb, post: 968501, member: 1781817"]
    ah.
    I hadn't seen that one.[/quote]
    I don't quite get it, are you guys implying that everyone who has to offer valid criticism is a troll? And besides, where did I say that this game was released? I just don't see Uber changing the things that I am criticising for the better, at least not until release. We don't even know what they're planning to do until then. All we know is that they're in quite a hurry.

    And when I read neutrino's post, in which he says that they think about focusing resources in making a ladder for release (which is oh so difficult), then I'm wondering where their priorities are. In my opinion, this game has more urgent problems to solve than a silly ranked ladder, that could be taken from modders instead.

    It seems to me, that the negative points I mentioned aren't even seen as problems in the Uber office, which worries me the most.

    I don't dislike this game, but there are some obvious weakspots, and I bet that many journalists will point out the same flaws that I have pointed out.

    Greetings
  15. FSN1977

    FSN1977 Active Member

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    I don't quite get it, are you guys implying that everyone who has to offer valid criticism is a troll? And besides, where did I say that this game was released? I just don't see Uber changing the things that I am criticising for the better, at least not until release. We don't even know what they're planning to do until then. All we know is that they're in quite a hurry.

    And when I read neutrino's post, in which he says that they think about focusing resources in making a ladder for release (which is oh so difficult), then I'm wondering where their priorities are. In my opinion, this game has more urgent problems to solve than a silly ranked ladder, that could be taken from modders instead.

    It seems to me, that the negative points I mentioned aren't even seen as problems in the Uber office, which worries me the most.

    I don't dislike this game, but there are some obvious weakspots, and I bet that many journalists will point out the same flaws that I have pointed out.

    Greetings[/quote]

    Im pretty sure Neutrino came to the conclusion that the ladder was not that important for the release of 1.0...
  16. Clopse

    Clopse Post Master General

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    I'm not arguing there is nothing wrong with the game (my opinion) but you seem to be just pointing out issues you have with the game. Of course this could be expected from many other paid reviewers but to claim your opinion is unbiased touched a nerve. If I was to read your review in laymans terms I would take it this way.

    "Cool idea for a game, loads of problems, wait for after it to be finished to buy! 76/100"

    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-21-planetary-annihilation-early-access-review

    This is a proper review from a guy that maybe gets paid to review games properly 3 months Ago. Observe the language difference.
    FSN1977 likes this.
  17. cwarner7264

    cwarner7264 Moderator Alumni

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    Not at all, I'm simply wary because there have been several users on this forum who have attempted to argue that PA is released already and should be subject to reviews as a result. You post, both in form and in tone, appeared to be an extension of that argument.

    If I've misjudged I offer my sincere apologies for the slight.
  18. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's a 4D hypercube:
    [​IMG]

    so use it, maybe?
  19. Arachnis

    Arachnis Well-Known Member

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    Wow, you just accused me of being a paid reviewer? I wish that was the case. I would like to earn money with my writing, and I'm honored that you think I'm qualified for it. I didn't read the review you linked there. If you don't believe me, then that's fine. But if you track my history, you will see that I have defended my views for longer than 3 months.

    I have the slight feeling that the community, and maybe not even Uber themselves, aren't very good at handling criticism. And that's a shame, because skepticism and criticism is what drives innovation.

    Greetings
  20. Clopse

    Clopse Post Master General

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    I don't speak for uber nor the community but after reading your paragraphs of tripe I decided to tell you how I felt. Or do you not enjoy criticism either?

    Maybe I'm being cynical because of your use of the word accuse and your somewhat sarcastic tone on the opening paragraph. If you were sincere I take back the venom of my previous paragraph.

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