Greed Corp review

Posted by Kevin in Featured, Microsoft, Reviews, Sony | 1 comment

W!Games represents a new lease of life in Dutch software development. The largest piece of entertainment produced in the country was Guerilla’s €43million monolith, Killzone 2. Perhaps with smaller ambitions, W!Games releases it’s second title, a rather more interesting affair then it’s first release; My Horse & Me.

Set in a rich environment and world which will be revisited in future W!Games titles, Greed Corp is a new endeavor for the company. A risky one at that. Using interesting set-pieces, characters and weaponry, they have set about creating a downloadable turn-based strategy title in an era where big shooters and explosions are king.

The environment is important, as it’s set in a world called “Mistbound”, which will play host to more then one title in the future. A rich, detailed environment and world story has been created to be a set piece for several games in the future from the company. Details as far down as a brand of tea available in the game have been carefully constructed by the Amsterdam-based developer.

The story revolves around four factions fighting for the remnants of the worlds’ land which is, rather inconveniently, falling into oblivion. Thus, resources are very important. The pieces of hexagonal land you own will reap financial rewards, letting the player buy more harvesters, walkers, turrets and so on.

The rich environment is laden with graphical and audio brilliance

Playing the game can get frustrating. The game is often based on luck rather then strategy, which for some will add a much fancied element of surprise to the gameplay, but for others will add a huge amount of frustration. Quite often winning or losing comes down to a single piece of land after destroying all the other pieces – which doesn’t necessarily slot in nicely to the story arc which W!Games plans on continuing with further titles.

Harvesters are a double-whammy. They do not attack anyone but do earn you money, but will destroy the land around it. So, the exchange is cash for land – and the ultimate goal is to hold onto land, and steal land by building armories that produce walkers… and using turrets and so on you can attack enemies and steal their hexagonal land pieces. It can be a fine balance of land versus firepower and money.

You start with a tutorial level, which is, for the most part, a bit useless. You’ll learn very little until you actually dive in and play against factions. Once this happens it becomes quite good, if not sometimes frustrating, fun. You begin fighting on a small piece of land against one other faction, and slowly build up to larger portions of land fighting against the three other factions.

Graphics are quite lush for a downloadable title. €10/800MSP gets you a fair whack of game, but I would almost buy it on the premise of revisiting the world over and over again, as the character design and landscape is rather interesting.

With online and offline modes available this game is worth a few bob. It’s a definite winner for any strategy game fans, or even board game fans. It has a relaxed vibe with great colours, characters and sounds. Even more, it’s worth becoming acquainted with a deep, rich world that W!Games have built up to begin exploiting with future titles – like a harvester exploits a bit of land in Greed Corp.