Pros: Great graphics and sound, terrific interface, wonderful and varied gameplay...
Cons: ... the storyline and characters are very cheesy (though enjoyably so!)
The Bottom Line: Even if you've only vaguely enjoyed Real Time Strategy games before, take a look at this. If you're an RTS fan, you're sure to love it.
Paraworld is an absolutely superb game that has had me hooked for weeks, and shows no sign of releasing its grip. It’s an RTS (Real-Time Strategy) and though on the face of it the game appears quite simple, there’s a huge amount of depth to the tactical game play and many, many hours of gaming fun to be had.
The characters and storyline would be at home in a made for TV sci-fi movie; three scientists speculate that there is a parallel dimension from which much of what we view as our own history comes from. They are refused funding by everyone until a scientific research institute called “SEAS” comes to their aid - but of course they’re the bad guys and trying to get them killed surreptitiously. The three scientists also happen to be great fighters, funnily enough, and can form armies in order to aid their quest. The cut scenes are good quality and the in-game graphics superb. The only slight problem with them was that the scrolling is a little jerky. You can zoom in and out of any aspect of the map, and swing the perspective round with ease. The voice acting is cheesy but good, and the music(written by Pierre Langer an Tilman Sillescu) is absolutely majestic, it could easily grace a major movie release. The graphics occasionally get a bit messy in that some random shapes sometimes appear on top of the image, which is annoying, but this is a relatively rare occurrence and I’m always so engrossed in the game that I just keep playing until the glitches go away - which they always do in the end. So, top marks for aesthetics!
All of which would, of course, be fairly academic if the game itself wasn’t good. After a tutorial that gets slightly irksome, you are thrown into the game proper, though not quite at the deep end. The first couple of missions are dead easy and very simple. The tutorial gets slightly annoying but does a pretty good job of getting you used to the basic controls and the screen layout, but it will take you a good few hours of playing before you truly realise just how well designed the interface is, what everything does, and just how much information is packed onto the screen at any given time. Though the manual is quite helpful (albeit the translation isn’t always perfect - the game originates in Germany), there is no substitute for experience and after a while you’ll realise just why certain things appear the way they do. So, top marks for the interface as well…
The major elements in this game are, as you would expect, base-building and conquest. Each of these is well incorporated, and the really great thing about the game is that there are almost always several very different ways of achieving something. Each mission in the Campaign mode has its own specific objectives and sub-quests, which do not have to be completed but which can earn you bonus points that carry over to the start of the next mission, and can then be spent on extra resources or units to begin that game with. You can of course choose to start without these advantages even if you have the points available to spend.
Base-building consists of building units, gathering resources and creating buildings that can make more units or perform certain duties. You can also build various fortifications; the stronger these are the more resources will be used up to build them, and the more time they take to build. They range from simple fences to self-manned towers that shoot at any enemy in range You can also progress though 5 “epochs”, given enough resources and choosing to develop them, and with each advance you get more options in terms of units you can build and advances you can make. For instance, build a Forrester’s Lodge gives you extra storage space for wood and food, and placing it near a forest means your workers don’t have to travel as far to unload. When you go to Epoch 2, you can create an upgrade which lets your workers collect wood faster, or carry more in a single trip. There are only 3 main resource - food, wood and stone - but considering all the other things you’ll have to be keeping an eye on simultaneously, that’s quite enough!
One of the main attractions of this game is that it features dinosaurs. It doesn’t matter how old you are, dinosaurs are cool (don’t try to deny it). You can build dino farms in your bases (or outside, in fact - buildings can be built anywhere, but if you leave them with no protection at all, they might not last very long!) , and these come in three sizes - small, medium and large. The small ones include Scouts and Raptor handlers, medium include the mighty stegosaurus, while the large ones include Brachiosaurus. There are melee and ranged attack as well as transport modes of each dinosaur, and they can all be converted later on if you want as well. Several other animals are available too including woolly mammoths, warthogs and sabre-toothed tigers. Each one is well animated and there are certainly a large selection to choose from (as long as you progress far enough through the game). The animation is far more detailed than it looks, too, since once you get the big dinosaurs you will notice them actually picking up the human battlers and throwing them. (At least, that was the point I started looking more carefully at the animations and realised just how good they were.) A number of sea creatures such as transport turtles are there as well - in fact these huge, slow creatures are among the most important in the game, though it takes a while to realise it. (The can transport a number of creatures and are amphibious, which is dead handy sometimes!)
As you will have gathered from the above, there are a large number of human fighters to choose from as well. Initially you just have a choice of spearmen (even though they can be women they're called spearmen... weird!), warriors or archers. Some are suited to fighting animals, some humans, some buildings. Things get more interesting later on, and in the meantime there is still the chance to upgrade your units. At any one time you can have up to 52 units (with the right buildings in place to increase your initial amount), which may not seem like many - but believe me, when you’re in the thick of the action, it’s more than enough. Each unit has its own hit points, melee damage, ranged damage, etc and there are five levels of this. Not only can you only have 52 individual units at any one time, but you can for instance only have one at level 5, three at level 4, and so on. Managing all of this (and timing your levelling up to the maximum possible effect is quit a skill, but very rewarding once you get the hang of it.
You will definitely have to have at least two groups on the go simultaneously at times if you want to actually win the mission you’re playing. You can control your units in groups (rubber-banding or selecting individually by holding down the Shift key), or send individuals off on a particular quest if you want. This lets you set up complex series of commands and adds a lot more depth to the game, because the only limit to the number of simultaneous objectives you’re aiming for is your own ability. This can be a little confusing at first, but you soon get used to it. The trick is to work out a strategy for each mission - you definitely can’t rely on a single strategy to get you through all of them. I won’t suggest any particular strategy as the joy in this game is finding your own and making it work. There are practically no points in the game where only a single approach will have the desired approach, though the right approach requires the right build-up and units to carry it out, of course.
There are three tribes in you can control in the game, depending on the scenario. Not only do the units in each tribe look differently have have a different name, but they also have differing abilities and attributes. Warriors in the Dustrider tribe, for instance, can also build structures and have mobile resource centres, whereas the Norse tribe have fixed resource centres and the warriors can only fight, not build. Again, this is something that initially seems an insignificant difference, but when you've got further into the game turns out to be crucial. Your strategy has to take into account the strengths and weakness of the tribe you're controlling at the time.
Apart from your units, which can all be upgraded as mentioned already in terms of levels and special abilities, you have heroes. (Yet another subtle increase in complexity is that certain units can only be built when a particular hero has reached a certain level.) There are your three starting heroes - Cole, Ada and Bela, each with their own special abilities, and you can gain more as you go along - you can only recruit heroes who've come into the storyline already. If you build a tavern you can recruit other heroes that you’ve encountered along the way or bring back heroes lost in combat - for a price. The price mainly comes in the form of skulls, which you gain when you defeat enemies (the Barbarians in particular take an instant dislike to you), or various wild animals. Some of these are aggressive, some passive. The more difficult they are to defeat, the more skulls you can get. The skulls can be used in levelling up heroes / units as well, and might be needed for specific building projects. In some missions, you lose if you let a particular hero die - so be careful!
Because... I have found that if you’re not careful, one or two levels can be made impossible if you’ve got to get one or more heroes to a certain place. Heroes can die, but can be brought back. However if you’ve defeated all of your enemies and destroyed the indigenous wildlife (how could you, you utter cad!) and the all of the nests where the indigenous wildlife are born, you’ll be stuck if you need to resurrect a hero without having the skulls to do it. I came perilously close to making this mistake (okay so I’m an utter cad…), only one nest remained but that was enough (took some patience though). It is quite cool the way the animals grow slowly over time - and the younger they are, the less skulls they yield. It’s this type of attention to detail, coupled with the great aesthetics, cheesy but engaging storyline, slick interface and open game play that encourages you to take your own path to victory that make this such a wonderful game. The missions in the campaign are well thought out and quite varied, so it doesn’t at all feel as though you’re simply doing the same thing over and over again with minimal changes to the scenery.
The Campaign mode will take you many hours to complete, but if you finish that there’s a “Skirmish” mode that enables you to play, effectively, a single (sometimes wide-ranging) battle against one or more opponent, any number of which can be AI controlled. There are plentiful skirmish scenarios to play, each different, with three different types of game (win condition is being the last survivor, dominating landscape, etc) and many more hours of game play to be had. This in addition to a dedicated multiplayer mode… this game could well take over your life if it let you.
Sadly it’s probably all but unknown outside Germany and possibly mainland Europe. I only came across it by chance, but I’m sure glad that I did. It’s available as a DVD-ROM released as a collaboration as SEK, Sunflower and Deep Silver and only cost me four quid (about eight dollars). At the moment, it’s looking like one of the best gaming bargains I’ve ever had!
System Specs
The requirements for this game are quite high. The minimum configuration is:
CPU: 1.6GHz
RAM: 512Mb
HDD Space: 3.4Gb
DirectX 9.0c
Video card: 128Mb
OS: Windows XP or 2000
Recommended specs:
CPU: 3 GHz
RAM: 1 Gb
The system I ran it on:
CPU: Core 2 Duo 4300
RAM: 1Gb
Video card: GeForce 7500LE
OS: Windows Vista (and it worked fine, I didn’t need to put it in compatibility mode)
The PEGI rating is 12+ for violence (it is a strategy war game after all) and, apparently, language. I’ve played this game for a long time but don’t remember any bad language (bad dialogue yes, but not bad language!). I wouldn’t say that it’s particularly gory.
Another good RTS is Homeworld. It’s a game that fans of the genre will enjoy; Paraworld though is so enjoyable that it may well create new fans of the genre.
I am putting together a fansite for this game - I really am that taken with it - check out http://www.paraworld.darscom.net/
The Gold Edition includes ParaWorld and expands it by adding two new units, two new heroes, a new upgrade, a new building, three new single player and...More at GamersGate
NEW RETAIL DVD CASE EDITION 3 different LAN and Internet multiplayer modes for up to 8 players Wage war for control of a prehistoric parallel world in...More at eBay
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