Perimeter review

This is driving me nuts. Perimeter makes the bold claim of being 'real-time strategy reborn' and although we all know games tend to exaggerate their worth (or at least their publishers like to), it is a game that puts some much needed innovation into what is one of the stalest genres on the PC today. It's almost as if you can smell the decay as it sets in; an odour that calls to mind construction queues, resource-gathering, bad path-finding and optimum build paths.

If developers K-D Lab have blasted electrifying bolts of energy into a stiffened RTS corpse, why am I not sharing in their gleeful, manic laughter as the resulting creation begins to tear into all that oppose it? Why am I still pulling my hair out?

Staple ingredients

The Frame is the heart of your base and your population centre. Don't lose it behind the sofa.

I'm not sharing in the enthusiasm, the excitement that many of my peers are expressing, and that's what's driving me as nuts as the niggles in the game itself. When the buzz all about you is so positive, when the convictions are so strong, it doesn't feel good to be the one guy with reservations. You know how it feels, we've all been there at one time or another. I could cop out and tell everyone who reads this review that Perimeter is great, how it rejuvenates RTS gaming and how I worship it and want to have its babies.

What would be the point in that? I'm here to tell you my story about Perimeter. It's what I'm paid to do; it's what you expected when you came here. So let's get to it. Are you ready with your clipboard? Good. Fill a tick in each of the following boxes: "Far future", "Base building", "Three factions", "Upgradable structures" and "Annoying aide."

Shields up

Energy cores do their thing, making the ground very shiny in the process.

The latter refers to that unofficial RTS staple - the invisible assistant who narrates everything that is happening - this time manifest in several particularly grating incarnations. Good voice talent and computer games aren't known to be regular bedfellows, but the three faction advisors are particularly prominent examples of aural irritation and yet manage to be just informative enough for you to be unable to ignore them. That's Perimeter's first black mark and it might be a relatively minor point but it does fray nerves.

Now, onto the meat of the game. Perimeter offers the staple multiplayer/skirmish mode as well as one of those campaigns where, bafflingly, every mission is so critical that failure would mean the end of all things (you have to wonder who plans overall strategies that are perpetually on the point of total collapse). The latter not only pitches you against rival factions, but also sees you fighting the nightmare hordes known as The Scourge. The Scourge, a distraction compared to rival factions, manifest themselves as the darkness within us all, apparently. Basically, this means they pop out of designated hive structures or, more often, simply emerge from nondescript areas of the map and make a bee-line for your base, be it in the guise of a cloud of birds, a flood of insects or what seem to be giant eyeballs. You could fight against their unrelenting advance using your finely tuned tactical finesse, or you could just raise the perimeter.

Perimeter's eponymous feature is an impenetrable shield - a dome of energy which arcs out from every energy core of your base to ensure the safety of everything that exists inside it. Against the mindless advance of The Scourge a perimeter and a sense of timing is all you will really need - between each raising you are free to get on with whatever your mission's goals may be. There is, of course, a catch, the caveat being that a raised perimeter rapidly drains your energy reserves and, in this particular RTS, energy is your one resource. This also means that, against intelligent opponents, a perimeter is merely a stopgap.

Core concepts

Once all that terrain is terraformed to zero-level the reach and effectiveness of those cores will be improved.

Perimeter's approach to resource gathering is another of its originalities. Rather than having set areas of the map which produce Tiberium, spice, wood, gold or whatever your choice poison might be, energy is instead extracted from 'zero-level' ground. Zero-level is a little like sea level - a particular altitude at which your nano-technology functions and at which you build structures; a giant shiny plate off of which your war effort hungrily feasts. When they're not acting as the backbone of your perimeter, your energy cores spend their time sucking up limitless power from any zero-level terrain that exists around them. As long as you keep the land flat and your cores well-positioned, you will generate enough energy to create additional structures, power your perimeter when needed and build combat units.

Key to your development are five non-combat units known as Buildmasters or Brigadiers, all of which can be transformed into the other when needed. Buildmasters beam energy to new structures to facilitate their construction, whereas Brigadiers spawn terraforming robots which terraform the terrain to zero-level. The Brigadier/Buildmaster balance you dictate naturally affects the development of your base. Should you wish to acquire a greater resource pool, then the only way to do so is to increase the physical size of your base, expanding it with more energy cores, terraforming as you go, and, naturally, having to build additional defences as you see fit. Naturally, this concept, coupled with a fixed number of Brigadiers and Buildmasters, introduces different tactical considerations.

As far as the structures at your disposal go, you have the standard weapons labs, factories and a few additional extras - resource 'silos' for storing extra energy, faction-specific laboratories, long-distance energy transmitters and command centres which broaden your tactical options. Each new command centre allows you to create a new squad, since you give orders to unit groups rather than each individual unit. Personally, I think this removes irritating micromanagement, but I imagine it may irk some. So, let's get onto those units.

Magic formula

Most laboratories can be upgraded, giving you access to more advanced unit combinations.

There are no simple tanks in Perimeter. In fact, all the units are a tiny bit abstract in their design. That's nothing, however, compared to how they are actually constructed.

From the three plants at your disposal - producing officer, technician and soldier units - you produce units which are then reassembled into more powerful ones according to whichever 'recipes' are available to you as dictated by the labs you have constructed. Confused? Here's an example: After building three technicians and six soldiers, all of which are automatically assigned to a squad post construction, you have the option to convert them into a rocket launcher unit, providing you have a rocket lab at your disposal. With a click of a button, the nine little robots have merged into a new form. Expanding this concept sees you merging different numbers of the three units and, as your labs become more advanced, producing more powerful and more diverse units which can later be re-assembled into something else to fit a new tactical consideration. Need a unit with anti-aircraft capabilities? If you have the right combination, you can make an instant switch. Isn't nano-technology great? It might be a little bit greater if you had shortcut keys to build certain unit combinations and save yourself unnecessary clicking. I'd be even happier if my futuristic technology stopped my units from doing silly things. They can't cross the void of chaos? Well, why are they even trundling into it? My tanks never tried to swim in Command and Conquer, and that was a decade ago. While we're on the subject, why is my sniper squad not even attacking the target I told it to?

Regardless of such flaws, there is an even more abstract concept at work now. Your enemy's units also change into something else in front of your very eyes to suit a new purpose and, providing you have the right mix of raw units, yours can do the same too. It takes some time to learn the effectiveness and the requirements of each of the units and having each squad restricted to existing as only one unit type at a time is even more of a tactical complication. Different types of units are also countered by different base defences and so it's extremely important to build aerial, ground-based and subterranean defences concurrently as any deficiency is easily exploited. Subterranean units are a particular menace, given that they disrupt your precious zero-level terrain and can tunnel under a raised perimeter. However, the effectiveness of many units is based less on rate of fire, strength and so forth and more on what other units they are able to attack.

Balance of Power

You must balance your energy production with its use. Tip the scales the wrong way and your war effort is crippled.

All these different unit types, however, are all pretty much unfazed by terrain. Your terraforming duties serve only to further your industrial needs as even terrain that cannot be brought to zero level can still be crossed by any unit. The exception to the rule is ditches, which make a kind of moat for your protection but, despite this, the largely passable landscapes and lack of fog of war, means that making a bee-line for the enemy base is your only real move, there's no passes to be held or bridges to be seized and no resources to be closely guarded.

That is, except, your own. Sneaky tactical tomfoolery means you can sometimes capture opposing structures and power cores. Since cores and energy transmitters inevitably link in a chain, capturing a link can deprive an opponent of vital power and potentially destabilise their carefully-balanced industrial output. In practice, this is not as easy as it should be, as see-sawing resource control would (and should) be a lot of fun. However, none of Perimeter's skirmishes are short affairs and when the excrement hits the extractor it inevitably becomes a very lengthy battle of attrition. It's easy to build a sprawling, heavily fortified nano-metropolis and, because you have a limit on squad numbers but not on defensive turrets, you can outgun your opposition and even begin base vs. base combats, ever so slightly reminiscent of Rampart. These quickly start to feel a little ridiculous as your raise your perimeter, hurriedly construct turrets under its protection, and then lower it, watching your turrets duel it out with the corresponding extremities of the opposition's base.

The Remains of the Day

Poor terrain for terraforming, but it makes little tactical difference.

So, after picking apart the Perimeter pie, just what were the tastiest portions? What's the new flavour like?

Your tactical focus has shifted. No longer are you controlling key areas of the map and monopolising resources. This time around, you're actually making your own and then closely guarding it. With the aid of your perimeter and plenty of cheap-and-easy static defences this isn't particularly difficult, just as long as you cover your bases. Taking down your opponents is as much about whittling down their resources as outgunning them, outmanoeuvring him being far less important. This certainly makes combat feel very different, but, at the same time, more like a hammer-to-a-wall slog as opposed to just using a bulldozer. Being able to re-assemble units on the fly is a great idea, however, and if you can out think your opponent in what is essentially a very complex version of scissor-paper-stone then you will have a considerable advantage, although many units are still too similar in effect, firing range and durability. Limited squad numbers force you to use them where it counts but also mean you can lose them rather quickly. It's not easy work. Does it sound like your kind of thing? That's the big question. This job, this business, is always subjective to a greater or lesser degree. Ask yourself if the changes Perimeter has made to the face of real-time strategy appeal to you. This is very much a case of taste.

Personally, I think this is a lateral development for the genre. I hail the ambition, I commend the experimentation and I recognise the potential. However, I wish it still didn't sport some of the genre’s silly little annoyances and the whole thing is a little too unbalanced in its execution. Perimeter works well as a real-time strategy game, but it could work better.