The Red Solstice dropped on July 9th. I was supposed to have a review come out just after San Diego Comic-Con, but a strange thing happened. I couldn’t stop playing The Red Solstice. That isn’t something that happens often in the line of work I do. Sure, I have a great deal of fun playing and reviewing games, but when one begins to take up my personal play time that means its something special -at least in my eyes.
The thing about The Red Solstice is that it isn’t the kind of game I usually like, or get into. The Red Solstice is a tactical, squad-based survival game that sees a team of Space Marines battling it out on Mars. Think of it like a mixture of something view the top-down perspective of Warcraft 3, with a mixture of Xcom Enemy Unknown. Add into that an ever changing map that changes with every play and you have a game with near limitless replay potential.
Gameplay comes in two forms over singleplayer and multplayer components. In single player you control a team of Space Marines as team leader. This isn’t turn-based like in Xcom, but you can slow down time to issue individual
commands. So while you only
have control over your lead
character during normal play,
when you initiate the tactical
mode” you can set individual
waypoints, active character specific abilities, check and swap items between team-members, target objectives, and a few other cool things. This turns what could have been a pretty basic point-and-click action game and turns it into a deep tactical experience.
Each team-member comes with their own weapon loads outs as well as abilities and items. Not only that, but The Red Solstice offers up and RPG upgrade system that lets you take XP points earned in battle and apply them to the litany of stats each character has. It’s laid out in much the same way something like League of Legends does while on the fly with ability upgrades, but between levels the depth can be intimidating. This isn’t something where you just pass out points across three or four stats, instead there are over a dozen places to put points into. It’s less PC RPG and more along the lines of grander pen and paper RPG.
All these things are incredibly important as The Red Solstice is no walk in the park, even on the easiest level. You will be looking at around 30 hours of gameplay just going through the singleplayer game alone because of the challenge. This in and of itself would be enough to make me happy as I don’t really do the multiplayer thing, but the multiplayer here also shines. Everything that you do and learn from the singleplayer experience will only serve to give you a better multiplayer experience, because unlike the big shooters out there, The Red Solstice serves up a multiplayer that uses an 8 player co-op survival experience that rewards actual teamwork.
When dealing with multiplayer up to 8 players will get the opportunity to tackle 6 maps. These maps are pretty large and it can take a team a good chunk of time to complete. I know it may seem like 6 maps is a pretty paltry number, but events and missions within each of these maps are always randomly generated. This means that every time you jump into a co-op match you will be getting a fresh experience. It should also be noted that The Red Solstice is an open-word experience, so you’ll get an objective, but can see to it however you choose, by whatever path you choose. Multiplayer also opens up a number of classes to take over so that squad makeup will play a factor in how you go about taking on missions. You’ll also have the ability to rank up the more you play online, and this ranking will open up new classes and abilities so you’ll always have a new character or special power
to play and learn.
The Red Solstice is the kind of
game that would have been
really popular during the days
of Warcraft 3 mods, but the
game is so well put together that it works just as well today. The Red Solstice is a great game to play in singleplayer with its long story, even if it does fall on the silly side of things, but if you want a “true” multiplayer experience you’ll be hard pressed to find a better game. The Red Solstice is the kind of multiplayer game for the hardcore, the players that value teamwork and tactics, and for those that are up for a real challenge.
Red Solstice is an engaging game that is quickly making me love mulitplayer gaming. I should also note that I’m pretty bad and pretty new to the multiplayer communities that these sort of games have. They tend to disgust me with how they carry themselves, but in Red Solstice I have found some of the best players on the internet. I was welcomed into games and given solid advice during play. Not once was I verbally attacked or berated which made the experience a lot of fun.
The Red Solstice is incredibly fun and offers up the best co-op gameplay experience this year. The graphics also fit the world and while they aren’t going to tax your system, they do well to flesh out the world around you. Yes, there is a steep learning curve here as The Red Solstice is no walk in the park, but tackling the singleplayer game will do a good job of teaching you the basics. There are of course a few issues with the game, but nothing that takes away from the experience. In singleplayer you will run into the occasional pathfinding problem with you AI team. You may also have a hell of a time dealing with the amount of micro-managing the game asks of you, even on the fly. None of this is enough of an issue to not recommend the game. The Red Solstice is a lot of fun and falls into the category of that that deosn’t get deleted on my Steam library after a review.
" The thing about The Red Solstice is that it isn't the kind of game I usually like, or get into."
The Red Solstice
PC