Now good. Review of Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. Ashes Of The Singularity - Guided Tour Game review ashes of the singularity

Developer and Publisher: Stardock Entertainment.
Genre: RTS with benchmark elements.
Similar games: Supreme Commander, Total Annihilation.
Platforms: PC.
Minimum system requirements: Win 7 64, 4-core processor, 6 GB RAM, GeForce 660 or R7 360, 13 GB hard disk space.
Recommended: Win 10 64, Core i5, 16GB RAM, GTX 970 or R9 390.
Multiplayer: yes.

The wonderful era of the PC, the apogee of which fell on the year 2005, presented us with insanely ambitious, full of bugs and incomprehensible somewhere half of gamers toys. Then came the seventh generation consoles, the world was captured by multi-platform blockbusters, debugged, optimized and understandable, like two or two. Ashes of the singularity- a guest from the past, her sight even knocks out a tear. Proven gameplay, experienced developers, advanced technologies, Napoleonic ambitions, and all together - a semi-edible product that obviously not every connoisseur will digest.

I'll introduce you to the course. Ashes of the singularity conceived as the first strategy on DirectX 12, and in this case it means not so much beautiful photorealistic graphics as large-scale panoramas of battles. If you take one unit, it looks like a war machine from any fantasy. All sorts of lasers and lightning as his attacks are not at all remarkable. The trick is that in your army there may be thousands and even tens of thousands of such units, and you can observe at least the behavior of each individual tank, at least observe the whole picture of the battle, taking off the camera into the sky.

But if the words "Chapter One" in the title of the campaign inspire hope to see something decent in the addition, then sleepy music and slurred sounds are unlikely to replace it. The latter are partly reminiscent of toy lasers, partly a rumbling in the stomach. Where Ashes cannot take the technology, it has obvious problems with its own style: it cannot be described otherwise than by the word "ordinary".

By and large, Ashes of the singularity- this is only a "skirmish" on 25 available cards. Not so little, especially if you play not only with the computer, but also with your friends. But this game both strived for more and deserves more. It remains to be hoped that Stardock will have the resources to increase the meat of interesting content on sensible mechanics.

Joy:

• Scale.
• Streaming economy.
• Cutting edge graphics.
• Advanced AI.

Nasty things:

• High system requirements.
• Unsatisfactory single player campaign.
• Unremarkable visual style and slurred sound.

Score: 7.0

Despite the large number of reservations, Ashes of the singularity able to give a lot of hours of unusual strategic gameplay and become some kind of alternative, but still. If, of course, you can run it on your computer.

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game from the developers of Oxide Games. It's fair to say that the Nitrous game engine and the game itself were created with the participation of Stardock Entertainment, which in turn have released such successful projects as Galactic Civilizations and Sins of Solar Empire. The strategy genre is fading away, less and less you can see new game, around which there is a lot of noise. Before us is the most typical strategy with one exception, dozens of units were replaced by hundreds. The setting of the distant future and the war for resources.

Launch Trailer

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away!

The year is 2178. Technological progress has gotten out of human control. The resource Turinium, necessary for humans, can be obtained by processing other planets. A coalition of people remotely sends robots into battle against other inorganic people who are subordinate to the AI ​​The Substrate.

In short, people send robots against robots to war for a resource that is needed by both. There is no plot here.

Gameplay Trailer

The most common strategy ... Almost ...

At the start of the game, you have the main building Nexus and some engineers. Engineers are your builders, equip resource deposits. They also build buildings and repair units.

All of your buildings in the game are connected by a yellow path. As you conquer new regions, you create a link between the resources of other regions and your Nexus.
Economy
Probably too loud a word for local interaction with resources. Each controlled deposit brings resources, in order to increase the growth, it is necessary to equip them. Your resource has three indicators: its income / expense, current availability, capacity. When you build buildings or units, costs appear. Try to maintain a balance between capacity and zero balance by rebuilding buildings and units at peak productivity.

Resources only 4, primary 2

• Metal is the first simple resource, material for the construction of buildings and units. It is mined in deposits.
• Radioactives are the second simple resource, they are spent on fuel for advanced buildings and units.
• Turinium - some regions may contain turinium generators, may be a prerequisite for winning.
• Quantum is a super resource used to improve all technologies. Also allows you to use the global abilities of the Nexus.

Battles
The map is divided into regions where resources and generators are located. They will be protected by neutral troops, after clearing the neutrals return over time, and you need to protect your resource network. In addition to neutral units, you will have a specific enemy or several at once. Different buildings produce different units: flying, ground, scouts, etc. Flying units will provide reconnaissance and cover from the sky. Ground attack at close and long range. Others provide support in battle. On planets with low gravity, altitude planning is possible. Each combat unit has indicators of range, speed and damage.

Victory conditions
As in all strategies, destroy all opponents or control the required amount of Turinium. If you accumulate enough resources, you will have the opportunity to build one of the global weapons.

• Engineer call. At the start of the game, Engineers can only be crafted in the Nexus. As the territories expand, you will move further and further from the Nexus. So, you can spend the resource Quantum to call engineers wherever you want.
• Players can build a building that can teleport units to a designated location by spending a Quantum resource. This can allow you to flank the enemy.
• Orbital strike - everything is clear here, it spends the Quantum.
• Orbital shield.

Not exactly Star Wars ...

At first glance, it's hard to believe that this is a 2016 game. Space strategy has a clumsy appearance and curve control. Do you remember what 6-year-old Starcraft II looks like, in which all the graphic elements synergize and create a single picture? How does Blizzard's strategy go? The opposite is true here.

Appearance
The soapiest landscape in recent times that I just saw. And on the soapy landscape, lurid plastic spacecraft roll and shoot with all the colors of the rainbow. It has nothing to do with graphics settings and selected terrain. Is it really difficult to make friends with developers with a color scheme and create not a teenager's fantasy, but a rich bright picture? Good examples among space games a lot: series Mass effect, Dead space, again Starcraft. In Ashes of the Singularity, every object looks like a foreign body, you want to destroy them more than develop.

The sound and music are on a high level, but you shouldn't expect anything special.

Control
I can't find the right words. Each order is issued with a delay, and you don't think it happens at a good frame rate. Models of interaction with the game world and the player (collision models) do not match the texture models. You can click on the building, but it will not be highlighted. Every action causes anguish, maybe with a habit it will pass.

The camera can be zoomed out and the process can be observed

All of the above is fixable. But isn't it easier to do well right away than to correct it later? Apparently, developers are not looking for easy ways.

Meta-units

All the same units are combined into groups, each behaving like the others. The game interface makes it easy to collect such groups, by choosing one, you will have the entire battle group stand out. Combat units do not crowd, but are very cleverly distributed on the front line, like water spilled on the floor. Engineers do the same when building.

Everything is in "business"

"V real world flying bomber is individual, it has weapons, radar, warheads. But in our game you can add your bomber to the meta-group. And all units will behave based on the resources of the whole meta-group. "

The developers want to say that instead of controlling the unit, you have control of the "flock", and the game itself knows how to behave this "flock". You can focus on global war, you do not need to manage each "stack" of 5 units like in other RTS.

According to the developers, the Nitrous engine is capable of simulating battles involving up to ten thousand individual units. Sounds great, but I tested a hundred units on GTX 970 + Corei5 4570, and the game does not give the desired performance at maximum quality settings, what is really needed for thousands of them?

Conclusion

Aside from strategy lovers, Ashes of the Singularity is not easy to advise anyone. The game can be forgiven for its graphic neglect, given the fact that the emphasis is on drawing more combat units. Yes, this can be viewed as interesting feature, if you don’t put bread in your mouth, let the strategy play. Also interesting is the mechanics of advancing and capturing territory. The "strategists" have already decided everything themselves, and I advise the others to pass by at a price of 699 rubles.

The wonderful era of the PC, the apogee of which fell on the year 2005, presented us with insanely ambitious, full of bugs and incomprehensible somewhere half of gamers toys. Then came the seventh generation consoles, the world was captured by multi-platform blockbusters, debugged, optimized and understandable, like two or two. Ashes of the Singularity is a guest from the past, her sight even knocks out a tear. Proven gameplay, experienced developers, advanced technologies, Napoleonic ambitions, and all together - a semi-edible product that obviously not every connoisseur will digest.

I'll introduce you to the course. Ashes of the Singularity is conceived as the first strategy for DirectX 12, and in this case it means not so much beautiful photorealistic graphics as large-scale panoramas of battles. If you take one unit, it looks like a war machine from any fantasy. All sorts of lasers and lightning as his attacks are not at all remarkable. The trick is that in your army there may be thousands and even tens of thousands of such units, and you can observe at least the behavior of each individual tank, at least observe the whole picture of the battle, taking off the camera into the sky.

Unlike Total war, where, after all, the tactical unit is the squad, in Ashes of the Singularity A1 devours huge resources, allowing each) "an individual robot not to get lost in a common dump Instead of maniples methodically grinding one one, here is a hefty anthill, where you can't tell right away who It slows down like a Moscow traffic jam, especially if your video card does not support DirectX 12, which really greatly increases performance. At high settings, you get a bright extravaganza of special effects, but at low settings, rather, some kind of Crimsonland. So be Ashes just a benchmark game, the review would end somewhere at this point.

But remember the early 2000s and such typical PC games that always with character In Ashes of the Singularity, you need to spend a few hours, and then it is quite possible to get a taste. Let's start with the fact that AI does not eat its resources in vain, and the computer adversary is unusually flexible in his strategy. Loading the same save in the hope of getting ready for the bot's actions, you can first get an aviation attack on your rear, another time - a cruiser raid on the second base, and the third time, when the defenses of the bases are fortified, - wait for a frontal attack of the dreadnought on your own. the main army. Until you cover the entire map with scouts, you will not see victory.

The gameplay of Ashes of the Singularity is precisely strategic, that is, it requires thinking ahead, not pressing buttons quickly, chasing seconds and crumbs of resources. The latter here are not measured in units at all, you only monitor the inflow and flow. Are the warehouses empty? It doesn't matter: order a couple of hundred units on credit (you can even turn on auto production), lay a dozen buildings, and they will be built as materials come from the mining mines. The smaller the inflow, the slower the construction will go. Squeeze the mines from the enemy, keep the balance of all types of troops - and you will slowly start to win. In Ashes, you have to forget about games for 15-20 minutes. The armies are large, but the maps are even larger, and the pace of the game is such that actions at different ends of the map take place as in different realities. The transfer of troops between "fronts can take so long that it is faster to summon a worker from orbit, build new factories and hire another army.

Troops in Ashes of the Singularity are categorized not only by function (aircraft, artillery, repairmen), but also by severity. Small frigates - cannon fodder in order to capture more key positions in the early stages. Cruisers are already strength, but with a narrow area of ​​application: Zeus's lightning will instantly cope with a trifle, and Nemesis, for example, are good against heavy ships. Leading the army are dreadnoughts, each of which counts, and no wonder: these giant ships level up after each successful battle, acquiring new guns, defense drones and other bells and whistles. However, even this force can break against a battery of defensive turrets, of which Ashes of the Singularity has a rich choice - an unusual thing for modern strategies that are balanced for the sake of dynamics and surprise attacks.

There are many ways to break the mold, such as focusing on aviation, which will reach and cover a vulnerability in defense in seconds. Or build generators "quanta" to deliver orbital strikes, speed up resource extraction or summon units to unexpected points for the enemy. These abilities are unique to each of the two races: Post-humans and Substratum - which are not so much, but still differ and the balance of characteristics.

Having painted a picture of a very good RTS, we turn to the obvious "question: does such a game need a technologically advanced, but gluttonous engine for hardware, which has clearly left a large part of the target audience in the outside? some of the time you view the battlefield from a height, so the unit models are indistinguishable from sprites, the landscape of the maps is rather dreary, there is no physics, the explosions are cartoonish, and the buildings are built on a grid, just like 20 years ago.

Miracle AI only copes with the simplest tasks, such as wall-to-wall combat or taking positions in open areas. But leading the army through a narrow gorge, retreating in time, throwing the right units into the attack at the right moment - before that the AI ​​will not think of itself, and the player is deprived of fine control: any sudden movement creates a jam, and half of the units begin to chaotically “dance in circles”. It is especially difficult with aviation, which cuts such loops that you can't even catch it right away with chicken litter. It is clear that a real plane cannot hover in the air, but why fly under anti-aircraft guns?

Plus, Ashes of the Singularity is simply not tapping into its great potential. For example, Stardock has no money left for a decent campaign. And even if we omit the primitive story of the war of the good against the bad, as well as missions that are more reminiscent of extended training, we still cannot close our eyes to the text briefings in the ugly windows. And to the frank crap scripts, like in the mission for the defense of the reactor, where the last wave of attackers passes 10 minutes before the end of the timer, and the rest of the mission you just have to look at the screen. Needless to say, the difficulty levels differ only in the numbers of characteristics, and there is a campaign only for one of the races? Shikanuli with graphics - and ended up in the B-class on the same shelf with some Deserts of Kharak.

But if the words “Chapter One” in the title of the campaign inspire hope to see something decent in the addition, then sleepy music and slurred sounds are unlikely to replace it. The latter are partly reminiscent of toy lasers, partly a rumbling in the stomach. Where Ashes fails to take on technology, it has obvious problems with its own style: it cannot be described as anything other than “normal”.

By and large, Ashes of the Singularity is just a "skirmish" on 25 available maps. Not so little, especially if you play not only with the computer. but also with friends. But this game was striving for more and deserves more. It remains to be hoped that Stardock will have the resources to increase the meat of interesting content on sensible mechanics.

Verdict

Despite the large number of reservations, Ashes of the Singularity is able to give many hours of unusual strategic gameplay and become some kind of, but still an alternative to Starcraft 2. If, of course, you can run it on your computer.

Final grade: 7 points out of 10!

Modesty has never been one of the virtues. The creators of the "gold standard 4X strategy" (and their colleagues from) promised "innovative and deep strategic gameplay" of unprecedented proportions. Unfortunately, in fact, they turned out to be a kind of time machine - the game resembles that distant era when each RTS clone wanted to seem cutting edge and unique.

Post nonsense

Sad thoughts arise from the very beginning of the plot, which is intended to explain game mechanics a hackneyed set of stereotypes and absurdities. Once again we are sent to the distant future. People have finally reached the singularity with artificial intelligence and moved to a new stage of development, becoming "posthuman". The Posthuman Coalition keeps a strict record of the number of these advanced individuals - there are only a little more than a hundred of them. This is how the universe is protected from complete plunder, because the main occupation of the "elite" is the colonization and privatization of planets in order to extract the resource of turinium (does it resemble anything?) And the ephemeral "progress of mankind". At the same time, one posthuman easily controls the huge infrastructure of the planet, connecting to the nexus - the central command center through which he gives orders to unmanned vehicles.

It makes no sense to seriously follow turns and unexpected revelations. Not only is the whole story presented in the form of dialogues of talking heads against the background of sluggishly animated screensavers, but it is also predictable to the limit - another variation on the theme of the war of people and machines.

Of course, making claims about the plot of the RTS, which is also clearly focused on multiplayer, is not too fair. Look, he, too, was indicated only in general terms. And she tries diligently to copy her progenitor.

Ashes and diamonds

Ears stick out from everywhere - the same two resources (of course, under new names), the same queues during construction, similar angular units, the familiar logic of the formation of armies. Several mechanics from other strategies have been added to the gameplay familiar since the times: checkpoints, orbital abilities (area strikes, materialization of reinforcements from the air, and other tricks) and upgrades are now mandatory. But even for a person who has not seen what is happening on the screen will seem like a standard RTS action.

Mines tied to deposits and special buildings produce resources; engineers build bases (there are familiar factories and turrets in the assortment); Despite the pretty names from Greek mythology, the unit types are boring. Unmanned ships vary in size - from small frigates to huge dreadnoughts with the health bar of an entire army. Only they, thanks to a set of experience and "pumping", are able to arouse some kind of interest. But disappointment quickly follows - the choice is usually limited to increased damage or vitality.

There are, of course, tactical nuances. The aforementioned superpowers can be both destructive and constructive: for example, you can temporarily increase the production of resources in a certain area. Access to them is opened by the corresponding buildings, so the queue for engineers must be planned in advance. For abilities and global upgrades, a separate resource (quantum) is needed, the consumption of which must be controlled: at the right moment, one orbital strike can decide the outcome of the battle (if there is no jammer nearby).

However, the options are woefully limited. The game, in principle, does not amaze with its variety - the set of buildings is ascetic to the limit, as, indeed, the composition of the units within the framework of the "rock-paper-scissors" logic (the fleet is not represented at all - posthumans apparently neglect the sea). The differences between the two sides of the conflict are not so significant: tenacious, but slow and mobile, but flimsy. For whoever you play, the armies turn out to be monotonous, and the one who has the most wins. Added capturing turinium generators to the classic victory condition - destroying an enemy command center. However, this does not affect the fun of the missions, in most cases everything ends with a big explosion at the enemy's base. Naturally, since at the very beginning of the campaign, it is proposed to throw waves of cannon fodder at the enemy as the optimal winning strategy.

Waste crematorium

In such an awkward way, the developers hinted at their main trump card - the scale of the battles. In multiplayer, where the speed of decision making is often more important than the options available, the limited toolbox could be forgiven - if only thousands of cars exploded beautifully on the screen. Moreover, in network matches available huge maps designed for six players.

Alas, the ever-memorable system control points imposes restrictions on local topography - almost all maps are a chain of narrow canyons ending in large plateaus, and huge armies just nowhere to turn around. When there are more territories and there is a need to defend them, the troops inevitably have to be split up - the already mentioned canyons and mountain ranges interfere with fast movement across the map from one point to another. All this exacerbates the disgusting pathfinding algorithm and the turtle speed of the "meta-units" (that's how pretentiously combined groups are called here).

It is a pity for the missed opportunities also because the game technically easily "digests" large accumulations of military equipment. emphasizes that it acts as a presentation of the "revolutionary" engine Nitrous, and is also one of the first games for DirectX 12. But, despite the decent fps, problems lie in wait here: owners of Windows 7 and below may be haunted by constant graphical glitches , crashes and freezes after winning a mission. In addition, the graphics are not amazing (and the difference between the versions will be noticeable only to a very meticulous observer), and only the special effects look really good. Well, the only thing that completely and unconditionally succeeded was the interface. True, for those who seem to have hits in their track record, this is not such an achievement.

* * *

It has been almost four months since the game was released, but life is still glimmering in multiplayer. Apparently, the modern fans of the genre, sitting on a starvation diet, have enough of those limited opportunities that it provides. But only a very severe strategic cancellation syndrome can make an RTS veteran buy this game.

Cybersvine

Ashes of the singularity

Game developers today rarely release largeDLC that fixes the flaws pointed out by the player community. It's not without patches, but many people even forget about them after the release. CompanyStardock is not one of those - decideproblems of the originalAshesoftheSingularity she decided in additionEscalation.

It should be said right away that Ashes of Singularity: Escalation is not a sequel original game, but rather work on bugs. After examining the criticism of the first part, Stardock released the game eight months later with the same basic mechanics, making it more varied and tactically deep.

Ashes of Singularity is an RTS inspired by the legendary. Huge spaces, large-scale battles, high-tech mechanisms and an economic system, simplified so that you are not distracted from the permanent grinder.

If you already have the originalAshesofSingularity, then it can be upgraded toEscalation with a significant discount.

The game primarily focuses on online battles, so the original was largely criticized for a mediocre single player campaign, made for show. Escalation tried to fix this moment. Two game campaigns tell the story of the confrontation between people and a group called Prion, in which a surprisingly good-natured man will help mankind artificial intelligence... In general, the campaigns do not have enough stars from the sky, but they will not get bored either. Almost every mission will have unique tasks such as grabbing resources, which will dilute the banal goals in the spirit of "destroy the enemy." At one time, such formulaic missions were more like a standard skirmish than a full-fledged single-player campaign.

There are more videos in the game, and the dialogues are well voiced, although they do not provide a large amount of information. In principle, in this kind of strategy, the prehistory or detailed script are not so important. This is a game about battles and only about them. And in this respect Escalation is one of the best this year.

Direct competitorAshesofSingularity -new which operates mainly with the same mechanics and is even visually similar to the projectStardock. But there is an important difference -Homeworld relies on the storyline campaign.

The main advantage of Ashes of Singularity is its scale. If in the original the cards were already one of the largest in the entire history of RTS, then in Escalation they grew by another quarter. But the point is not even the size of the battlefield, but the fact that practically in every area of ​​it fights are raging, in which up to 16 people can participate at the same time. Why do you have to fight for every corner of the map? Due to the provincial system. The entire map is divided into areas that can be captured, gaining access to two game resources - metal and radioactive elements.

In addition, the number of units participating in even ordinary squabbles can reach hundreds. Compared to the original, their variety has grown significantly. This was mainly due to the emergence of aviation, but there are also newcomers among ground units, and several old designs have acquired a more futuristic look.

However, most of the changes are related to balance. Finally, in Ashes of Singularity, defensive structures have become operational. And if before the rush reigned supreme over some frigates, now you will have something to stop them. Turrets have been upgraded and more powerful. Anti-aircraft cannons can completely suppress a fairly powerful air attack, which has become very popular in Escalation due to the appearance of bombers. However, there are still problems with the overall balance. For the most part, they are due to the fact that one part of your technique becomes useless due to over-amplification of another.

In the originalAshesofSingularity's major problem was the weak differences between the races in the game. Alas,Escalation makes little difference.

The main novelty, however, is more about planning than battles. Finally, a sane strategic look has been added to the game, like in the new Homeworld. You ascend to the level of the orbital station and control the troops represented by icons on the tactical screen. Unfortunately, in this mode, it is difficult to understand the terrain, so you often have to sink to the level of ordinary skirmishes.

All in all, Ashes of Singularity is a suppression game. You capture provinces, gain an advantage, destroy the enemy. It is quite difficult to win solely through tactical skill or an efficient economic system. Quantity and strategic planning play a role. And, of course, the winner will be the one who will be more practical to manage superunits - dreadnoughts. Even a losing player can change his position, having released these titans on the battlefield in time, who, of course, still need support. The balance of the sides in Escalation is changing very dynamically, and you shouldn't leave even a weak opponent unattended.