[h1][i]“It's over, Anakin! I have the high ground!”[/i]
~Obi-Wan Kenobi[/h1]
In order to understand [b]Ground Control[/b], we should go back to the time it was released. See, the early 2000s (and this game was released exactly in 2000, in June) finally marked the end of the transition era for strategy games. And yes, strategies were a bit late. While genres like first-person shooters and platformers felt like they could seriously benefit from 3D, strategies?.. I mean, it's the genre about one unit going to war against another, right? And the fact that said unit may be represented by only a few pixels (like in, say, [b]Command & Conquer[/b]) didn't really change much. Still, there were always those who wanted a bit more. Let's not go too deep into history, which can be traced all the way back to the 80s and a game called The Sentinel (1986); let's talk about the evolution. And for strategies, things went into motion in 1995, when [b]Mindscape[/b] released their jaw-dropping epic: [b]Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat[/b].
While still utilizing 2D sprites for units, it introduced us to a fully 3D landscape. And it was... huge. Again, it wasn't the first game to experiment with elevation (technically, it was a thing since the 80s too), and what it did was pretty limited—while units did have benefits for their sight, physics-based projectile trajectories didn't get extended range, there were no damage bonuses, etc. Still, while trying to recreate [b]Warhammer[/b]'s original tabletop mechanics, [b]Mindscape[/b] changed the genre forever. Everybody started to want that. Even the games that were still heavily old-school started to utilize heightmaps. [b]Cavedog[/b]'s [b]Total Annihilation[/b], which came out in 1997 and made elevation one of its core mechanics (while heavily improving it and even introducing polygonal models), was a nice example of that. Talking about 1997, by the way: [b]Total Annihilation[/b] aside, it was also the year when [b]Blue Byte[/b]'s [b]Incubation: Time is Running Out[/b] was released. Which was, like, a 3D porn for strategy games (with heavily improved lines of sight and fire). And after that? The Hell broke loose. Tactics dived into realism ([b]Force 21[/b]), base-oriented strategies got [b]Homeworld[/b]... Like I said, the genre finally fully adopted 3D.
That's when [b]Ground Control[/b] came out. And it was... a thing. A fully 3D real-time tactics game, where height played a crucial role (no, seriously, if you got the high ground in this game? You're, like, the king of the world. It's a game-changer). With a real, no-“buts” free camera. With proper 3D models and environmental details like weather effects and dynamic lighting that directly impacted the "stealth" mechanic (a rarity for strategy games at the time). Sounds awesome, right? Well, it was. In many ways, [b]Ground Control[/b] achieved what many others tried to do. Every mission felt like a challenging tactical “puzzle,” the game really wanted you to know your units (special powers aside, each of them was unique like a chess piece), and, of course, there was multiplayer. So, it's a must-have thing in your [b]Steam[/b] library? Well... About that.
The problem with [b]Ground Control[/b] is that, while being a rather big milestone for its genre (remember, only “yesterday” we had [b]Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines[/b]), [b]Ground Control[/b]... didn't age well. For three reasons. First, there's nothing in it that those that came after don't also have. I'm talking about that certain something that makes you return to the old games, despite all of their limitations and clunkiness. I already mentioned [b]Commandos[/b]. Lots of tactical games have stealth nowadays. Even the RTS titles like [b]Age of Empires IV[/b] embraced the idea. But it didn't have that specific [b]Commandos[/b] thing, which, at the moment I write this, only one company ([b]Mimimi[/b]) can properly imitate. And even their games (which I absolutely love) still feel a lot like an imitation. Means that sometimes you'll still want to get back to original. [b]Ground Control[/b]? Everything it did, others have done better (aside from other things, [b]Ground Control[/b] is pretty minimalistic and doesn't even have the most basic settings like the ability to change speed).
Also, naturally, while looking technically impressive in 2000, [b]Ground Control[/b] simply can't impress nowadays. Which is cool; we can all appreciate retro. The problem is—[b]Ground Control[/b] is one of those games that went all-in on the technical side. While completely forgetting to look unique. Look at [b]Shadow of the Horned Rat[/b], the game that started it all. It can't impress nowadays either, for the same exact reasons, but it's [i]so-o-o[/i] beautifully designed that it's hard not to have feelings for it. And it's not only because of [b]Games Workshop[/b]'s legacy. The crew behind that game did a pretty awesome job designing it. Now, [b]Ground Control[/b]? It simply doesn't have it. It features boring-looking vehicles on boring-looking maps in a boring setting.
Talking about the setting, by the way. What we have here is corpos fighting cultists. That's it. There's a solid amount of missions (15 for each faction, plus 15 more in the expansion, in which missions are much more interesting but also much more frustrating due to things like stealth I meantioned), but they all feel kind of the same. Remember [b]Z: Steel Soldiers[/b] (no, it wasn't a game about russian nazis; those are made of something much softer and much stinkier than steel)? That's pretty much it. And it's... stupid. I mean, the game is designed after [b]StarCraft[/b]. We're supposed to play one faction after another (we can't choose) to learn the whole story, but the thing is—there's almost no story. Even though [b]StarCraft[/b]'s signature dialogues in briefings are presented, it is close to impossible to form an attachment to the characters. Just because they're nobodies. The Shallow functions. Thanks to which everybody knows [b]Sarah Kerrigan[/b], but close to nobody remembers [b]Sarah Parker[/b].
Finally, as an extra bonus to our list, there are technical difficulties. I remember that on launch this game had problems with my hardware because it was new. Now? Now it didn't work “out of the box” on my system because it's, well, old. There is a quite easy way to make it work (you can use [b]dgVoodoo 2[/b], for example) and it'll work pretty stably (as long as you don't alt-tab too much), but still, it's one of those releases where publisher didn't care much. And to make things worse, online multiplayer in [b]Ground Control[/b] was tied to its devs' website, [b]Massive.com[/b]. Naturally, the original website went offline ages ago and the domain now belongs to a financial data provider of the same name. What does it mean to us? It means no online multiplayer. Because, like I said, the publisher didn't care.
So... Here we are. Having a game which was a big milestone for the genre (even the [b]Warhammer[/b] universe should be thankful for it, since its sequel heavily inspired the famous [b]Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War[/b]), yet gives you no reason to get back to it nowadays. And I'm not saying it aged. Everything ages. I'm saying exactly that—as long as you don't have personal nostalgia tied to very specific memories you made with this game, there's literally not a single reason to care. [b]Ground Control[/b] is one of those games you [i]read[/i] about. Or watch on [b]YouTube[/b]. In other words, it's a game you [i]learn[/i] about for historical reasons, not something you actually play and enjoy. And while I totally admire what [b]Massive[/b] (the devs, not the financial data provider) did, there's just no way I can recommend this game nowadays for those who never played it before. Especially since it's a bad release with no online multiplayer that also requires some extra work to run properly. Dixi.
