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Can Stormgate bring back the glory days Warcraft and StarCraft?

945 View2024-02-08

Stormgate

Real Time TacticsLevel EditorMechsSci-fiCo-op CampaignActionStrategyDemons

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SHOULD I PLAY STORMGATE?

You should definitely check Stormgate out if you have fond memories of playing head-to-head real-time strategy games like StarCraft II or...actually you know what, this really is mainly for the StarCraft oldheads out there. Stormgate looks, feels, and plays very similarly to Blizzard’s landmark game that dominated the RTS scene for many years, and that’s no coincidence—all of its lead developers helped create StarCraft II and Warcraft III before striking out on their own to found Frost Giant Games. I’m a little concerned that it feels too familiar, in fact, but time will tell whether that winds up working in its favor.

TIME PLAYED

I played about two hours of the Stormgate demo currently available as part of Steam Next Fest. That included about half a dozen 1v1 matches and a couple attempts at the tutorial, which was a three-player co-op mission that introduced some core concepts and had us assaulting a heavily fortified enemy camp on the opposite side of the map. I dabbled a bit with the Infernal Host faction, which is all demons and other heavy metal creatures, but most of my time was spent with the Human Vanguard, which is very similar to StarCraft’s Terran race.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT STORMGATE?

• It’s built on a proven template. StarCraft didn’t become South Korea’s unofficial national pastime by accident—it’s a solid game that’s easy to start playing but difficult to truly master, with plenty of room for creativity and switching strategies to counter your opponents. Stormgate very deliberately picks up from that point rather than reinventing the RTS wheel, which made me excited to learn about how its unit synergies worked and how I could time my attacks and expansion moves.

• Attractive, easy-to-read visuals. Stormgate looks nice, which gives it a professional feel, but more importantly, it’s designed to be very clear: Units and structures are easy to spot and identify on the battlefield, which is itself designed for maximum clarity. I never found myself wondering what it was that was attacking me or whether my units could path through areas on the map.

• Interesting new ideas borrowed from MOBAs. The powerful hero units of Dota 2 got their start in Warcraft III, so it’s no surprise to find them here as well. But Stormgate takes a couple of Dota 2’s original ideas—notably jungle camps that offer buffs to whoever clears them out. Taking on these small groups of neutral creeps buffed my armies with health or speed bonuses, healed units, or added resources to my stockpile. These added an interesting dimension in multiplayer; not only did I want those goodies, but I wanted to make sure my opponent didn’t get their hands on them.

• The smart tab system. I really liked the way Stormgate allowed me to select tabs for building structures and training units with hotkeys, and then queue up unit production or select buildings with another hotkey tap. By pressing one key, for example, I could pull up a tab that showed me every basic unit I could build, and when I ordered new units, it would simply add them to whatever production queue was free, rather than making me manually select an available barracks or mech bay. It took me a while to shake my old StarCraft II macro habits, but this is unambiguously a big upgrade on that system.

WHAT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT IN STORMGATE?

• No way to play solo yet. Stormgate will eventually include a single-player campaign, but I was only able to play a couple multiplayer modes during the demo. As I mentioned earlier, even the tutorial is multiplayer—it’s one of the three-person PvE missions, and frankly, it’s not great. It tossed out some RTS 101 ideas and then left us to our own devices without introducing almost any of the Human Vanguard’s units or structures. For many seasoned veterans, this won’t be a big deal, but new players may be extremely intimidated by the prospect of jumping into a multiplayer match completely blind, trying to find their footing while a seasoned opponent quickly builds up an army to wipe them off the map. New players need somewhere to try things out at their own pace, and the lack of anything like that in this build is probably going to scare some folks off.

• Are we really doing StarCraft again? Don’t get me wrong, I love StarCraft and part of me really appreciated how familiar Stormgate felt, but the level of similarity was also jarring. As I played, I felt that Stormgate needed more of its own identity to set itself apart from games that have already had their glory days. The Infernal Host faction added some visual flair, but mechanically and visually, I felt the balance between innovation and repetition was skewed too much toward the latter.