Iron Harvest

[Sarafan]

Iron Harvest was on my scope for some time. It offers an interesting alternative history setting and what's important a quite unique diesel punk atmosphere. Now we have an option to test the beta version of the game for free. I decided to give it a try. After playing it for 1,5 hour I can say the game is noteworthy. I also had the occasion to play one multiplayer game. I got milled of course, but it was enough for me to get a feeling of the gameplay. The multiplayer reminds Battlefield a little. You have to fight to control key points of the map. The points provide resources for which you can build new units.

Graphics are very mediocre though. I have a feeling that the old C&C3 looks better. The vegetation is thick but it has a quite low resolution. Also the performance on my GTX 1060 isn't satisfying. This isn't a nextgen game, but it works way below 60 fps on my machine. Also, as I mentioned above, the graphics don't justify this bad performance. It's worth to mention that the units have sometimes trouble staying in cover. This is still a beta version, but I doubt that a lot will change until the final release.

This is probably the first bigger RTS for quite a long time, so it's definitely worth trying. Beta is completely free and you can download the game through Steam. Why not try it?

 

[Gvaedyn]

I love the setting / aesthetic. I've often been tempted to try out the board game that it's based on.

I played it -very- briefly. As in, I loaded up a Skirmish map, sent some soldiers to capture a nearby key location, and then watched as they fought an enemy squad. It was awful; they kept vaulting back-and-forth over the sandbags to try and hit one-another. I quit and uninstalled.

I try to be understanding as video game development is a tough job, but when the basic combat doesn't even function correctly...there's a problem. On top of that, as @Sarafan rightly says; the graphics aren't that great. I zoomed in and wondered why Company of Heroes 2, a game release several years ago and of similar gameplay, looked far better.

As far as I'm concerned, Iron Harvest is a game that will improve over time. The thing is, I have so many games to play now-a-days and the quality of new titles has been pretty good recently. I've got no patience to wait until the product is finished "finished".