| Shadow ArmadaShadowman131 | Strategy games are the bread and butter of nerdy PC gamers. For centuries nerds have been participating in these lovely bloodsports, each newer one more gruesome than the last. First there was WarCraft and Civilization. Then there was WarCraft 3 and Civilization 4. Now there is Shadow Armada.
In Shadow Armada you take control of a small rag-tag fleet of warships and take part in space battles with other fleets. These battles can get pretty intense. There are often ships colliding everywhere and projectiles flying every-which-way! However, the game's pace is actually much slower than it would appear, as at its base lies a turn-based strategy game.
The core gameplay involves setting a trajectory for each ship every turn. Ships can only move within a certain area around them, however, making tight turns difficult to achieve at higher speeds. You can order the ships to fire weapons at specific points along this trajectory as well, making gameplay more strategic by causing it to be foolhardy to rush at enemies. Each ship has a finite amount of weapons to fire, although some weapons slowly regenerate, making ammo-conservation a must.
Shadow Armada is a whole lot of fun without a human opponent; The enemy AI is either too predictable, too easy to hit, or just plain impossible to beat. I would still recommend it to anyone who needed a good LAN party game to play in-between installs of retail games, though. |
| |
