Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade

Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade Hands-On - Starship Combat, Mutations, and Conversation

Real-time strategy games set in space are a bit rare nowadays. Still, fans of the genre have something to look forward to with Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade, an interesting new game coming from Dreamcatcher and developer Metamorf Studios. In Genesis Rising, you'll command interstellar fleets in a campaign that takes you through different galaxies. We've been playing around with a fairly complete work-in-progress version of the game to see how the interstellar warfare is shaping up.

In Genesis Rising, you'll follow the journey of Captain Iconah, an officer in a religious and militaristic society who's tasked with recovering the Universal Heart, which is a powerful object that will make humanity godlike. Of course, recovering the heart won't be easy, as there are alien factions to battle, as well as the promise of plenty of intrigue throughout the story. Another unique thing about these humans is that instead of zipping about the galaxy in metallic vessels, they rely on organic starships whose DNA can be manipulated. This means that you can mutate new weapons and capabilities onto ships, which is important because you'll constantly need to adjust your tactics. For instance, if the enemy is hammering you with missiles, you might consider adding shields and armor to your vessels, but if you're looking to sneak into enemy space, you could add stealth capabilities to stay undetected.

On the surface, Genesis Rising bears a bit of a resemblance to 2005's Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Indeed, even some of the ship designs bear an eerie resemblance to one another. However, while Nexus was mainly a starship combat simulator, Genesis Rising is more of a real-time strategy game. There's a resource that you must harvest, in this case bloodair, which can then be used to construct new ships and upgrade existing ones. Bloodair can be recovered a number of ways, such as from "altars" in space or by draining the corpses of dead ships of blood and DNA. The latter is important because you can recover DNA mutations from enemy ships and then adapt them to your own, which will be a key way of gaining access to new technologies.

Unlike many real-time strategy games, though, Genesis Rising isn't going for epic scale. Instead of building dozens of different types of starships, you'll only build a handful--just enough to make a small task force. The idea is that by giving you a manageable number of ships, you'll be able to explore the different strategies more easily. Indeed, in a number of battles we were able to give our ships general attack orders, but we could also take the time to order individual ships to use special attacks on certain targets. We could also adjust our tactics by changing the mutations on vessels to better counter the enemy's capabilities. After the battle, ships can be healed by having them siphon bloodair from the corpses of enemy vessels.

The mission design is also going to take advantage of this, as you'll do far more than simply go out and destroy the enemy. Some missions will require you to use your various DNA abilities to solve puzzlelike situations. We saw missions ranging from sneaking a single ship through enemy defenses to recover an important vessel to defending a strategically important station from enemy attack. Combat in the game is quite pretty, too, as ships can engage multiple targets at once using their different weapon systems, resulting in lots of colorful laser beams and explosions.

There's also a conversation element to the game, as Captain Iconah will encounter a variety of characters along the way, each time starting up a cutscene. It's an interesting universe that's being set up, as cryptic churchmen, sultry alien seductresses, and more all want the ear of the good captain. During the conversation, you'll be able to select whether Iconah takes a friendly or a belligerent tone, which can affect the course of the conversation. The campaign features some branches to it, as well, so it's not a purely linear experience, and you'll be able to decide which sector to go to next during your adventures.

Genesis Rising also will feature a fairly full multiplayer suite. The campaign missions will be playable in cooperative multiplayer, but there will also be support for 16-player competitive multiplayer. The multiplayer mode will feature three different playable factions, as well.

We're impressed by the visuals in the game. The starships all look unique and original, and there's a wide variety of different ship and alien types. One faction carves its vessels out of giant asteroids, while another builds icy, translucent vessels that you can see through. More importantly, the gameplay looks solid. There appears to be a fair amount of depth to the strategy, so you'll be able to explore different ways of playing each mission. There's enough here that fans of starship combat should keep an eye out for Genesis Rising when it ships in March.

Gamespot