Introduction

There Can Only Be One

Like so many real-time strategy games, ORB sticks to the tried and true genre conventions. Two races battle it out for incontrovertible supremacy. Warcraft had it with the Orcs and Humans. Command & Conquer had it with GDI and Nod. Total Annihilation had it with the Arm and the Core. In a similar vein, the fundamental objectives present in ORB remain the same, seek out and destroy. Granted, there are some miscellaneous missions such as search and retrieval, but ORB’s experience can be distilled down to three basic steps: gather resources, research, and obliterate the opposition. Despite this simplistic recipe, many RTS games still manage to provide a challenging and rewarding experience. ORB adheres to the same, basic guidelines that games such as Red Alert II and Warcraft III were designed around. ORB, however, often results in a gaming experience that comes up with many “if only” moments, the whole experience lukewarm and rough about the edges.

Title Screen

The Good Fight

Pretty Trails

Intolerance At Its Best

Like many games, ORB fails to offer a compelling or realistic game universe. The two primary races in ORB are the Malus and Alyssians, designed by a near-omnipotent race of gods called the Aldar over 10,000 years ago. Much like Star Control’s Precusors, the Aldar have disappeared inexplicably, leaving their ‘child races’ to fend for themselves. The Aldar have left a series of teachings, the Torumin, for their child races to learn from. Unfortunately, as fate often has it, the Malus and Alyssians develop vastly different cultures and outlooks. The Malus, growing up on a scorched, intemperate, hostile planet, develop a warmongering clan-based government, pathetically xenophobic in its attitudes. Meanwhile, the Alyssians developed on a planet much more similar to our Earth, developing a culture that values democracy and intellectualism. These two races have no knowledge with each other, and their first encounters are almost comedic. The Malus finally encounter the Alyssians in a mutual first alien-encounter, who appear to attack with almost no provocation whatsoever. Even the dialogue stretches credibility. You’d imagine fighter pilots to have some semblance of self-control and military discipline. Conversely, The Malus pilots have all the restraint of your typical High School Counter-Strike player, screaming wolf at the drop of a hat and launching an all-out war with hardly any attempt at peaceful dialogue.

Rally Forth

Where's The Love

Onwards

The single-player missions are bland and plodding, with no real sense of urgency or drive to experience what happens next. The voices are offered, at best, in a Dr. Sbaitso-esque monotone. More often than not, we’re simply given paragraphs upon paragraphs of text to dissect and digest in between missions. It almost feels like taking direct part in a PBS documentary, without the interesting bits of historical or cultural relevance. Each race has 9 missions for a total of 18, and each can last anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on how quickly one pursues the objectives. The majority of missions are simply a typical RTS melee brawl with objectives to disguise the repetition. That formula worked perfectly for Starcraft, but doesn’t suit ORB well at all, due to its plodding gameplay.