Dogs of War Preview

As much fun as it is to load up game after game of three-year-old Starcraft, few would oppose an injection of innovation into the stale real-time-strategy genre. That's not to say developers haven't been trying. A cursory examination of the PC market shows that the latest RTS innovation of choice is the move to fully 3D units and battlefields - an evolution that's already well under way on the PC, as hits like Homeworld and Ground Control make evident. The key to 3D, it seems, is to seamlessly introduce the extra dimension without sacrificing frame rate, ease of control, or engaging gameplay. At last, Dreamcast owners will get a taste of what they've been missing when Silicon Dreams' Dogs of War arrives on the Dreamcast later this year. Dogs of War, as you may remember, is one of the many recent PC titles that attempted to carry the RTS game across the gap from 2D to 3D with relative success.

Dogs of War takes place in 2161, when mankind is faced with the prospect of an Earth entirely depleted of natural resources. Forecasting this coming economic cataclysm, a totalitarian Earth government, known as the Imperial Order, begins colonizing other planets in the galaxy in an attempt to commandeer resources to supply its now barren home. The most promising early candidate, Primus IV is the first to be colonized by the Order. After a smooth colonization, though, trouble comes in the form of the Mantai, an insectlike race and the original inhabitants of Primus IV. In the face of this threat, the Imperial Order abandons the Primus IV colonists who are left to defend themselves against unorganized Mantai raids. However, the colonists persevere, and they eventually discover an all-purpose "uber-metal" known as SL-18, which they trade and make an incredible profit. The Order becomes envious of the colonists' success and begins to exact a terrible tax to maximize its own profits at the expense of the colonists. Predictably, the colonists rebel, and the opportunistic Order makes plans to conquer Primus IV and take the SL-18. The colonists, greatly outnumbered and facing the prospect of a slaughter, hire a group of mercenaries known as the WarMonkeys to defend them against the encroaching Order. As the game begins, the defense of the Primus IV colonists is threatened by two forces with divergent agendas - the Mantai and the Imperial Order.

Silicon Dreams hopes that the 3D units and the battlefields in Dogs of War will shake up this rather conventional plot. Like in Starcraft, you can play as either the Imperial Order or as WarMonkey mercenaries in a linear series of eight missions each; a five-mission Mantai game also becomes available as you progress. Some of these missions start with predetermined units and positions, while others let you use your resources to purchase them beforehand. While this move away from the old standby of harvesting resources and building a base isn't a totally new concept, your ability to purchase units before a mission begins is indeed a bit of an innovation. However, like most RTS's, control in the missions falls to the individual unit level, and Silicon Dreams offers a higher degree of control here than what's normally found in these types of games. Upon selecting a unit, you can switch the camera to a behind-the-back mode, and some units go so far as to let you assume control from a first-person point of view. Here, you can pull out the sniper rifle to pick off enemies in the distance as well as get an idea of what your men are seeing from the front lines. Features like these should help Dogs of War separate itself from the "been there, done that" malaise currently pervading the genre.

Graphically, Dogs of War shouldn't disappoint. Silicon Dreams has gone to great lengths to ensure that explosions and other visual effects have a solid, visceral quality, and since they were very impressive on high-end PCs, these effects should really push the capabilities of the Dreamcast. Smoke trails, colored lighting, and lens flares are subtle and impressive. As mentioned before, all units and environments are fully 3D, and they feature detailed texture work as well as solid architecture. Units are large enough that they take on distinct personalities: the Imperial Order's armies are large mechanical constructs, sheathed in thick armor; the Mantai appear very organic; and the WarMonkeys are gritty, human, and rugged. Perhaps the weakest graphical elements in Dogs of War are its poor fog draw distance (sometimes coming too close to looking like a high-resolution Nintendo 64 stereotype) and the barren landscape of Primus IV itself. Primus IV's battlefields are large, but they seem to be mostly plains and desert. Since the game has already been released on the PC and is a straight port to the Dreamcast, don't expect any major changes here.

Dogs of War met with mixed reactions on the PC front; some welcomed its attempts at innovation, others criticized its cumbersome interface and uninspired storyline. Considering that the stiff RTS competition it faced for hard-drive space on PCs is nowhere to be found on the comparatively wide-open DC market, Dogs of War has the floor open to it. It'll be interesting to see if console owners (historically unwelcoming to tremendously popular RTS hits like Starcraft and Command and Conquer) will, for once, be receptive when Dogs of War's strategic mayhem hits the Dreamcast this December.