Tryst Review

What stands out most about Tryst is its odd name. Otherwise, this real-time strategy game about a sci-war between humans and aliens is a generic clickfest based on the traditional Starcraft formula, and comes with a ton of problems. Speedy missions and a straightforward base-building-and-battling recipe pique your interest for a little while, but a fleeting campaign, inconsistent difficulty, a range of irritating bugs, and the absence of anything interesting in multiplayer gives the game a very short shelf life.

Combat comes hot and heavy in the campaign missions.

If you have ever played an RTS before, you won't have any problems figuring out what Tryst is all about. The campaign story is the same old claptrap about evil aliens waging war with humans, this time about 1,000 years from now on a colony world called Ishtonia. The aliens are sci-fi stereotypes, consisting solely of biomechanical monsters called the Zali, who turn on humanity at the start of play. They launch a surprise attack after years of peaceful coexistence and assassinate the current president, who represents the Rhyn Tech Corporation in some kind of corporate oligarchy. This leaves protagonist Ivan Petrovich in charge of the inevitable counterattack and making peace with a bunch of rebels consisting of an underclass apparently imported from Earth's prisons. The plot doesn't amount to a whole lot. Tensions between the two human factions are washed away with a quickie alliance in the second campaign mission, and the Zali are the traditional vile extraterrestrials who just want to kill all humans.

Gameplay covers the same old ground. You build bases, gather resources, crank out troops, and assault the enemy. There are two resources--ore and electricity--both of which are handled automatically with stations that accumulate these goodies. Some buildings can be upgraded. And a tech tree of advancements in the ARM, or Augmentation Research Mechanism system, lets you trick out troops and other units with various weapon and equipment buffs like shields, health regeneration, and so forth. The only aspect of the mission design that stands apart from RTS rivals is the speed. Missions fly by due to zippy building times, fast-walking units, and enemies that waste no time hammering your positions. It's like everyone involved has someplace better to be, so they sprint through objectives.

Missions play out in a straightforward fashion where you go through a building phase and head out to explore the map and take over enemy positions and resource points. The only variance is that sometimes you start at a base and sometimes you have to explore the map and go through a fair number of battles before you get to any building. Some diversions, such as being forced to choose between objectives and being pressed on multiple fronts simultaneously, keep scenarios from running on rails too much, at least, and add serious challenge, especially to the closing moments of an assignment.

The bizarre alien scenery and fauna in the background is the main visual highlight.

Difficulty is a problem in spots, though. The campaign ranges from incredibly easy to insanely hard with no warnings about what you're going to run into around the next corner, and the closing missions see you reloading saves dozens of times. Some of the insta-fail conditions are overly demanding, too, as in the grueling fourth mission where you need to keep all four members of your tiny assault team alive against ridiculous odds. Only the simpleminded enemy AI lets you get through some of the tougher moments, as you can regularly draw one or two enemies away from larger packs of foes, kill them, and then go back for more.

Tryst's single-player campaign does not last long, though. Just like the gameplay itself, the campaign flies by. This leaves you with solo skirmish play and multiplayer to keep the game fresh. Neither are great options, however. Skirmish play is limited by a paltry number of maps, and because few people are currently playing the game online, multiplayer isn't much of a draw. Both offer the same speedy play of the campaign. Everything moves very quickly, especially in a skirmish against the computer, where enemy attacks on your base arrive early and often.