Good: Graphics, alright sounds Bad: CONTROLS, Gameplay, Registration Other Thoughts: Don't Buy It
As a happy jittery little boy who loves anything that can be played on a computer, I love RTS's (and FPS's and other acronyms for genres) just the same: like children. Like children, I believe games can be deemed "incorrigible" or impossible to control. This is an example of one such game.
By god this game has atrocious controls. They may even be worse than the standard controls on Fear! Unless you spend a good hour reconfiguring and rebinding every key, you may as well toss this thing into a pile somewhere.
The game has decent value if you actually like it enough to go online and play someone.
No matter how much I dislike this game, it does look stunning. Beams and gunfire is sharp and the buildings look like... good building, I suppose. There are trails and such things all over the place along with beautifully rendered explosions. The only RTS games I'm aware of that can beat these visuals are Ground Control II and Age of Empires III (both of which are better than this game in every other way too). Please do keep in mind I play on all max settings however on just an X800GTO. If you have anything worse, it won't look much worse anyway.
The sound is also great. Tank cannons sound like they can kill something. Gun fire sounds like gun fire. Rockets sound excellent.
No matter how great this game looks, the biggest problem is running it. The first time you do run it, the game asks you to register it. I didn't want to. Now, I have to play in demo mode! I already bought the game! What more do you wnat from me!
Alright, so, I TRIED to. I went to registration and tried to register by phone. Turns out, the phone number doesn't exist. Great. I didn't have any connection to the internet. In 3 hours, when I did, I tried to register but the game refused to connect. Eventually, I had to get a Bit Torrent download of the game with a keygen on it. Now, I can actually play the game I bought! Yay! Woo hoo! That's just dandy.
The hassle of getting a sub-par game to work and then actually playing it was a waste of time, money, and effort. If they make an Earth 2170, they better fix this steaming pile of waste.