Review anarchistica 2/5 · Apr 22, 2018
Uninfectious gameplay
Rating (out of 10)
★★★★
Overview
Infested Planet is a mix of realtime and node-based strategy games. There are a number of bases on the screen which provide you with resources when captured. The enemy grows stronger through 'mutations' when you capture bases.
Positive (good features)
✔ You can give orders when the games is paused, like in many RPGs. …
Rating (out of 10)
★★★★
Overview
Infested Planet is a mix of realtime and node-based strategy games. There are a number of bases on the screen which provide you with resources when captured. The enemy grows stronger through 'mutations' when you capture bases.
Positive (good features)
✔ You can give orders when the games is paused, like in many RPGs. I wish StarCraft had that option, it makes the game more accessible.
✔ The game is quite fun at first, when you still feel you're improving.
✔ Precise interface scaling.
Neutral (average/expected features)
♦ Decent variety of units and buildings.
♦ You can buy single-mission boosts (e.g. an extra sniper) if you really have a problem with a mission.
♦ You can replay missions or play random missions to get money.
Negative (bad features)
✖ The campaign is rather short.
✖ You have to grind to buy newly revealed units and buildings.
✖ Only 3 different defensive towers.
✖ There is almost no variety in enemies. There's the usual swarm, suicide swarm and shooty swarm - that's about it.
✖ Research buildings look identical and can't be told apart when close together. They don't even show their name when you click on them.
✖ Easy difficult isn't easy, it's comparable to Normal in other games.
✖ Poor mission balance. The one where the enemy gets endless free infected marines is a nightmare.
✖ While there are a variety of units, you generally don't get to use them much because their cost is prohibitively high.
✖ After a handful of missions you feel you're getting weaker compared to the enemy.
✖ Randomly generated missions can be overly difficult due to the poor algorithm.
✖ You can't zoom in far enough to actually see what's going on. Good luck telling your troops apart or differentiating enemy units.
✖ Giant messages constantly obscure the action. You have to pause and wait for them to go away to be able to see the map.
Conclusion
While Infested Planet has a few interesting ideas it gets boring because of the lack of variety and frustrating because you have to grind to improve.
Details
⯍ Experience with genre: I've been playing strategy games since Dune 2 (1992).
⯍ Experience with game: Completed the campaign.
⯍ Recommended to: People who don't get frustrated by unbalanced, repetitive gameplay.