Machines at War Editor's Review

Machines at War is a world domination strategy game.

Machines at War is a RTS (Real Time Strategy) game. Your mission is to conquer the world. Like any other strategy game, the action starts with you in your headquarters, one base and some terrain vehicles that gather resources. For starters you have to discover territory and you can do that with scouts.

In order to see more terrain you have to construct more buildings. The minimap shows a snapshot of the actual map. The game is colorful and rich in detail even if it doesn't offer a 3D in-game experience. Resources are credits and energy. Energy is based on power battery cells that you'll have to build. There aren't many buildings, but since it's a "realistic" game you can easily distinguish an air factory from the ground or research facility.

You can also research different technologies for offense or defense that might help you at war. Also, the game has different terrains maps. I never took on an enemy on the same field.

In order to control the units, select, or attack you only have one mouse button, the left one. These makes the game quite dificult, the units often mistake attack with move. In order to de-select units, you have to use the right mouse button. In my opinion they could just set button no. 2 for action and control and the 1-st button for selecting, or just give some clear keyboard shortcuts. I lost a couple of matches for this reason.

Machines at War is fully customizable. You can chose between players, difficulty, landscape, climates, map size, population. There are up to six levels of difficulty. The graphics and sound are customizable as well. The first impression of video resolution is a very good one. It changed the game into wide mode automatically. After I quit the game I discovered my desktop icons rearranged.

The game kept me glued to the Mac for a few hours, for those who appreciate a good strategy game might take longer.

Pluses: great action, nice graphics and customizable.

Drawbacks / flaws: one button control of units, needs more work on graphics so it won't affect desktop icons.

In conclusion: with a few changes for controls, and some publicity this game might make it to the top as a best seller. If you enjoy strategy games I also recommend Galcon.

version reviewed:1.0