Savage: The Battle for Newerth is one of those games that takes some effort to enjoy. It's not an easy game to pick up, and it's harder still to grow proficient at it. Worse, I'm convinced that either the game is rather obviously unbalanced or designed deliberately from the outset to screw the beast horde. I played the demo and found it very intriguing, so once I found a copy of the game on the cheap I picked it up. Though it wasn't my best gaming purchase, it's nevertheless a good buy for some (myself included) for reasons I'll try to make clear.
Savage looks good and performs surprisingly well. I was able to crank the resolution all the way up to 1600 x 1200 x 32 bpp and play without any framerate issues, even when big battles erupted. The engine is a pretty impressive piece of technology in that regard, for it keeps things butter-smooth even when serious chaos and mayhem ensue.
In terms of specifics, the models are as good as their animation. The texture work isn't quite up to standards set by some other games, but it's good enough. The special effects are nice, the environments are quite attractive, and I rather like the overall art direction. I particularly like the grass effect; when turned all the way up Savage renders some lovely foliage. That tends to hide mines and other important details, however, so I usually keep it turned down. Still, it's nice to look at now and then.
The short summary is that Savage probably isn't going to be used by hardware vendors to show off their next generation video technology. It doesn't have the flashiest, super-high polygon, this-mapped, that-interpolated, shader-powered, whiz-bang graphics, yet it looks more than good enough to get the job done. Some will probably complain about its visuals but I won't. They don't raise the bar in any way, but they are more than good enough.
The audio is roughly on par with the visuals. The music is good, having a certain primitive vibe to it as one might expect. Though I like the various themes I do wish they featured more variety. The background music is also dynamic, switching gears when battle erupts, which adds considerably to the game. The main problem with the music is that it loops too often; the game could really use more of it.
The sound effects are also pretty well done, though again the comment about variety is relevant. I found the "pain" sounds particularly annoying, insofar as there seem to be but a few different grunts made when one's avatar is wounded. The weapons are better and the explosions have a nice oomph. Thus, on balance, the sound effects are good.
Yet I do have to log one substantive complaint against the audio: the voice acting is all the same! Seriously, whether you're playing the humans or the beast horde, you'll hear English-accented speech. I can understand that for the humans, but shouldn't the beast horde be a bit more... well... beastly!? One really doesn't feel like much of a beast horde when the dialogue is coming from Mycroft Northumberbottom of Cheswickshire. Why not have H.R.H. Queen Elizabeth provide the beast commander's voice? It would make about as much sense.
The interface is surprisingly good for a game that blends together two completely disparate game genres. Mining, repairing, combat, and pretty much everything else is simple. Best of all, for the new players, some cues are available to provide guidance on what to do. If you mine redstone or gold, for example, you'll get a message and a beacon showing you precisely where to take it. That's quite helpful when first getting started.
Speaking of such guidance, when a commander gives orders it's clear what he means. The same sorts of beacons, along with a spoken command and some text, will explain exactly where to go and what to do. It really makes the game a joy to play as a warrior on the ground. The chat interface is similarly very good, but not that much chat is really needed because the rest of the game's interface is so well done.
It also bears mentioning that playing as a commander is a real highlight. The commander's interface looks like it was lifted from a mainstream real-time strategy (RTS) game. The only thing that becomes somewhat tiresome is trying to keep up with player requests. Maybe others are better at that sort of thing than I am, but I found myself overwhelmed trying to keep up with what the troops wanted. Yes, I know I can enable automatic granting, but whenever I tried that my team ran out of gold in pretty short order. Maybe it's not a problem for a better commander. I don't know.
What I do know is that the interface for Savage is really quite good. I would like an option to reset all the keys to their default bindings, which seems like an odd omission to me, but that's about the only complaint I can level against it. It works and works well enough by default to require very little fussing to get into the game, which is exactly what an interface should do.
The game mechanics are an even bigger win. The game manages to blend the RTS and first-person shooter (FPS) game genres beautifully, something no other game has done so well to my knowledge. When you're playing as a commander the whole thing looks and feels like a good RTS game; when you're playing as a warrior the whole thing looks and feels like a good FPS game. It's downright amazing that the developers have blended the two genres so skillfully. In this respect I hope that Savage is a sign of things to come. The integration of the two genres is simply flawless, which is an absolutely huge feather in the developers' caps as far as I'm concerned.
Yet not all is wine and roses. For example, though the game features a good selection of ranged weapons they all sadly have but one of two functions: (1) sniping, or (2) spraying. Everything in the former category requires pin-point precision to use well while everything in the latter category allows a spray-and-pray style of play, useful only at close range. Both have their place, of course, but the appearance of variety consists more in the details of their aural and visual presentation than in their functions. There is little variety in the actual weapon mechanics, certainly far less than the number of weapons suggests.
There remain three additional complaints with the game mechanics. First, melee combat is surprisingly boring despite how big a role it plays in the game. Every character's melee attack works like every other character's melee attack, which reduces all of the up-close and personal battles to a click-fest. The developers really missed an opportunity here to add attack combos to the game, or other such features, to make the melee portion of combat more interesting. Savage reminds me of Rune in that regard; i.e., it's a nice start but it could have gone so much further with melee combat.
Second, I know I'm practically begging to be flamed for saying it but the beast horde is somewhat outclassed. In the beginning of the game, for example, the horde has no melee weapons at all while humans have hunting bows. That may not seem too significant, but it puts the horde at a huge disadvantage during the early game. Human raiding parties can attack the enemy base, sniping their opponents down to half their original health before the beasts can even close the distance. At that point it's a simple matter for the humans to whip out their axes and mop up the remaining opposition, especially given their ability to block incoming blows—a skill the beasts do not have. This tactic isn't going to win the game against any horde whose commander has a clue (i.e., one who builds defensive structures), but it keeps the beast team unnecessarily busy and puts them on the defensive right from the outset.
Worse, by the time the beast horde gets ranged weapons they're outclassed again. The human flux gun and repeater are far more effective up close and personal than any of the horde's ranged weapons. It may be the case that "flux is n00b cuz it takes no skilz", as I was told in pidgin English on one particular server, but it deals a lot of damage in a short time and is very easy to use. Whereas the beast usually has to lead his target perfectly a human player can simply keep the beam on target, a difference which makes several of the human weapons much easier to use. Yes, the horde does have some spraying weapons as well, but I never found them nearly as effective.
Now, I've been told that what the horde lacks in ranged weapons it easily makes up for in melee combat. To that I can say only that I've seen no evidence of it. By the time I close the distance to any given human target I'm typically half dead already from his more-effective ranged weapons. Worse, a human player who knows what he's doing will use block effectively to get in extra shots on any beast he faces. The result is that the bulk of my kills have been made with ranged weapons. I haven't found any beast advantage in melee combat whatsoever. If it's there it's mighty hard to find, buried under the issues with ranged weapons.
Which brings me to my third complaint against the game mechanics. Gold and other goodies should accrue automatically, not simply drop on the ground as they do for anyone to pick up. The reason is simple: the rewards frequently go to the wrong player. Think about it. What happens when you drop an enemy with a good shot at long range? Answer: the stuff he drops sits on the ground a long way in front of you. By the time you get there it's (1) been snapped up by another player or (2) has vanished altogether after its timeout period has elapsed. Even with melee kills one's gold and goodies can get snapped up by scavenging players; it's just not a good system for distributing rewards.
That particular mechanic makes playing as the beast horde doubly irritating, for I almost never collect on the awards for my ranged kills. Because of that, and the fact that the bulk of my kills are at range, my best hope for scoring gold is usually to attack all of the annoying critters on the map. This wouldn't be so bad were there any generally-available way for the beasts to heal themselves, but as it stands it frequently serves only to weaken the player further before battle. Oh goody. That's helpful.
No doubt people will now flame me, telling me that I'm a "n00b", that I don't know how to play, etc. That's exactly the reaction I got on the servers on which I played. As soon as I would raise the issue in chat, I got all kinds of vile and/or stupid responses. But here is the simple fact: of the 250+ human vs. beast games I've played the humans have won all but one of them. The one human defeat I witnessed was because the commander was a complete goofball; he did roughly nothing and then bailed on us when things started to get tricky.
I started keeping records, after my first few games, because of the hostility I was getting from other players when trying to discuss the imbalance. My time on human vs. human servers has been far more balanced, the win/loss ratio being roughly equal for the teams on which I've played. But in all but one game on a human vs. beast server the beast horde has lost. Period. That says something to me. It could mean that all the players who choose the beast team are incompetent, but does that really seem the most reasonable conclusion? I think not. It's not a statistical anomaly; the beast horde is clearly disadvantaged.
To conclude, Savage is brilliant in the way it blends the RTS and FPS genres. It doesn't get all of the associated particulars right, leaving quite a bit of room for improvement, but it's still an amazing game overall in terms of its mechanics. This is easily overlooked, I suspect, because the developers have done so good a job at integration, but it really shouldn't be missed.
I'll give Savage this much credit: it tries to offer a story. After the standard post-apocalyptic nonsense it spins a yarn about how the humans must now face off against radically evolved critters. The problems, I suppose, are that (1) it just feels lame, and (2) has very little to do with the game. There is no single-player campaign, about which more in a moment, so it's not like any of the characters or background of the story have any significance or meaning.
Oh sure, the story provides justification as to why the beast horde has the weapons and structures it does, as opposed to the humans, but why is the story needed when it never comes into play in the game? Personally, I don't see a point in even bothering to try to provide a story when it's so wholly irrelevant. Savage is yet further testimony in support of the proposition that games don't necessarily need an interesting story to be good. I would much prefer that the developers spent their time balancing the game rather than working on the "story", such as it is.
I think the game stumbles somewhat in terms of content. Yes, it does feature several different playable units, a number of different weapons, various structures, technologies to research, etc., but they're all so similar to each other across the two sides, for the most part, that any one of them will do. Playing the beast horde feels just like playing the humans, save for the disadvantages mentioned already. Maybe I've been spoiled by RTS games like Starcraft, Warcraft III, and Command & Conquer: Generals, all of which require very different approaches based on the race/faction one is playing.
Further, as I've mentioned already, the weapons pretty much feel the same. One melee weapon feels just like another, while the ranged weapons fall into two categories such that any weapon in a given category feels just like any other weapon in that category. There are some cool bits of equipment/relics that are specific to each side but these seem more like afterthoughts in the game and are rarely available anyway. In my experience most commanders don't seem to value the research necessary to make them available.
In the plus column, however, the game does feature some nice maps on which to play—no less than twenty-three of them by my count—and it does provide a good number of unit, weapon, and equipment choices. I think it's more fun playing as a commander, given the novel way in which one can give orders and reward/promote units, but that's a matter of personal taste. I wish the content in the game were more strongly differentiated. As it stands, much of the variety seems largely cosmetic.
Perhaps the most egregious complaint I can level, however, is that the game has no single-player campaign whatsoever. That wouldn't be so bad if the learning curve weren't quite so steep, but Savage isn't a no-brainer game. Playing the commander role in particular requires quite a bit of experience to know what to do. The game isn't nearly as hard to pick up as some others I've played, but it does very little to help the player beyond the more trivial cues and that's not a good thing.
Because Savage has no single-player component, all of the comments made above apply to the multi-player game. Of the multi-player-specific features I can say this much: they all work. In other words, the game browser is nicely laid out and provides some useful filters. Some better searching options would be appreciated, but I do applaud the support for IRC chat as well as the buddy list. Savage could surely do more in terms of player-community features, but it already provides more than many other games. It's pretty simple to find a good server on which to play, and that's one of the more important factors to consider here.
There is one negative thing worth mentioning, however, and that's the size of the player community. It seems that Savage hasn't really taken off all that strongly. At the time of this writing there are 74 servers on-line, of which 52 are completely empty, with a whopping total of 360 people playing the game. That's not a lot of servers or players. I haven't had much trouble finding a game, but we're not exactly talking about a huge and thriving community. If you're hoping for a huge diversity of servers you won't find it with this game.
Savage could have been a great game; to its credit it's not a bad game; it's somewhere in between. It appeals to me because I love RTS games. It is all the more appealing as such because having human beings in control of the fighting units avoids the rotten artificial intelligence (AI) that plagues so many RTS games. It also appeals to me because I really like FPS games, especially FPS games that feature melee combat. I followed the game's development with interest and was disappointed by the initial reviews. I'm glad I bought it eventually for the experiences it gives.
Unfortunately, for the reasons already given, Savage doesn't make any of those experiences as compelling as it could. Most players will be playing on the ground, trusting that their commander knows what he is doing—which is not always the case. As such, most players will be confronted with an underwhelming variation in weapons and units. Those who play the beast horde will bear the further disadvantages already discussed. And, to add insult to injury, the player will have to spend a fair amount of time working at the game before he really becomes proficient with it, to say nothing of taking command of a team.
For all these reasons I can give Savage only a moderate recommendation. For those to whom its unique blend of RTS/FPS stuff appeals it may be worth the money if you can get it on the cheap. I paid about $15 for the game, so I don't feel like I was ripped off at all. I've enjoyed all of the human vs. human games I've played, and I've even enjoyed losing (every single time) on the beast side, albeit to a much lesser degree. Because of the imbalance I think the game fails to merit the full price, for there are more entertaining and better-balanced games to be had.
So here's my advice: give the demo a whirl. If you like the human vs. human combat, and believe you would be satisfied with that, then buy the game. You might like the beast horde more than I do, and you might enjoy the increased variety of maps as well. If the only reason you might want to buy the game is to get access to the beast horde then I suggest you save your money. It just isn't interesting enough to justify the purchase; enjoy the demo instead. If you don't like the demo, well, then you should definitely avoid the full game. I enjoy Savage, despite its flaws, but it's clearly not for everyone.
04/02/2004