Windows PC
Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade
By Ryan Newman
Apr 24, 2007, 7 :04 am

It’s about time future mankind romps some extraterrestrials – although it would be more satisfying if the game wasn’t so sardonic about it. Regardless, I’m proud of our fictional future selves. After being kicked off of Earth and displaced throughout space, a lone human rises to unite mankind and reclaim his home world. His life and death lights a fire within his brethren, and they began erecting statues of his Christ-like pose and worshipping him as a savior. His death rallied humanity to victory, and subsequent conquest. The State, the Military, and the Church are now a tribunal force leading a vast army throughout space, seeking the heart of the universe and the subjugation of the enemies of man.

Oh Genesis Rising, “cheeky” is the last word that you should bring to mind. Man used what was a charismatic leader to ends that went beyond preservation, and now they are the aggressors, literally sucking the life out of the universe with their bio-engineered, bloodsucking ships.  That’s either saying a whole lot about the human race’s aggressive and self-destructive nature … or it’s a bunch of hamfistery that kind of came together. I can’t decide.

It is 3,000 years after the Hero’s death. You are a captain in man’s massive dominating fleet. There is little left of the universe for you to conquer, but your story isn’t about conquest, but about finding the Universal Heart. To this end, you will talk with other creatures using a crude but could-have-been-interesting good or bad response system, micro manage your small fleet of ships with power-up genes, and explore the vast darkness of space on an epic journey. It’s a shame the game betrays itself so early on, because the premise really isn’t bad.

For all of the fleets of ships you see in the intro, you will be limited to only a handful for your task. You will also have to scavenge and trade for genes, the power-ups that you allot to your ships to arm them with weapons and various traits. Out of the vast resources of the human empire, you, a captain on a mission from the highest authorities, have to dig through the trash and piecemeal put together an effective fighting force. This design makes sense, mind you, because the handful of ships are hard enough to manage due to combat made all the more chaotic thanks to a lack of a pause button; trading allows for less combative contact with others; and siphoning genes feels a bit like treasure hunting. But it all stands in stark contrast with both your character and the game world.

The game is basically three unequal parts: cutscene, combat, and dialogue. The dialogue doesn’t seem to do much since the in-level politics are largely separated from how snippety or nice you in your pre- and post-level conversations. Due to the lack of an in-game save feature (ugh) I had to play several levels over and over from the beginning, which gave me a chance to mix my responses in the dialogue portions; unfortunately, the only noticeable difference was that being nice throughout landed me an alliance a bit earlier than otherwise. The art direction is very similar to Quake 4 and Prey – not necessarily a bad thing, just that the people look a bit oily and stiff – so you get to either watch a cutscene of eerily familiar characters chat or choose an response tone first and then watch stiff characters chat. Some meaningful consequences from your responses really could have offered up some great branching storylines and gave Genesis a bit more personality than the next strategy title.

You might have noted my usage of “could” just now, and that’s because the game never really finds its legs. The plethora of campaign missions are largely trial-and-error levels, and the lack of an in-level save feature means that the first half of the levels, if not more, will be played to the point of insanity. The enemies often have better ships or technology than you: one offering them ships with greater holding capacity for the stackable genes or advanced technology over your own. So you start off trying to time just how long before the first wave hits so you can designate how much blood to send to heal ships – adding new genes increases the ship’s health bar but you have to manually order the excess has to be filled – and what to put to the pool so that you can have your lab pump out more genes. The pace is often slow, but once combat starts, it becomes beyond hectic due to the ships’ special being jumbled together when the ships are en masse on screen; sometimes they appear on the fleet’s side quickbar, but not always. Even the attempt at simplicity by restricting movement to a 2D plane couldn’t stave off the ensuing confusion.  After a few levels in you’re so taxed from all the restarts and micro managing that you’re ready to give up on the slowly evolving story.

The game does have its moments though, but they never come together to form a cohesively enjoyable experience. The graphics aren’t bad and the voice-overs aren’t terrible. The world is certainly an interesting one, and it is taken advantage of from time to time. That’s really the overall problem: the game has so much obvious potential, but it just falls flat in the end.

Overall: 4/10