Genre: RTS/RPG
Publisher: Dreamcatcher
Developer: Metamorf Studios
Release Date: March 20, 2007

Dreamcatcher is known primarily for the PC title Painkiller, but their new RTS offering, Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade, is a first outing for developer Metamorf Studios. Based on an obscure European comic by the same name, Genesis Rising embraces some very unusual gimmicks and gameplay mechanics in the name of making their RTS more fast-paced and customizable than any competitor's. All of the ships in the game are biological creatures, their bodies reengineered and cybernetically enhanced into full space-faring vessels. These biological vessels can be adapted on the fly, by the simple expedient of rewriting the creature's genetic programming. The result is a unique gameplay experience (insofar as any title in the crowded RTS field can be unique), although it may be a bit too simple to please fans of hardcore sci-fi RTS like Homeworld and Savage: The Battle for Newerth. Its storyline and surreal ship designers are certainly memorable, and neatly embody the sci-fantasy aesthetic that is distinct to European comics.

Like most RTS, Genesis Rising has both single- and multiplayer components. A multiplayer beta has been freely available for quite some time now, so instead we'll focus on the single-player campaign. The basic story is an interesting reversal of the usual sci-fi RTS status quo, with humans posing as the unsavory, self-aggrandizing universe conquerors. Despite this, you play as human Captain Iconah, tasked with finding and conquering the Universal Heart that is believed to be the source of all life. Doing this involves encounters with two other alien civilizations, and inevitably, both battles and alliances. Cut scenes are interactive and allow players to take up aggressive or diplomatic stances when dealing with representatives of other races. Your decisions alter the course of the storyline, opening up new missions and closing off others. Which alliances you make also affect which resources and power-ups you have access to as you journey through the single-player campaign.

In most RTS, you spend much time searching for resources. In Genesis Rising, there's only one important resource to control: "blood air," which fuels your fleet's organic ships. You can get more blood by controlling outposts, or harvesting it from enemy ships. Similar to Homeworld, players can develop the fleet with which they begin the game and take it with them throughout 30 levels, piling enhancement upon enhancement. What's nice about the ship development system in Genesis Rising, though, is that it doesn't penalize you for not making just the right decisions early in the game.

Instead, your investments in your ships are represented as a given number of enhancement genes, which can be moved or altered at any time. If you've made a ship into a fast scouter and decide that instead you need it to lay down cover fire, then you can remove the speed genes and add an accuracy gene instead. If you like, you can add some genes that affix elemental or other special properties to your ship's new attack, such as the ability to gain damage potential as distance traveled increases. There are even "boomerang genes" that make shots curve upon missing a target, sending the shot rocketing back at its original target from behind. Very powerful genes have devastating effects, like putting enemy ships to sleep, effectively immobilizing them. To acquire the game's 26 genes during the course of gameplay, you can cannibalize the corpses of defeated enemy ships or develop your own technologies by making deals with alien factors you encounter. Allying with the cryo-happy "Cold Whites," for example, is likely to unlock cryogenic genes more quickly.

The main throttle that keeps you from stacking tons of status effect, range, element, and accuracy genes to create all-conquering uber-ships is the heat mechanic. The more genes on a ship, the more heat it generates. You can use some genes cleverly to offset heat generation, such as the cryo genes, but for the most part, you need to balance units so that their gene allotments aren't loading them down with so much heat they become non-functional. You also need to outfit ships with genes in ways that suit your current mission objectives, creating fast ships if you need to race to a certain point, or agile attackers if you need to take out enemy fleets in a hurry. Objectives vary wildly from mission to mission, forcing players not to rely on a single "win button" gene combination. There's no need to worry if a ship gets shot down; just like enemies ships, you can send other units to cannibalize it for blood and genes.

While graphics in Genesis Rising are very sharp, especially given its relatively light system requirements, it has a few quirks that might irritate veterans of previous space RTS. All battles are presented on a 2D plane, which makes the action easy to follow but is also disappointing, given that previous RTS have allowed for battles that take the z-axis into consideration when it comes to positioning units. You can send the camera following any particular unit in the game, which allows for some very impressive footage. This is fairly impractical to do in actual gameplay, where you have a distinct advantage if you keep as much of the field on-screen at once as possible. This also makes it particularly neat-looking after you do a mass reshuffling of your fleet's genes, as the appearance of various ships morphs in realtime to reflect the subtraction or addition of new games. A ship that just received speed genes may suddenly grow huge thrusters, while one receiving new weapons genes suddenly sprouts guns. Since much of the fun of the game is screwing around with various gene combinations, getting to see your creations reflected in the appearance of your fleet is extremely rewarding.

Our preview build of Genesis Rising was pleasantly stable once it was up and running, but it showed signs of needing some bugs ironed out. Significant system changes could make the build cranky, forcing a complete reinstall, and the build could otherwise have some disastrous disagreements with ATI video cards that should have been perfectly compatible. Such disagreements were also possible with nVidia and other cards, but more easily resolved by messing around with driver settings. This suggests that players desperately interested in playing the final build might do well to make sure they had nVidia cards installed before placing their orders. Of course, these issues may already be addressed in the gold master that goes to press this week, and even if they aren't, patches are likely to be on the way once the game streets.

In terms of gameplay, Genesis Rising is a light and pleasantly fast-paced RTS that rewards cleverness in solving problems with gene combinations. It's an excellent game for players who've grown tired of slow-paced, research-intensive RTS that consume hours to achieve even minor progress. Instead, being able to take your fleet with you through the entire game makes it much easier to get absorbed into the distinctly Eurocomic setting. Players who want to try an RTS that feels different from the pack without having to invest in a high-end PC rig just to get the game running are probably going to be quite pleased with Genesis Rising when it hits in the end of March. We certainly were during our all-too-brief time with the preview build.