A Review: 8-Bit Armies, PC 2016
The second review for today is about the PC game 8-Bit Armies, enjoy
8-Bit Armies is an RTS game developed and published by Petroglyph Games for the Steam Online Game Store in 2016. I found this game in late 2018 and kept it on my wishlist for quite some time before I eventually forgot about it. In early 2021, the game came back onto my radar and seemed to be completed and all wrapped up. So I got myself a copy and gave it a play, hoping that it would be as good as some reviewers led me to believe.
8-Bit Armies is stylized much like the old Command and Conquer games and was developed by a team comprised of some of the original C&C developers. Play is fairly standard for an RTS title, with the same mechanics and features that many would expect. Such as taking a small army, building up a base, collecting resources, and then destroying the enemy AI over a series of missions in a campaign setting.
Reviews on Steam have this game marked as 'fairly positive' at the time of writing (11/01/2024), but I can remember back to how this game originally received. I can also remember that there was a huge amount of content and extra features that were promised to fans and backers but never came to be. Instead, they were shoehorned into a separate game that was sold at a higher price instead of the promised lower DLC cost, leaving many backers and fans with a sour taste in their mouths.
I found this game to be a big letdown. I was hoping that some of the original magic that had made Command and Conquer so great might have rubbed off on this game. That was not the case; I felt that 8-Bit Armies was a watered-down skeleton of a game in comparison. With no plot or direction aside from repetitive battles over a course of 25 rather generic missions. There were no mission cutscenes or FMV sequences, not even ones using the game's own engine. There is only one playable faction, despite the teasers in the game of another playable faction 'coming soon'. There was a limited number of units, with little to no real variety in the buildings either. The only real difference between the AI teams and the player was color; there were no extra unit types or designs at all. The tech tree was very limited, and aside from the standard RTS tropes, it was actually rather bare, I thought. With play coming down to who could spam the most units before the other, there was almost no space for any other tactics to be used. Turning most 'battles' into a case of weathering the computer's waves better than it could weather yours over and over again.
The graphics for 8-Bit Armies I actually liked; they had their own charm about them that I thought was pretty cool. The pixel, 'old school' styling hit well with me, and I never found this game's appearance to be a problem. The worlds were nicely coloured, and the various resources and interactive areas, like lava and such, looked good and fit in well. The little animations looked good, and the units during the battle were fairly charming overall. The interface was clean, and the menu and icons were about right—nothing garish or over-the-top. I liked the way that the helicopters looked, and the little bouncing cartoon style of the oil trucks made me smile.
Sadly, though, I feel that this game was made and released as something of a way to monetize nostalgia, a cash grab of sorts. A way of getting people who loved C&C, like me, to part with £13 only to be met with a hollow shell of a game that really isn't at all that different from any other RTS out there.
4/10 – Could've Been Better!
Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ
8-Bit Armies is an RTS game developed and published by Petroglyph Games for the Steam Online Game Store in 2016. I found this game in late 2018 and kept it on my wishlist for quite some time before I eventually forgot about it. In early 2021, the game came back onto my radar and seemed to be completed and all wrapped up. So I got myself a copy and gave it a play, hoping that it would be as good as some reviewers led me to believe.
8-Bit Armies is stylized much like the old Command and Conquer games and was developed by a team comprised of some of the original C&C developers. Play is fairly standard for an RTS title, with the same mechanics and features that many would expect. Such as taking a small army, building up a base, collecting resources, and then destroying the enemy AI over a series of missions in a campaign setting.
Reviews on Steam have this game marked as 'fairly positive' at the time of writing (11/01/2024), but I can remember back to how this game originally received. I can also remember that there was a huge amount of content and extra features that were promised to fans and backers but never came to be. Instead, they were shoehorned into a separate game that was sold at a higher price instead of the promised lower DLC cost, leaving many backers and fans with a sour taste in their mouths.
I found this game to be a big letdown. I was hoping that some of the original magic that had made Command and Conquer so great might have rubbed off on this game. That was not the case; I felt that 8-Bit Armies was a watered-down skeleton of a game in comparison. With no plot or direction aside from repetitive battles over a course of 25 rather generic missions. There were no mission cutscenes or FMV sequences, not even ones using the game's own engine. There is only one playable faction, despite the teasers in the game of another playable faction 'coming soon'. There was a limited number of units, with little to no real variety in the buildings either. The only real difference between the AI teams and the player was color; there were no extra unit types or designs at all. The tech tree was very limited, and aside from the standard RTS tropes, it was actually rather bare, I thought. With play coming down to who could spam the most units before the other, there was almost no space for any other tactics to be used. Turning most 'battles' into a case of weathering the computer's waves better than it could weather yours over and over again.
The graphics for 8-Bit Armies I actually liked; they had their own charm about them that I thought was pretty cool. The pixel, 'old school' styling hit well with me, and I never found this game's appearance to be a problem. The worlds were nicely coloured, and the various resources and interactive areas, like lava and such, looked good and fit in well. The little animations looked good, and the units during the battle were fairly charming overall. The interface was clean, and the menu and icons were about right—nothing garish or over-the-top. I liked the way that the helicopters looked, and the little bouncing cartoon style of the oil trucks made me smile.
Sadly, though, I feel that this game was made and released as something of a way to monetize nostalgia, a cash grab of sorts. A way of getting people who loved C&C, like me, to part with £13 only to be met with a hollow shell of a game that really isn't at all that different from any other RTS out there.
4/10 – Could've Been Better!
Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ
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