Stalin vs. Martians Part 3: Like Bolsheviks on Bicycles

I decided at the last moment to wait until today to post, mostly because I've already covered most of mission 2 and I wanted a little bit more content for part 3. Namely, I wanted to beat Mission 3 before I posted part 3.

So how did I beat Mission 2? Simple, I threw all conventional strategy out the window, and just used tanks. You see, I was wrong in my initial assessment that tanks cannot handle the little Martians who like to Zerg rush for no reason. All I had to do was micromanage slightly. How you may ask? Well, the first tanks available for you to purchase (BT-8s I think...) have an ability which allows them to fire while moving. So, if you keep all of your tanks hot-keyed, you can have them run away or run in circles around the small Martians and let that ability do the rest. All you have to worry about after that is retreating when you're close to losing all of your tanks, replacing lost units, and focusing your fire on the larger Martians.

You see, the thing is, I sort of knew this from the first time I played Stalin vs. Martians. I came to the conclusion that infantry were useless and tanks were really the backbone of any legitimate USSR military. I remembered this when I picked the game back up this week however, I rethought my initial assessment and decided that infantry must have some use like being cannon fodder. In other words, I over thought the situation. Which is also an overstatement since I was, you know, trying to apply legitimate strategy to the way I play. But that's not good enough for Stalin vs. Martians. No! It wants you to throw all strategy out the window and just spam tanks.

Anyway, mission 3. This is a pretty straight forward mission. There are a number of villages you have to liberate and once you've cleared them of Martians, you've won. Stalin also tells you in his briefing to destroy any strange trees you run across since they are desecrating the Motherland with slime. These have shown up in all missions up to this point, but I haven't felt the need to describe what they look like until now. These weird looking trees...well...you know those cartoons where they depict old willows and other small, bulky trees with scary branches as having mouths and angry eyes? There's your Martian slime producing tree. I'll take this time to mention that that part of the briefing is sort of misleading. You see, I only ran into one tree throughout the entire mission and I'm pretty sure that if I had left it alone, I still would have beaten the mission.

Also new to mission 3 is a new tank for you to use. I should mention that this is the second new unit I've gotten...I just didn't mention the new unit for mission 2 because, frankly, I don't use it (it's an anti-tank weapon...but regular tanks work just as good...so..yep I don't use it). The T-70 is just like the BT-8 except...well I couldn't really tell what the difference was between the two tanks besides how they look. I'm guessing the T-70 is a little stronger, however since it retains the move and shoot ability, it's really just a more expensive BT-8. But, I didn't let that stop me from buying a bunch.

Again, the strategy I used was the same that I described at the beginning of this post. When small Martians rush me, I run around letting my guns kill them. Then I focus fire on the big guys and move onto the next area after replacing lost units. This mission was very easy, and is probably what Stalin vs. Martians should be. But alas, it is not.

I took a quick look at mission 4 before I stopped...all I'm going to say is it's a giant worm.

Part 4 will be up latter this week.

Stalin vs. Maritans part 2: From Stalin with Love

...this game may have just beaten me and I'm only in the second mission. Seriously, I just spent two hours on the second mission of the game, and I haven't beaten it. It isn't long, it's just hard. Really hard. And that's not because the enemies are jerks or master strategists either. No, it's because the game has another fatal flaw that I hadn't realized until now.

Remember those tiny enemies I told you all about? You know, the little dudes who zerg rush your troops and gang rape your tanks? Well, they are so small, you can't command your units to target them. Ok, maybe it's possible, but I sure haven't been able to do it. So, the best strategy I've come up with to deal with these little guys is to put a massive buffer of infantry in front of my tanks, tell all of my units to hold position, and watch as they get blown away before they can even get close to the tanks I have. Keep this in mind while I describe the second mission.

In the second mission, you're given the task of defending a set of Russian villages from the Martian onslaught. (why dictator Stalin would care about such small villages in the back country of Soviet Russia is beyond me). Also, on a random note, Stalin sends you on this mission with lots of hugs and kisses. No joke, at the bottom of the briefing, right before his name is signed, it's got like 6 XOs. So, the mission starts with you in a small village, and you have to immediately position your units for the coming onslaught. After being rushed, you're told that you have to liberate a village that's directly horizontal to you. All in all, the mission is proceeding according to plan and has also introduced me (or reintroduced me) to the other large species of alien, which look like some sort of giant, bipedal, blue Elephants. While the Toy Story alien dudes seem to be anti-tank weapons, these guys are anti personnel, shooting fire from...well somewhere on their body...

Anyway, I had defended the two villages and everything seemed to be going according to plan. I'm then told that I have to liberate two villages at the lower part of the map. This is where I ran into problems. You see, between your force and those villages, are numerous large martins, supported by hundreds of the little small martins. The first time, I tried to rush one of the villages directly with my massive force...it didn't end well...After that, I decided to try and slowly creep down the middle, taking a little bit of land at a time, and letting those small annoying martians get owned before I dealt with the larger guys. This worked once as I was able to liberate one of the villages, however I was so low on money I couldn't replenish my force to take the other village which seems to be harder to get into then Fort Knox. This isn't because the opponent is some super strategist either, no it's because I can't target the individual small martian guys since they are too small and move too fast.

I finally decided to try taking the other village with a direct assault and that almost succeeded, however, when I tried to reposition my units so I could sweep across the bottom of the map, my Tanks began to randomly explode for no reason. I really don't know what happened. It didn't look like I had moved them onto a patch that damages them over time nor was their anyone attacking me at that time. The only thing I can think of is that I was close to the edge of the map, and this is there sick, twisted way of keeping you inside the map: by destroying any unit that even tries to leave. While that might be semi-accurate, it's a horrible game mechanic since it makes operating around the edge of the map impossible.

But small units and randomly exploding tanks weren't the only game play issues I noticed in this mission. Since you're entire economy is reliant on killing enemy units, a mission like this, where you have to defend an area and then wipe out everything on the map, is next to impossible since you are guaranteed to be out of money when you need it the most. So, you then have to try and make some sort of risky move to get more, however that always goes wrong and you end up failing.

Needless to say, I stopped after my tanks randomly blew up. Not even hugs and kisses from Stalin could convince me to continue playing after that. I may play more tonight and try and actually beat this thing, I may wait until tomorrow. Part 3 will be posted whenever I play the game again.

Introdcution and Stalin vs. Martians part 1

Yes, I've made myself a blog and I have to admit, my reasons for doing so are rather terrible. You see, recently I got the twisted idea of dropping every game I'm playing currently on October 1 and devote that month to games of horror. The only problem is, I only own one horror game and I'm close to completing it. So, against my better judgement, I decided to get creative and also play the ever weird and trippy Killer 7, the painfully hard La-Mulana, and the horrendously bad Stalin vs. Martians. As I sat looking over this list of mine and considering how sadistic I was for adding both La-Mulana and Stalin vs. Martians to it, I got a very weird idea. Why not create a blog to chronicle my experience with, at the very least, Stalin vs. Martians?

Seeing as how I'm a rather opinionated individual, I found this to be a great idea since it also gives me a chance to share my opinion about just about anything. So here we are, I've made a blog and am now permanently locked into attempting to beat a really bad game in one month and writing about how bad it really is. Take it as both a warning and a review. So enough babbling, its time for Stalin vs. Martians.

Stalin vs. Martians part 1: Remembrance

Stalin vs. Martians caught my eye earlier this year when the Indiegames blog highlighted it and provided a trailer for it. I knew immediately that this was a game that I had to own just because of its premise. I was honestly expecting it to be pretty bad, cheesy and a waste of money but I really didn't care. In fact, as soon as the game was available for purchase on Steam, I bought it, making it the first game I have ever pre-ordered. When it was released, I didn't play it immediately because I had other games I wanted to play. However, I kept an eye out for any reviews just to get an idea of how bad it really was.

To my slight surprise, the reviews didn't just suggest that the game was bad, they suggested that it was horrible. According to Metacritic, the average score for this game is a 25 out of 100, with the highest score being a 52 and the lowest being a 0. Gamespot gave the game a 1.5 out of 10 and the only good thing they had to say about it was that it had Stalin dancing in it and then going on to call it the "worst RTS ever created." Now, I thought the game would be bad, but this suggested it was quite possibly one of the worst games ever made. So, I gave in and played through the first mission.

I have to admit, it's been a while since I played the first mission. So my memory is a little fuzzy, however I think I remember enough to at least supply an intro to the rest of my play through and analysis of this game. From what I could tell, Stalin vs. Martians is indeed an awful game. Part of this has to do with the fact that the pacing makes it impossible to implement any strategy you may come up with. All of the units in the game move too fast and the controls to select units have a tendency to not work.Combine those two things together, and there is no way for you make any strategic maneuvers while playing. Really, the only strategy that seemed to work for me was to build as many units as possible and steam roll whatever I run into. Also, the game adds a rather random element in power ups that the enemies tend to drop. These are immediately applied to your units when they run into them, making the game far more random then it should be.

You can't build any buildings so whatever strategy would come from that is immediately removed and, while their is an attempt to encouraged balancing your forces with a variety of units, I discovered that tanks are the most effective unit and infantry are really just there to die horribly. Seriously, the infantry you get in the first mission are only good for cannon fodder. They get mowed down by the hundreds, yet you sort of want them as a distraction so the smaller units can't gang rape your tanks. Actually, this aspect of the game made me wonder if it was some sort of witty commentary about Russian military tactics over the years. After all, in the battle of Stalingrad, the USSR did send infantry in with only a magazine and the command to take another infantryman's weapon once they died. However, satire of WWII strategies doesn't necessarily equal a good strategy game and in this case it failed miserably.

I guess I should note that the first mission wasn't all steam rolling Martians. At the very end, you are ordered to hold a position from a wave of Martian attacks. However, ultimately this section boils down to splitting your force to cover the two roads they can come from, telling them to stay there, and occasionally buying more units to replace the ones that die.

Speaking of units, the design for the units is...well...interesting. The USSR soldiers look like what you expect, however whenever you click on them they say rather silly things. This is the games humor and well...I actually liked it. I don't know, there's just something funny about members of the USSR army telling you that they love you even though they are about to get slaughtered as meat shields for my tanks. The Martians, however, are where the unit design really gets interesting. In the first level, you run into two kinds of Martians. The first being these rather small blue critters who zerg rush your units whenever they appear. They tend to get killed even faster then your infantry, though because they move so fast, they can cause considerable damage to your forces. The second kind are these large, green three eyed monster things that sort of look like the aliens from Toy Story. These guys you have to use Tanks on since they destroy infantry while Infantry do nothing to them.

One other thing of note is the music, which provides a techno beat as you lay the beat down on the Martians. I was glad to see that they included more then just one piece of music in the soundtrack, however, as I recall, the soundtrack changes to the games theme song, "All hail Stalinator," whenever you get into a skirmish.

Overall, Stalin vs. Martians appears to be a pretty bad game so far. However, I have to admit, I actually kind of enjoyed playing it. Maybe the latter missions will cause me to develop a hatred for this game by adding frustrating gameplay elements such as escort missions. But, so far, the game is just a mindless RTS with a sense of humor. And, honestly, that's about what I expected from Stalin vs. Martians.

Part 2 will be up by Saturday.