First Impressions?

[watchful]

#6013

Feels so much like Command & Conquer: real-time, single resource, explore-once-see-forever fog (I’m a fan), FMV briefings, typical units, sci-fi setting–albeit apocalypic, asymmetric factions, and similar controls.

Still, missing defend (location or unit), scatter, jump-to-base, and select-all shortcuts. From the DOS version anyway. At least it has Ctrl+{number} grouping. And always wished games like this had commands like encircle and go-to-yet-attack-first-contact.

Manual and readme appear to be trying hard to set a humorous tone, though haven’t seen as much of that in the game itself yet.

What does everyone else think?

[TigerQuoll]

#6015

I’m not the biggest RTS fan in the world. My favourite RTS is Warcraft II for all the reasons that everyone else seems to dislike it. Gameplay wise, this Command and Conquer kind of model has never resonated with me.

In terms of getting into the game it’s not too bad. Having only one resource is nice, and it’s pretty obvious what all the buildings do and how to progress in building your base.
The AI seems to be a bit more interesting (not sure about smart) than in other games of this type.
Navigating the map and using the interface feels a bit clunky to me at times.
Pathfinding doesn’t always work too well, especially in the heat of battle – but that is a pretty common problem, even in my beloved Warcraft II.
But overall, the gameplay isn’t really my thing. I find myself enjoying the early missions without base building the most.

Aside from the gameplay:
Acting is above par – sure it’s cheesy, but in a fun, not cringey way.
The overall tongue-in-cheek tone is pretty good, although I feel at times the self-referential fourth wall breaks (especially in the manual and text files) go a bit too far.

Long story short, despite my not loving this particular genre, I can’t help but be a little bit charmed by this game.
It gets bonus points for being Australian too 😉

[Pix]

#6018

I’ve had a couple of hours on this and done 6 missions on the human campaign so far. It’s every inch the C&C clone as said, way more so than I expected. I’m liking the presentation and the humour in the mission briefings. I could do with being able to watch them more than once since they give you 3 things to look at simultaneously.

I’m really missing a minimap from C&C. That’s my main complaint. It’s very familiar stuff otherwise. More music for the missions would be nice rather than the same tune every single time. The AI has the same build anywhere cheat from C&C. Mission 5 – it would keep rebuilding the same buildings over and over until I eventually tracked them all down. My troops will just sit there while being hit by a scorpion, etc..

So far, it’s fun but Red Alert was better. Nice to play something new in the same vein though. Interesting to play something this late from Beam/Melbourne House also. I associate them far more with early Speccy games like The Hobbit.

[Mgoddard]

#6039

Sometimes you don’t realize how much you miss something until it’s gone. 100% regarding the minimap.

[Katsumoto]

#6043

Don’t forget that you can hold right clock to scroll around much faster. Doesn’t really make up for lack of mini map, but it is definitely better than nothing!

[watchful]

#6045

One quick, second impression: it’s nice to have the repeated clicking to queue construction of units–even to infinity. I think Starcraft was the first RTS I noticed with that feature.

[f2bnp]

#6046

Hey, Starcraft only allowed you to queue construction of up to 5 units at a time I believe, so KKND has that beat there 😛

[Pix]

#6050

A mini map does show up eventually once you can start researching upgrades.

I’ve finished off both campaigns now (only the evolved without cheating). Out of the two, it’s the fairer and doesn’t get stupidly hard until the last mission where it requires foreknowledge of the map, zero time wasting and a ton of reloading. KKND stops being fun at this point for me.

It all gets too relentless for my liking with timing absolutely critical. Any minor delay at the start can make these missions impossible as you don’t get enough chance to build your resources up between the relentless enemy attacks.

I don’t mind the genre but can’t say I play a whole lot of RTS games. I’d guess that KKND had to be aimed at everyone who would already have played C&C, Red Alert, Warcraft etc.. It isn’t going to topple any of those but if you are targeting people looking for more of the same, then the difficulty level makes sense and the game overall is probably good enough for the job.

[watchful]

#6051

According to hosts of the “Dev Game Club” podcast there is tendency to make games too difficult the more devs play it, i.e. the longer it’s developed. Apparently the devs and QA just become too familiar with it and lose objectivity.

[f2bnp]

#6052

Agreed, I have played the first five missions of the “human” faction and was surprised at how thin my victory was for the first two missions. It’s fun though and I did find myself getting a lot better at it once I got more comfy with the controls.

The cinematics are fun and actually very well shot (and encoded!) for what I assume was a somewhat lower budget production. Evolved cutscene costumes remind me a bit of Mad Max villains and maybe a touch of the Harkonnen in Lynch’s Dune 🙂

[Elh]

#6068

I thought it was a decent C&C/WC2 clone back in the day. It still has a bunch of QoL issues, but it’s a good game for sure. I’m happy that it’s on GOG for sure, it’s a real gem of its time.

Fun little fact: Creative Assembly began because of this game. One of the guys said they looked at KKND and said that if people can make this type of low budget/low quality RTS, then surely we can. I’ll see if I can find the source.

[f2bnp]

#6070

I sort of gave up after playing halfway for each campaign. The mutant campaign is certainly a lot easier than the “Survivors” campaign or perhaps I was better accustomed to the controls and mechanics by this point.

Before I began playing I looked into source ports, reverse-engineered engines, wrappers or anything remotely helpful in order to get the game in its best state in this day and age and found out that the only such effort is a mod for OpenRA, an open source engine for Red Alert (and perhaps even C&C Tiberian Dawn?), which struck me as odd. Why would you even bother with this if not for some practice and/or personal fun? Then again, people have “ported” Blood and Half-Life to the Doom engine, so there’s that.

Upon playing the game, I understood why the above project was ever conceived. It plays shockingly close to C&C, to the point where someone may be fooled into thinking it’s a mod for that game (actual phrase a friend of mine used to describe it in a recent chat).
A less polished version of C&C anyway, as it looks pretty rough IMO and it also plays a lot worse with somewhat weird balancing (soldiers seemed incredibly powerful compared to vehicles or was it just me?) and all sorts of weird AI behavior (hellooooooo pathfinding!). One neat trick I found and used to exploit the AI was to camp next to an oil drillers and wait for opponent’s rigs to come harvest resources at which point I destroyed them. The enemy AI will keep creating more of them and waste all its money on buying rigs. It’s still a lot of fun though and I imagine multiplayer was pretty decent at the time as well.

I also found the soundtrack to be… almost unbearable when it came to the Evolved, the Survivor side had some decent tunes.

I’m considering giving KKnD 2 a try, it’s been a few years since I last played that one and it’s apparently massively expanded in every area (although it lacks live-action FMV which is a damn shame!) and also adds another faction.