February 2007 will see the arrival of what and KDV Studio are strongly endorsing as the Next Big Thing for the whole real-time genre - Maelstrom: The Battle for Earth Begins. Or, as it was in my case, Maelstrom: La Battaglia Per Terra Comincia, as in order to get such a hot title so early, our noble editor apparently had to make nice to the Italian press office. Reading between the lines, or at least ignoring the Iti-sci-fi dialogue, they may even be right.

Historically, previous attempts to do something terribly clever or massively innovative with the genre has ended in tears, and it looks like Maelstrom will not be falling into the same trap. What it does seem to be striving for, is to do all the tried and tested stuff we know and love, but simply to do it better, and much bigger. KDV seems to have listened to the gamers rants these last few years - 'Why can't I have better control of my units?', 'Why is the terrain completely indestructible, even if I nuke it?', 'If this is a tactical game, why can't I use the environment to my advantage?', and of course the age old cry 'Why doesn't this truck turn into a giant robot?'. In Maelstrom all these, and hopefully even more, classic RTS whines will finally be answered.

Maelstrom is making a big noise about the destructibility of its environment, which by now will make most gamers roll their eyes in despair and ennui. 'Fully Destructible Environment' has been touted on the back of every box since Red Faction, and just about every strategy title to date, such as Joint Task Force, has missed the mark with credibly making things explode, crumble and splat. This time, KDV promise they really do mean it, and the engine so far actually looks like they might finally deliver this grail of RTS - land deforms and craters repeatedly under sustained fire. Buildings crumble in a way that I assume is realistic, and prolonged large caliber exchanges will turn settlements into bouncing showers of concrete chunks and burning cars.

The attention to destructibility is certainly going to be put to the test considering the Maelstrom rolls out, as when complete it promises some of the most varied units in an RTS to date. Even standard units can be upgraded with hand grenades, anti-tank mines, electric discharge cannons and all manner of pyrotechnic madness, whilst the hero units can really roll out the thunder by throwing around meteors, call down the angelfire from orbit, meteorological weapons like tornadoes and typhoons, and even just plain old nuclear weapons. Super-Units taller than the buildings your basic infantry are hiding in can stride about the map, no doubt causing all sorts of mischief.

All this megadeath scale weaponry and malleable landscape isn't going to be just to make pretty explosions with, but should be integrated into the game. Not yet credibly done so in this build, but promised as a central feature, will be the use of terraforming techniques and well placed demolitions to flood out your opponent, and build channels to ensure the same isn't done to you first. Since what I understand of the plot involves much of the human race killing each other over dwindling water supplies, I can only assume flooding entire enemy bases is some sort of tactical irony.

Keeping in mind much of my experience of the plot involved sci-fi looking types saying things like 'Ciao, esseri umani. Il mio nome e straniero diabolico' I had to gather much of what was going on from the material that came with the disk. Apparently, after many years of selfishly plundering the environment for its goodies, the whole mess finally came back to bite us on the ass and atmospheric catastrophe happened. The sky, as Jeremy Clarkson puts it, finally went wrong. What is then left of humanity forms two groups - the freedom loving Remnants, and the corporate utopians The Ascension. Like waiting for a bus to arrive then two come along, but on a galactic scale, just then a whole race of alien scavengers turns up, whom just so happened to have buggered up their own planet too. What were the chances of that happening?

The races essentially seem to represent explosives ability and maneuverability in The Remnants, firepower and those transforming vehicles as promised in The Ascension, and the ability to manipulate the tsunamis and the water resource with the alien Hai-Genti. Each race will come with its own three hero units, at least one of which will be on the field in any given mission. The Hero units are fairly familiar territory - upgradeable, inventory carrying, powerful - as has already be done in games such as Mark of Chaos, right back to ol' Warcraft III. However, thanks to Maelstrom's ethos of taking all of the classic elements that one step further, you can now have direct control of your hero. Taking direct control of a unit in a strategy game isn't especially new either, as was poorly attempted in C&C Renegade and to a lesser extent the Battlefront series, but Maelstrom's engine looks to be powerful enough to execute both the RTS and the first-person elements. The amusement value of taking direct control of the hero, and then hopping aboard one of the previously mentioned super-units sounds very high indeed. The implementation of this element has yet to have all the bugs ironed out of it on this early build, but there are some that will require some clever thinking rather than just code tweaking, as a Hero controlled by the player is sufficiently powerful to sometimes win the whole map on their own. Using just the time honored circle strafe method would usually defeat even the heaviest armor, and simply running backwards whilst firing would usually see whole platoons of enemies forming a line to get neatly shot in row. Making an AI that can respond to both overhead RTS gameplay and FPS approaches will be no mean feat, and the title may rise or fall dependant on this.

Otherwise, many of Maelstrom;s features can sound a bit tedious on paper, but on consideration could be manna to the jaded player. Ideas such as Healer units that can prioritize its patients, avoid fire, and work automatically, and Constructor units that can be simply told to get on with making a particular type of base area whilst you go and actually have fun - these are the concepts that RTS players have long dreamed of seeing actually implemented, and if this feat of AI routine programming can be done for your final polished build it will be quite the liberating experience.

Maelstrom: The Battle for Earth Begins is one of the more promising RTS titles that has rolled around in a while. The high concept space opera styling and plot - apparently devised by the only Brit to ever write on - means that it will not have to compete too closely with Company of Heroes or the Dawn of War series. This is just as well, as whilst Maelstrom looks exciting, I suspect it unlikely to threaten either the previously mentioned titles dominance. KDV has certainly taken a big, big bite at the RTS genre. Whether it sinks or swims will be down to the final fine tuning in the weeks ahead.

Buona fortuna, uomo del spazio.

By Duncan Lawson