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> Results: Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade
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The ESRB Says
Blood: GamerDad couldn't help but notice that the universal currency was blood and that you harvested genetic materials from destroyed ships. Fantasy Violence: Everything in the game is based on destroying other organic ships. Mild Suggestive Themes: There is minor flirtation and seductive themes in cutscenes. Use of Alcohol: Where do organic ship-pilots go in their off time? To the local watering hole, of course! Critical Portion: While pundits have questioned the place of PC gaming in a console-dominated world, the Real-Time Strategy (RTS) genre has thrived. The past several months has seen games such as Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes and C&C 3 Tiberium Wars. These are games that require a great deal from those who play them in terms of juggling micromanaging clusters of troops while watching the big picture of the global situation. Into this mix comes Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade, a game that will probably last longest in my mind as a reminder that no matter how hot a genre may seem, it is quite possible to introduce a really bad game into its' midst. The problem isn't the presentation - the graphics are top notch, the sound effects and soundtrack are very well done and the impression is solid throughout. In fact, everything right up until you start playing the game is done very well. The basic story and concept of organic ships, or ones carved from various natural elements, that are outfitted and augmented with genetic elements is just a really great idea. You want to go faster, get a speed augmentation. You wanted to build a stealth unit, give it appropriate genes. And so on. The storyline offers branching based on whether you make good or evil choices in dialog trees, and offers plenty of alien races to interact with and even neutral races to win over. The basic gameplay is classic 4X strategy - you need to build units of various types for battle, harvest genes from defeated ships to expand your capabilities (ok, that is different), explore the galaxy taking on missions and battling alien ships. As I said, everything right up until the main part of playing the game is really intriguing. My first real hint that things weren't going to work out so well was in the tutorial with three ships under my command. The game kept messing with the camera perspective and zoom factor and then suggested that I manually move ships around to avoid incoming missiles. That seemed to be taking micromanagement to an unnecessarily high level but I gave it a shot. It worked, except I was so busy evading attacks that I failed to keep my best armed ship alive. That awful balance between micromanagement and the big picture dominated the game. Building many units with and expecting that quite a few will get destroyed is the cost of doing battle in a RTS. But the image that kept coming into my mind as I played was that of Fire Emblem, where every unit is critical - but Fire Emblem is turn based. The problem with Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade is that you get too many ships to control them all in real time and too few that you can afford to lose any of them. Add to that difficulties with the camera and controls trying to control the ships you do have, and you have a recipe for extended frustration. It just seems like you are not being allowed to properly control your fleet in an adequate fashion - if you had hordes of disposable drone ships it would be much more acceptable, but since every ship matters it is just awful. The more time I spent playing Genesis Rising, the more frustrated and disappointed I became. There were many aspects I could forgive, but I couldn't forgive the horribly balanced combat - it was the worst of both worlds, demanding overwhelming amounts of micromanagement yet providing entirely too few tools and opportunities to make it happen. And while the single player campaigns of many strategy games are lacking, they tend to make up for it with robust multiplayer. The opposite is true with Genesis Rising - there might be some fun in a multiplayer game, but the single player aspects are the best, and that is not a good thing.  
The content in Genesis Rising is divided between the elements in cutscenes (Use of Alcohol and Mild Suggestive Themes) and the core battles of the game (Blood and Fantasy Violence). The actual space battles are fairly standard RTS stuff - except that since everything is organic and the universal currency is blood, there is plenty of blood ro go around. Substitute blood for robotic elements or fragmented ship parts and everything is back to normal. The cutscenes contain the elements that cause the game to be (appropriately) rated T and earn a 14+ GamerDad seal. There isn't anything too mature, just minor flirtation and some seductive suggestions, as well as forays into space taverns where alcohol is consumed. It is not something that is a major flag if you and your kids are already playing other T-rated strategy games like Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars then there are no major concerns ... except that if you are playing that game then there is no reason to even look at this one.
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