GamersInfo.net

Welcome to Genesis Rising, an adventure that will take you to the far reaches of the universe in search of the ultimate prize: The Universal Heart - an enigmatic entity that spawned all life and matter.

In this space-based adventure/real-time strategy game, you will command your fleet of living ships and combat alien races bent on your destruction. As the game progresses, you will be given choices in the direction in which you want to travel in your investigations in the search for the Universal Heart. And as you defeat the forces arrayed before you, your investigations will open new avenues in your search.

In most RTS games, you may build a base that will construct vehicles and equipment to further your goals, but in Genesis Rising, your command ship spawns new crafts for your use. Each "birthed" ship - scout craft, harvesters, laboratories, etc. - will have advantages and disadvantages, depending on their basic functions. Since the ships are living entities, you have the ability to genetically alter them to give them weapons, defenses and other abilities. Once the genetic alterations are applied to the craft, you can watch them morph and grow as the alterations take effect.

When you begin the game, you are given a couple of simple genetic templates that can be used on your craft. The goal in the game is to acquire as many templates as possible; you get them from harvesting the remains of destroyed enemy ships. As you progress, you will encounter even more powerful modifications, to which your enemies don't have access. As you kill their ships, you can send out a harvester to sample their DNA, which gives you access to their abilities and enables you to apply them to your own ships.

Being living entities, the ships suffer injuries in combat, and these injuries cause them to loose blood. Your harvesters can be used to "repair" or heal the damage by transferring blood from destroyed enemies or your own reservoirs to the injured ships thereby restoring them to full operating status.

The concept behind the ability to genetically alter the ships gives you a nearly unlimited number of combinations to apply to your ships and also makes the game a challenge because you must learn what combinations work the best to defeat the enemy.

In single-player mode, there is some replayability to the game in that you may want to see the outcome by following differing paths to reach your goals.

The game has a griping storyline that will make you both love and hate humanity for what it is doing in the universe at large. It's comforting to know that lies, deception and intrigue are going to continue far into our future. As the story unfolds and takes you from mission to mission, you will (if you are anything like me) want to get through each mission so that you can see what is in store.

The game has a number of innovative aspects, including the concept of the living ships and the ability to genetically modify them. The ship-to-ship combat and ability to control your ships works very well for the game, and though all aspects of space combat in Genesis Rising occur on a level plane rather than in three dimensions, it does not detract from the game's uniqueness.

The single-player missions can be extremely difficult to complete and, at times, were very frustrating. There seemed to be something of an imbalance in the game in terms of the waves upon waves of enemy ships that would arrive without allowing you to recover or spawn replacement ships. This could be due to my misunderstanding something about the game, but I'm not sure that I missed anything that significant that would allow me to compensate.

The graphics in the game are absolutely amazing. The detail on the ships and the effects of watching the ships morph are stunning. I am very impressed with the graphic quality, as well as the conceptual art involved in the creation of the ships and other items. Visually, the game flows very well and, as far as I can tell, it all works well together and makes sense for the environment presented. There are no glaring anomalies in terms of objects being encountered that obviously don't belong in the story as presented.

The user interface is simple and easy to use once you learn what the icons represent. The various functions that revolve around ship modifications and upgrades and use of the genetic templates are easy to use and fairly straightforward.

Combat in the game is also fairly straightforward and simple, but as combat is inherently chaotic and confusing, there were times when I lost track of certain ships in the heat of battle and did not use them to their full potential.

Genesis Rising offers some wonderful new concepts in the RTS field, as well as breathtaking graphics and innovation in the balance of power in war. I recommend this game not only for its visual effects, but for the uniqueness of its concept as something new and interesting.