NetStorm: Islands at War

The Good
The beauty to NetStorm is that you can see the map when the game begins, that the map varies, as well as your home island, the geyser's positions, and so many other factors, determine what the best strategy to use is. On top of this variety the added factor of bridging is similar to 1st person shooters in the sense you have to make skilled and incredibly fast moves when bridging against another. In other words you need good reflexes, nerve - as many choke to a faster bridger - and a focused mind.

Unlike other RTS games, where it can take an hour for your troops to reach the other side of the map. In NetStorm, within 4 minutes, you are already heavily involved tangling with your enemies bridges attempting to wrap around him and secure the skies. NetStorm is like chess, with the pieces set up before the game and the deep knowledge required to play the best strategy. NetStorm is like a 1st person shooter as you are required to move at incredible speeds with fast reaction times, that after alot of practise become instinct. There is no room for error and one mistake will lose you an arm or an potential outpost. The combination of both these variations, makes NetStorm the most original strategy game ever made.

The Bad
The present NetStorm: Islands at War is experiencing its first decade as abandonware. Rated as the most original RTS of all times with plenty of possitive feedbacks but also as the game that no one bought at that time. Months before the game hit stores, people had already converted the demo into a full-version download. This exploitation damaged the sales of this online RTS game created by Titanic Entertainment. However, NetStorm did manage to score some great reviews but inevitably Titanic Entertainment would later plummet into cold water. NetStorm's chance to shine was shadowed by bad timing. Allthough all of this happened, the game was played and in very short time became very popular. On May 28th, 2002 , the Activision's customer support answered, "The NetStorm servers have been taken down. There are no plans to reactivate these servers in the future." The main server of NetStorm was officially closed. Through all the dark and troubled times, NetStorm was given a chance to shine. NetStorm players finally got in touch with Activision whom said that they did not mind allowing a public-owned server and was willing to send the old NetStorm server. The community never received such server. NetStorm: Islands at War was a true underdog of a game. Despite not having any publicity, NetStorm has been strongly supported by its players and fans throughout the years. Many thanks goes to those who have contributed their work; let it be running servers, creating and managing websites, developing new patches, or anything that strengthens NetStorm, even if they had very bad moments contributing to this game.

The Bottom Line
Netstorm is situated in the world of Nimbus, the sky world with floating islands, always in war. In pyrosphere, the central sphere of Nimbus, you'll square off against your opponents. Your goal is to capture High Priests from your opponent and sacrifice them to the furies. You will have to use many strategical advantages, such as the art of bridge building, constructing and placing different kind of attacking or defending units, casting spells and conquering the nearby islands.

You can download this game and it's newest patches for free at www.netstormhq.com.

The Good
I liked how this game was laid out: the view was a bird's eye view, with a bit of tilt.

I also liked how you had to sacrifice all of the enemy priests to be able to move onto the next mission or be declared the winner of the multiplayer game.

I also liked how the missions kept you hooked onto the game even after I had beaten all the missions [I could beat].

The Bad
There are only 2 things i didn't like about the game, everything else was fine:
1. Not enough buildings
2. No sequel

The Bottom Line
The game goes like this:
You start with an island (your home), a temple (for holding your storm power and allowing you to build bridges), a workshop (researches buildings), and a priest who can create a new temple if your first one is lost, more workshops, and an altar for sacrificing the enemy priest. You must research buildings in order to build them. then you need to build bridges off of your island (in a tetris/jigsaw type manner). Then you need to build your attacker buildings off of the bridges while defending them with either stronger attack buildings or defense buildings (your units will shoot through). Eventually you may to overcome the enemy's buildings, incapacitate and capture the enemy priest. After, you must take the enemy priest back to your island and sacrifice him by using an altar which sends him to the deushpere (where the furies rage against each other), and thus, (if you are in multiplayer) granting you new knowledge to you.

"I wouldn't mind living above ground, but crossfire tends to burn your house down." Damon Runyon, Regular Guy

The Good
The basic idea of having to build these floating islands completely changes how you have to think about your expansion strategies. I really enjoyed this new style of play.

The Bad
Games could reach serious stalemate positions where no one could make any noticeable advances on the other players. If everyone has the biggest shields and the biggest defense items, no one is going anywhere for a long time.

The Bottom Line
Everyone should play this game at least once just to get a feel for hanging in sky.