By Jim Rossignol on July 14th, 2009 at 7:24 pm.
Update: cheaper Ground Control bundle here, but only for Britons.
Quite a few people sent in comments about classic, resource-free, 3D real time strategy Ground Control being on GoG.com. It’s interesting to see the game up there for a number of reasons, not least because the original game was actually freely distributed by Vivendi for quite some time. Of course with Vivendi disappearing into the ActiBlizzard merger there’s all kinds of funny things going on with the ownership of their games, their distribution and so on. Rebellion – the chaps who are making the new AvP game – now own Evil Genius, Ground Control, Empire Earth and Lords Of The Realm, and they’re distributing them via that aforementioned digital download service. I suspect a few of you will have something to say about all those games, but Ground Control was a particular love of mine, and I wanted to say a few things about the GoG bundle, and why it might actually still be worth a few dollars.
I’ve spoken at length about the original game in the past, and you can check out my retrospective from eighteen months ago just here. The game has not aged well technically – the highest res is, I think, 1024×768, and it now looks crude, although it still boasts a certain minimalist sheen, and a beautiful toned-down aesthetic. Few games even seem to attempt this kind of anti-interface now, and that’s a shame. It’s also slightly underwhelming in terms of some aspects of its campaign – there is no skirmish, only LAN multiplayer – with the pace and wobbly narrative building up to an anti-climax.
The reason for this unsatisfactory ending was unclear at the time, as the game just seemed to roll to a halt. But the difficult-to-find Dark Conspiracy expansion largely solved that problem, with the opening two missions being among the most dramatic I’ve ever played in an RTS. The opening mission of Dark Conspiracy is about as surprising as I can remember an in-game RTS game being before the games of the past couple of years: it’s genuinely seat-of-the-pants stuff, with a carefully executed mission boiling over into an ambush, and finally a rolling crisis management that I totally didn’t see coming. The rest of the campaign finishes off the story that the original game started, and finally gets you somewhere. If there’s a reason to get hold of the game now, it’s because the original game was never whole: Ground Control was one of the few titles that was genuinely, ultimately completed by its expansion.
Ground Control and Dark Conspiracy together are the complete package, and Dark Conspiracy wasn’t given away for free back when Vivendi was promoting Ground Control 2. For anyone looking to go back, or to try out this beautiful little RTS for the first time, I can say that $6 doesn’t seem unreasonable for the pair, finally, fortunately, reunited.
14/07/2009 at 19:38 pkt-zer0 says:
Bought it for the equivalent of 30$ a couple weeks after it became freeware. Would spend at least as much on it even today.
14/07/2009 at 19:42 Nobody Important says:
Amazing game. Never played the expansion, but I think I’ll have to.
14/07/2009 at 19:43 Darthy says:
Ground Control remains a big favourite of mine. The graphics, while faded now, were astoundingly detailed for the time. The story and voice acting was well done, and the gameplay involving.
It always encouraged you to play cautiously; fast units were fragile, and heavy units were slow. Attacking without scouting things out first just cost you units. It was this element of puzzle-solving interesting, but also something of a weakness.
All the careful movement and repairing created a slow, turtling style of game play which ultimately didn’t distance itself that much from the base-building games it was trying to move away from. There were few puzzles which ultimately couldn’t be solved with a spotter and a bit of artillery.
The other failing was to make the drop-ship that useful as a game play mechanic. Because you were limited exactly where and when you can land there was never a real sense of using it strategically.
It was a great game however, and had some of the best big guns of its era. War never looked so beautiful.
14/07/2009 at 19:57 DMJ says:
Ground Control is one of my “games to reminisce about with old gaming buddies”. Like the time we tried to have a multiplayer battle. I set up a carefully balanced force, positioned it carefully, and he sent in a bomber to drop a literal nuke my APC and won the match in under 2 minutes :(
14/07/2009 at 20:03 Duckmeister says:
Exactly how did Rebellion get a hold of Empire Earth? That was developed by Stainless Steel, then Mad Doc Software, right?
However, no matter was it’s released on, I don’t care, as I still have my Gold copies of Empire Earth I and Empire Earth II.
Frankly, these games were milestones for RTS gaming in general, and remain two of the best RTS games (and most chock-full) ever.
14/07/2009 at 20:12 Railick says:
I remember the multieplayer for this game being a total blast! I loved playing with a bunch of artillery units and looking at the mini-map to see where incoming fire was coming from and having my units fire at that area blind, 90% of the time I would kill their artillery units and then pound the surrounding area taking out the defenders ect. With your troops just constantly coming back into the game with drop ships the action never slowed down. I’d like to see something like that now a days. DoW 2 is close but no cigar :) Still fun but doesn’t capture that feel. Also I’d love t osee Nox’s multiplayer is newer game, death match/diablo 2 is fantasic.
I’m also excited to see Evil Genious on that list, I had the game way back but lost one of the two CDs a long time ago and have been wanting to play it ever since. Never saw it again after the intiial release in any store or bargin bin ;(
14/07/2009 at 20:13 Heliocentric says:
You can’t take freeware back, this game is free, stupid mergers spoiling everything… *pouts*
14/07/2009 at 20:21 Heliocentric says:
People are repeating that the expansion wasn’t given away free, but i’m sure it was.
14/07/2009 at 20:23 Heliocentric says:
About ground control being methodical and slow, most of the expansion and often in the core game a light scout, a little artillary and a zerg of planes can do anything, indeed during the expansion for a run of missions planes can do everything and do it fast.
14/07/2009 at 20:26 skrat says:
Still have my original boxed copy :)
Grand game.
14/07/2009 at 20:40 Railick says:
If there was ever a good reason to pirate a game this is it. Not that I codone that, but still like Heliocentric said you can’t take freeware back mate.
14/07/2009 at 20:42 Duckmeister says:
The expansion wasn’t given away free helio.
14/07/2009 at 20:42 Railick says:
I always had as many planes I could get in the later missions with as much artillery as I can get to go along with it.
14/07/2009 at 20:44 Nobody Important says:
Having played the freeware version of Ground Control from beginning to end, I can state with an affirmed and stern face that Dark Conspiracy was never given away for free.
14/07/2009 at 20:48 SwiftRanger says:
People are repeating that the expansion wasn’t given away free, but i’m sure it was.
It wasn’t given away free as others have said but it did debut at an amazingly cheap price (for an addon) back in the day, like 5 euros or so I thought.
14/07/2009 at 20:56 teo says:
Ground Control is STILL available for free, which is nice because I lost my discs. By coincidence I was reminded of this game a few days ago and downloaded the free version, and then I went to GoG to see if they had the expansion and it was just released! Crazy timing
Visually I think it holds up pretty well. Compare it to other games from 2000 and you’ll see what I mean. But I have to say I got really pissed off at the game today. I was playing the 11th or 12th mission of the 2nd campaign and I hadn’t really brought any real anti-air units. It was a really long mission (like an hour) and I had killed pretty much everything that needed killing, except for a few aerodynes. I could’ve made it out of there except that the fuckers were focus firing on my APC.
I had another close call in the first campaign. There’s a mission where you need to hold out waiting for a dropship and my APC got destroyed with 6 seconds left on the clock…
I don’t know if the game would be better with a save function but I have to say that Myth II wasn’t hurt by it, and I still think Myth II is slightly better than Ground Control.
14/07/2009 at 21:03 Doc Kirzner says:
Lords of The Realm? I’m not seeing it on GoG, and really got my hopes up briefly there. Oh, the nostalgia of Lords II. Might have to check out Ground Control; thanks for the tip.
14/07/2009 at 21:05 ArtyArt says:
I recently installed my boxed copy of GC and couldn’t get it to run like it should… i.e. it had a really choppy framerate which ruined the fun. My computer is nothing special (2 year old dual-core with a 3650 ATI card) and I do know most of the tricks to get older games (especially those who don’t like dual core machines) to run, so I suspect it’s the game’s fault. Can anyone confirm that those problems exist? And more important: can anyone confirm that those problems have maybe been fixed in the GoG version?
14/07/2009 at 21:15 Railick says:
I wouldn’t say it is the games fault, but rather your computer is probably too advanced to play it right like trying to play old Dos games on Windows Vista.
You probably already tried this but have you tried setting the core affinitiy or whatever the heck it is so that the program only runs on one core while everything else runs on another?
14/07/2009 at 21:22 Jarmo says:
Was mid-mission save ever added to Ground Control? Or even modded? As a family man I cannot possibly play a game with long missions and no mid-mission save.
14/07/2009 at 21:24 Heliocentric says:
Must be wrong about the expansion my bad, but its been on d2d in a bundle with gc2. Must have gotten mixed up. When i got my own first pc it was with a sierra demo disc. Half life, swat 3, alien vs predator 2, homeworld and this. Legendary.
And indeed you can see the proto world in conflict. Although personally i think they went backwards since dark conspiracy.
14/07/2009 at 21:27 Heliocentric says:
Mid game save was never added, but you can play it windowed and just leave it paused. :) its worth it.
14/07/2009 at 21:51 Colin says:
The expansion was given away for $5 to people who had bought the full game (free + shipping costs or something like that). As for the FilePlanet free GC promo deal, I seem to remember Dark Conspiracy being offered for download as part of that deal right when it started but being pulled quickly after that.
And I’m going to echo Heliocentric here and say that it’s really worth playing windowed/paused. Honestly actually, I’d like to see more strategy games not having mid-mission saves since it makes you respect the opposition significantly better. It also removes the tendency for “recon by error” which is never terribly satisfying.
14/07/2009 at 22:54 Gap Gen says:
The ending to Dark Conspiracy was really unsatisfactory, too. It’s a shame they didn’t continue that story – Sarah Parker was an excellent character.
But yeah, Ground Control was ace. Trying to complete a mission without losing a unit was an art-form, and perfecting a shock-and-awe assault on an enemy stronghold was very satisfying.
14/07/2009 at 22:57 Carra says:
I finished Ground Control 2. I have some good memories of the game but it was nothing earthshattering. Never did play the original game.
14/07/2009 at 23:01 Gap Gen says:
The graphics at the time were really something – to pan the camera down to troop level and watch enemy soldiers blow into a thousand tiny pieces in a vast, firey explosion, or watching your tanks kick up dust as they pumped out shells was really something.
Also: The ending to Dark Conspiracy (spoilers, natch). How is this an ending? How does this tie up the loose ends and finish the story? Or did I entirely miss the point?
14/07/2009 at 23:02 ids says:
ahh i have 2 copies of this game and it my favorite game of all time up with the lines of thief and thief 2. It just a great game how the camera works and no resource mangement. Also i love watching the nuke go off or taking the camera right next the squad of soldiers and you can see them full 3 rotate. I wonder if you could put it up on steam to play against people in multi player because i all ways had some problems with the multi player but the lan games i had with it where great.
14/07/2009 at 23:02 Gap Gen says:
OK, that last link failed. Ending to Dark Conspiracy: here
14/07/2009 at 23:02 Colthor says:
A question: I played the demo of this when it was new, and really disliked it – a few minutes in to the second mission a massive fleet of aircraft swept in and annihilated you utterly. Was this representative of the full game, or just a case of Crap Demo Syndrome?
I’ve held a grudge against the game ever since, because I really wanted to enjoy it/I’m a spiteful old git.
14/07/2009 at 23:34 Chis says:
Are GoG going to release something that ISN’T a bloody strategy game sometime soon?
14/07/2009 at 23:58 Stupoider says:
Oh wow, I’d love to try Ground Control 2.
My dad got me Ground Control 2 when I was younger and I loved it! Shame I never got to play the original. :(
15/07/2009 at 00:04 Sunjammer says:
Worked with a GC designer a while back, and he was so proud of that game it pained me to harbor hidden feelings of… shall we say indifference? The game simply bored me.
Not until DOW2 have the notion of a base-less RTS clicked with me. Granted DOW2 has some measure of a base, but it mounts to little more than a stationary unit that builds other units, and i think some base is better than no base. It helps to have an origin.
Anyway, i still don’t get the appeal. It’s always been a very flat experience to me, both artistically as well as in storytelling and overall design.
15/07/2009 at 00:04 Railick says:
@Colthor No , I can honestly say there is never a moment in the full game where you’re just randomly wiped out. There are some tense moments where you CAN lose but that might have just been a case of the demo killing you on purpose :) I hate RPGs and games that do that. DOW 2 has a moment like that but it doesn’t actaully kill you off it just gets you REAL close ;P
15/07/2009 at 00:29 Colthor says:
@Railick:
Thanks, that’s what I’d wondered!
Another game on the ever-growing “when I’m bored or see it on offer” list, then…
15/07/2009 at 00:29 DarthInsinuate says:
I love Ground Control, but I never got along with the sequel, I just felt overwhelmed by it.
I’m playing though the first game again then I’m going to drive through and have another stab at Ground Control 2.
I’m glad that I’m still completely in love with Ground Control, I find Major Sarah Jessica Parker’s accent a bit annoying though.
15/07/2009 at 00:30 antonymous says:
This one had no AI to speak of, they were always just riding along predefined paths.
Only with the no-reloads approach you’d have to be overly pedantic about picking them off one by one, which didn’t make for the greatest experience especially if you blundered somewhere and had to redo the fiddling..
And yes, the expansion was given away for free if you mailed in the postcard from some other games’ boxes.
15/07/2009 at 00:32 Gap Gen says:
Colthor: I think you can take out the enemy aircraft if you have AA units, but the idea is to move fast enough that you evac by the time the enemy air units get there.
Actually, thinking about it, I found the ending to GC better than the ending to DC – in GC you solved the mystery of what the planet was about and stopped the bad guys – in DC, you just uncovered some conspiracy waiting to be busted. I expected the sequel to take place on Earth, with Sarah fighting against the corrupt corporations there, instead of abandoning the storyline in favour of something different (and in my mind, worse).
15/07/2009 at 00:36 Railick says:
Honesty time here, I had to cheat to beat this game ! :P I’m ashamed of it, but I wanted to see the ending and I just wasn’t good enough to beat it or maybe just not patient enough so I used cheat codes to make my army unkillable. It still took me HOURS to beat the last few levels even marching through them with out slowing down O.o
15/07/2009 at 00:43 IvanHoeHo says:
Back when I was playing the free version, I got some kind of sound loop error during dialogues, which kinda put me off of finishing the game up.
Can’t really justify a purchase without knowing what kind of issues the GOG version had fixed. Too bad their pages don’t have changelogs or some such.
15/07/2009 at 00:52 Railick says:
It is probably just like the free version mate and sound loop was probably something wrong with or conflict with your computer , not likely to have been fixed since most people didn’t have it and it’s been years and years since patches stopped coming out ;P You should try downloading the free version and see if it works now, maybe some changes in your system over time got rid of whatever the problem was, you never know.
15/07/2009 at 01:32 Duckmeister says:
I wouldn’t say that this is kinda a predecessor to World In Conflict, I think it’s really just an execution of the baseless RTS with very bad and very good elements.
Personally, I would love to have certain presets of the units I’d like to be reinforced with, and be able to just click ONE button and everytime my reinforcement points would go high enough it would give me those same units automatically.
So, I’d have an Anti-Air preset, which would give a balance of units but with a heavy preference toward Anti-Air, or Infantry, or whatever.
Whereas in WiC you have to manually click out each unit you want to bring in, and that annoys me, even if it’s just “4 heavy tanks, 4 heavy tanks, 4 heavy tanks”.
Speaking of WiC, I used to be really good at it in the demo, co-founded one of the first clans, at reached some amazing ranking in the leaderboards. I just tried playing it the other day, and I still can’t run it past the “low” settings, and I got kicked off many servers because there’s new stupid player-enforced rules like “no using two heavy artillery at one time” or “no nukes before 15 minutes” or “don’t rush the capture zones with cheap units to get tactical points early so you can drop a nuke before 15 minutes”.
It’s like “no rushing” in other RTS’s, but worse.
15/07/2009 at 02:17 keelsids says:
@Gap Gen: youtube link is awesome.
@Railick: interesting, I would not pirate and in fact bought it from GOG since it’s such a great game. I do see that you have a point. It was and still is available and GOG is not providing anything of value like a soundtrack or artwork with this game.
15/07/2009 at 02:20 keelsids says:
….er by available I meant free. Missed a word right there.
Went ahead and saw the cinematics for Ground Control 2. The story seems to be just as good. Quality of models and such are great.
And do check out the Ground Control manual. It has a good amount of setting and character which is just the right thing for anyone who is interested and want to explore science fiction.
15/07/2009 at 02:26 Novotny says:
Best artillery ever.
15/07/2009 at 04:23 TCM says:
@Chis:
I find that strategy games tend to age way better than any other genre, possibly because most of the good ones have gameplay that’s only vaguely similar to other titles released since.
That said, I never played Ground Control. I might have to try it out now.
15/07/2009 at 04:27 Vinraith says:
@TCM
Strategy games generally aren’t very reliant on their graphics, either, it’s really all about gameplay. This is less true in the case of RTS games (which are really tactical games at best most of the time).
15/07/2009 at 05:49 TCM says:
Well, seeing as RTS stands for Real Time Strategy…
For me, tactical games fall under a specialized category within Strategy games. That said, they are distinct, and I recognize the difference, but I don’t see RTS games as relying on graphics either way. Usually.
15/07/2009 at 06:19 Vinraith says:
I’ve never exactly understood how, say, Starcraft ended up under the same genre heading as Europa Universalis, AGEOD games, and hardcore wargames (of the hexagonal, life eating variety).
RTS’s are definitely more dependent on graphics than “other” wargames, simply because part of the charm of RTS titles is watching all the little “things” do what they do. A lot of thought goes into what units look like and how they’re animated in RTS titles, whereas other strategy games can pretty much be played with the digital equivalent of cardboard counters.
So to hew back to the point, I’d say RTS graphics are significantly more important than strategy game graphics, but less important than, say, FPS graphics. The simple fact that one usually plays these games zoomed out means they hold up for awhile as long as you can tell what’s what on the field.
15/07/2009 at 06:29 James Hsieh says:
@Vinraith: Definitely a good point there regarding how RTS is attractive due to our interest in watching things move and “work” at completing the orders you gave them.
In general Ground Control held up. The most interesting details like the pop-up smoke discharger after firing a round from the main battle tanks, the shell casings which drop from the infantry, seeing actual projectile and particle weapons hitting the cliff and sand dunes behind the target they missed, etc. all make the game compelling. Those are details which are often missing or ignored by game studios.
15/07/2009 at 07:23 Heliocentric says:
In the mission where the massive airforce kicks the toffee out of you you are meant to be running for your life to an evac point. Alternatively, start the mission with lots of light tanks and all the artillary you can manage, make the light tanks carry anti air turrets and deploy them in the valley before the main enemy base and keep the guns inbetween you and the fliers. The jets get mullered.
15/07/2009 at 08:07 Aldo says:
I had GC2 but never really got into it. Then I reinstalled it on my new(er – C2Duo) PC and everything ran at hyper-speed levels, making it unplayable. :(
15/07/2009 at 09:14 pignoli says:
Mmm the artillery. GC artillery is probably still my favourite unit ever put in an RTS. Pretty, satisfying and effective.
Much as I love DOW2 and much as it feels like a worthy successor to the likes of GC, ‘Swoosh-bang!’ just doesn’t quite match up to the glorious arcing artillery contrails of GC.
15/07/2009 at 09:35 Gremmi says:
Just FYI, the Ground Control Anthology, which contains both Ground Control 1 + 2 + expansions, is on direct2drive.co.uk for £4.95
http://www.direct2drive.co.uk/333/product/Buy-Ground-Control-Anthology-Download
15/07/2009 at 10:39 Colthor says:
@Gap Gen/Heliocentric:
OK, cheers.
I’m sure I tried pegging it, but it was a long time ago.
15/07/2009 at 10:41 MC says:
@pignoli
Ever play Company of Heroes? You’d really dig the artillery units, they look and sound so great.
15/07/2009 at 10:41 cuc says:
>Aldo
For games running too fast, try this:
http://www.massgate.net/read.php?123129,279752
15/07/2009 at 12:59 Duckmeister says:
I have to say that out of all the RTS’s I have ever played, Company of Heroes is the most advanced, most fun, and most polished.
Now, I will still play other RTS’s for the nostalgia factors, but CoH is definitely my favorite. Except for that silly Tales of Valor expansion. I will not be wasting my money on that.
15/07/2009 at 13:00 Black Mamba says:
Another GC fan reporting in, loved the game the tactics the minimalist UI, the camera controls, the universe, the manual was cool too giving a backstory to the characters and vehicles used in game.
I also like that the religious faction (order of the new dawn) were the more technology advanced of the two sides which isn’t usually the case in scifi. That and the game had proper female leads who weren’t the atypical big tits and revealing outfits.
The story was a bit ropy in game but it was enjoyable overall & a great tactics game.
I cant say them same for the sequel though it was deeply disappointing the game seemed like it was never meant to be a GC game in the first place, time jump into the future abandoning all the characters and factions from the first and bring in aliens and the big tits in red latex outfit female lead of the Terran faction. It was a mess of a game.
If anyone from Rebellion are reading this please ignore Ground Control 2 and fork the game with your own storyline from the events of GC1.
15/07/2009 at 13:43 Heliocentric says:
If d2d is cheaper and gives away the sequel then the post should be changed. Gog get too much credit some times.
15/07/2009 at 13:46 Heliocentric says:
£5 on http://www.direct2drive.co.uk
$20 on http://www.direct2drive.com
They should have remained a colony.
15/07/2009 at 15:46 Duckmeister says:
What’s sad is that that isn’t just the weaker dollar.
15/07/2009 at 16:22 pignoli says:
@MC: Cheers for the recommendation. To be honest, the WW2 setting of CoH put me right off (just bored with WW2, really bored) so I never played it. Might well pick it up for a couple of skirmishes though if I see it going cheap with the expansion on a digi distrib service any time soon.
15/07/2009 at 16:53 Heliocentric says:
You owe it to yourself to play coh, just try the demo. Its a masterwork, i am very excited about relic’s next real rts, they understand it so very well. Once you have tasted the pace and flexibility of company of heroes multiplayer other rts seem frankly rubbish. Much kisses relic.
15/07/2009 at 16:56 Heliocentric says:
I need to add that you can buy the retail anthology triple pack for £10.
15/07/2009 at 16:58 Jim Rossignol says:
Men Of War > CoH.
15/07/2009 at 17:04 Heliocentric says:
I’ll take your word for it, despite owning the title i can’t get it to run smoothly on my low end system and my high end system is terribly far away, coh runs fine mind you.
15/07/2009 at 17:32 teo says:
Jim, have you played Myth II?
15/07/2009 at 17:45 Railick says:
If you don’t like ww2 you could try Dawn of War 2 , IMO it is much better than COH and the single player campaign is fandamntastic.
15/07/2009 at 17:47 Railick says:
@Teo Myth I and II both AWESOME games. my best friend in middleschool -> highschool and I used to play online for hours and hours every day. He created a way to turn dwarves and those lightning throwing guys ( can’t remember what they’re called any more lol) into long range artillery ! :P He’d have the dwarves throw their “grenades” and then have the wizards shoot their lightning just at the right time, launching the molatov cocktails VAST distances. So far that on the biggest maps he could hit me with them a few seconds after the game started if he got lucky. I’m sure he wasn’t the only one to do that but still it was awesome/annoying as hell when my troops get slaughtered a few seconds into the match. He pretty much beat me every single time but I still enjoyed playing it.
15/07/2009 at 17:55 Dominic White says:
On an interesting tangent – Myth 1/2 just got their final patch a couple of weeks back.
http://projectmagma.net/
Among such fantastic features as auto-downloading mods and maps for multiplayer when required, it now supports high-res terrain textures (a pack of which are included) which makes it look a lot sharper on modern machines.
Also, you can now play Myth 1 (cutscenes and everything) in the Myth 2 engine, along with that new patch.
15/07/2009 at 18:02 Railick says:
Are the Myth mutliplayer servers still up and keeping track of people’s ranks? I had no idea that game was still going O.o I had the CDs until my wife threw away my entire collection :P
15/07/2009 at 18:38 IvanHoeHo says:
Just tried the free version again. I assume that if the problem persists in 3 different systems – the latest one being essentially a brand new build (if not parts) – that it must be a game bug, instead of anything to do with drivers and whatnot. But who knows? Might be some kind of anal audio codec conflict…
On Topic: on the other hand, do so had made my fall in love with the damn thing all over again. 12-page essay due tomorrow be damned!
15/07/2009 at 18:45 Dominic White says:
@Railick – the new servers are. The original servers shut down ages ago, but have long-since been replaced by fan-run replacements.
16/07/2009 at 00:44 DK says:
Universe and Story by some of the people who wrote Homeworld’s Universe and Story – Ground Control’s background is far deeper than would have been necessary for a normal RTS.
16/07/2009 at 01:08 Dominic White says:
@DK – as far as I’m aware, most of Homeworld (and Homeworld Cataclysm)’s background fluff was written by one Arrin Dembo. She’s the one that did the Ground Control backstory as well.
Biggest thing she’s done is the backstory/fluff/novel (yes, novel) for Sword of The Stars, which is remarkably great.
I think she was a fluff writer on Arcanum as well.
18/07/2009 at 20:26 Paul says:
The first Ground Control is a great example of a very fine tactics game. Yes, I say tactics, because once you punched out, what you saw was what you got. No new units, no reinforcements. The sequel, however, was a bog-standard RTS, with the same expansion mechanic that had been previously employed in the Z series (and was later on used in WH40k: DOW and add-ons).