

The mode plays well enough for solo skirmishes, but one element we couldn't try out was Twitch integration, where people watching the stream could influence the game to either make it easier or harder on the player as the match goes on. The demo allowed for one hour of game time to build up your forces and try to outlast wave after wave of freeform tower defense. The mix of defense sections and exploration keeps players engaged, but we need to see more of the campaign to see whether that engagement persists.Īside from the introductory mission, the preview build contains what the developers feel is The Riftbreaker's highlight: survival mode. That aspect frees you up to concentrate on shooting, and like the company's previous games, you feel powerful even when you're using the weakest weaponry. Depending on how you built your base, it can more than hold its own against small forces, but even a poorly built base can withstand some damage before falling apart. It only takes one level to show that the blend of gameplay styles works well. These become the ingredients you need to craft your own weapons, so while you miss the thrill of picking up something immediately cool, you won't pick up heaps of junk in the process. Loot is also handled differently, as you aren't hunting down armor and weapons but alien minerals and body parts. Genre veterans may lament the fact that this is a completely solo affair, but the game makes up for it by giving you the ability to dual-wield weapons and switch to a multitude of them. The other game type that influences the title is the action-RPG, albeit in twin-stick shooter form.
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It may seem sacrilegious to PC players, but thanks to the slower nature of the title and the thought put into making the menu system work with this method, it's a nice compromise for those who are interested in the genre but can't work with the keyboard/mouse combo. On that note, the decision to make yourself a one-man army and cursor has the side effect of making the RTS portion control perfectly fine on a gamepad. That also means no need for hotkeys to manage units, so forces won't be rebound to the wrong group. You also aren't going to worry about population caps, since you'll never build barracks or other forces. For starters, the game is slower-paced, so you aren't rushing through the process of building and gathering. While the base-building and element-gathering will be familiar to RTS players, it deviates from the genre's norms. For those expecting a simple RTS, the juggling of these several elements may throw you for a loop.
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You'll soon find different resources to mine to create new buildings, and you'll worry about how to network everything together so you are using resources efficiently and managing outposts to maximize your intake. Defenses also come into play, and it needs both power and AI cores to operate correctly. Buildings need power, so you need to manage that resource, and there are several options, from using natural resources like solar and wind or using the resource that you're already mining. When you touch down on the planet, you're told to build a base, which means locating an element deposit and building around it. In the opening level, it becomes apparent that The Riftbreaker takes on two different gameplay mindsets: real-time strategy (RTS) and action-RPG.
