FREE DOWNLOAD LAPTOP | Golem Crusades (2010) | A golem consists of magically animated matter formed into a large humanoid creature. Fantasy literature traditionally has them fashioned from earth, clay, rock, lava, that sort of thing. In theory, they can be made from pretty much anything, although it's unlikely you'll ever read about a golem created from halfling toenail clippings or sticky toffee pudding. A high level version of the latter, mind you, would be one heck of a challenge for an adventuring party, not to mention one heck of a dessert afterwards. They'd just better hope that before they left town, the wizard memorised his summon custard spell.
Golem Crusades features the usual earth, wood and stone type golems which the main character, a druid, can summon. The idea is to direct these lumbering animated lumps around, while flinging lightning bolts at invading skeletons, spiders and other nasties, in what is essentially a cross between a basic RTS title and a Diablo style action RPG. Interestingly enough, Golem Crusades is a reboot of an old Commodore 64 title called Druid, with the original programmer at the helm.
The game is designed to be simple and streamlined, and each level (there are ten in total) revolves around huts. Huts provide a forge for worker clay golems, who have resources such as wood and rocks collected for them by normal golems, which are in turn used to fashion combat golems. Combat golems can attack and take out enemy huts, with the object of the game being to wipe the enemy from the map. Your evil opponent can also commandeer huts, and the more he owns, the harder things get, as they all spawn monsters which trundle across the map with the express purpose of rending the druid limb from limb.
Initially, we were impressed with the philosophy here: a fresh and original gameplay scheme, set alongside what appears to be a streamlined set of controls and interface. Unfortunately, Golem Crusades, rather like a sticky toffee pudding golem, is a novel idea which doesn't really hold together. Take the camera, for instance; it automatically adjusts itself as you move around to maintain an optimum view of the playing field, so the player doesn't have to worry about constantly tweaking the angle. A good idea in theory, but it just doesn't work in practice.
The viewpoint keeps shifting around way too much as you walk across the map, flipping gradually through 90 or 180 degrees and generally proving quite disorientating. Matters get even worse when you travel near a forest, and the intelligent camera decides to give it a bit of zoom, and suddenly all that's visible is an anything-but-optimum view of a canopy of leaves. You can't see the druid for the trees, and if you're anywhere near water (which our hero is seriously allergic to), this can be a death-trap.
When it comes to resource management, again Golem Crusades tries to keep things very basic, with just a couple of materials to collect. However, resource collection doesn't happen automatically, and the player has to specifically order the gathering of each separate unit of wood or stone. Shepherding resource grabbing golems around is rather tedious, especially seeing as they move rather slowly. Combat golems are even more sluggish, and moving them across the map to strike at the enemy is a very slow process.
Incidentally, you have no direct control over the golems. There's no selecting or marshalling units around precisely, but you can order them to guard a hut, or follow you. Again, this is an innovative idea, but the reality of it is that as you try to lead them across the level, some of your golems always end up getting lost, separated off and running after enemies coming in from the flank. Generally, the first thing you'll know about this is a low golem health warning message, and as you don't have a clue where it is (the mini-map is small and unhelpful), the poor beast is essentially dead already. Golems also seem to get stuck on the terrain sometimes; either that or they just get plain confused.
And the terrain is a further irritation when it comes to aiming your lightning bolts, which are launched by tapping the space bar. They never hit where your pointer is actually aiming, but instead where a dark blue shadow indicates. This represents the effect of slopes and elevation on your aiming, although the reality is that it's a finicky mechanic which serves little purpose but to annoy. Half the time, aiming on a steep slope seems nigh-on impossible.
Other strange decisions mar the game, such as a forty second introduction sequence which is played on start-up and can't be skipped. And the fact that when you take over a hut, the engine switches to a three second cut-scene, which looks fancy but interrupts any spell you might be casting. If that happens to be a crucial golem heal, for example, it can mean death for the beleaguered clay lump you were trying to aid.
All these fiddly bits and misjudged gameplay elements add up quickly, and mean that Golem Crusades, which is already a slow paced game given the speed of your troops, becomes a trial of patience. A lack of explanation at times - such as full instructions on how to use the more advanced spells - compounds this. It's a shame, as we were hoping this would be one of those diamonds in the rough, given the promisingly refreshing concept. Unfortunately, it's more a case of a zircon in the rough.
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