Netstorm: Islands at War

NetStorm: Islands At War is a real-time strategy PC game, developed by Titanic Entertainment and published by Activision in 1997. Titanic Entertainment went bust after releasing this game. Although a single-player campaign and tutorial missions are included, Netstorm is primarily designed for online play, allowing for games of up to eight players. However, in May 2002 the official servers were closed, because less and less players were playing the game online. Shortly after the servers were closed, fans of the game set up unofficial servers to keep Netstorm alive.

There isn't really a storyline in this game, you just play three campaigns (that is, if you're able to complete all the levels in the first campaign, after you've done that you unlock mission 1 in the second campaign and so on). The gameplay of this game is relatively simple but quite innovative for its time, as few moving units are used, in contrast to other real-time strategy games, such as Command & Conquer. The battle area consists of a number of islands, each one controlled by an individual player. You're able to build bridges to extend the battlefield, since you can build structures in mid air if they connect with a bridge, and that bridge must connect with your main island. You're also able to build a new bridge that starts from the placed structure. Each player has a priest. You must defend your own priest and capture the enemy's priest and sacrifice him in an Altar.

The most important structure in the game is the Temple. When you lose this building your priest will be immobilized and the enemy is able to build structures on your island, since you don't own it anymore. When the priest is immobilized he can be picked up by a transport unit, such as a Golem, Crystal Crab, Balloon etc. If your able to kill the transporter before he puts your priest into the Altar, he's able to move again.

The currency in this game are so called storm crystals, which you can collect from storm geysers. Some are located on your main island, but most of them you have to connect with your island using bridges. These storm geysers only have a limited amount of storm crystals available, so you have to connect as many as possible to your main island. There is also another way to gather resources, and that is destroying the enemy's buildings. You'll gain 50% of that building's worth in storm crystals after you've destroyed one.

There are several classes of units, including offensive units, defensive units and transport units. Only transport units can actually move and they are mainly used to collect the storm crystals from the storm geysers that appear randomly around the map. Both the offensive and defensive units are static, once placed they cannot be moved. Each offensive unit has an area or line of fire in which it can attack and destroy enemy units. Defensive units serve to provide cover to other offensive units while they make their attack. All units need energy before they can be placed. Energy structures also have an area which they support with energy. Energy structures themselves also need energy from another energy structure to be placed. Ironically, if one of the energy units in the chain is destroyed, all the others keep operating, so you can still build units within their range.

The key to victory in this game is fast bridge building, at least in the single player it is. Quickly cut of the enemy's supply routes to storm geysers is essential. However, there is a way to destroy the bridges, and that is to build an unit of your own next to it, and then salvage that unit so that the bridge collapses. However, the AI doesn't use this method so fast bridge building around his island is the key to victory, especially when you only have one enemy. If you have more than one enemy, the best thing you can do is to quickly build a bridge to the current storm geyser they're using. If you do that you can place an unit to kill their transports, and eventually immobilize their priest, since the priest can also gather storm crystals, and he will drop by to gather crystals after all the transports have been killed.

The graphics of the game are okay, but they get the job done. The game is quite old, so don't expect to much. It can make some people not really try the game. This area is one of the weaker areas of the game. That doesn't hurt the gameplay much though, if you can ignore the graphics, there is a good game behind it.

The sound in Netstorm is pretty decent. Originally, the game doesn't have a soundtrack, but a couple of fans did make an unofficial soundtrack. The original sound is decent and doesn't seem to repeat too often. Each resource gatherer will make some sound when you click on them, and those sounds are well done. The battle sounds are good as well. Nothing special really, but appropriate for the game.

In conclusion: Although the game is quite old, I've really enjoyed playing this game again. And I'm sure you could too, if you're able to look past the graphics. Netstorm's single player really is challenging at times, even when using that bridge trick. The game also still has a community that organizes tournaments among their members.

Netstorm is considered abandonware by some, and can be downloaded here.