When
Mel Gibson remade Braveheart as the American Revolution epic The
Patriot, he did so because he understood that the freedom narrative
holds a mythical poignancy for American audiences. Its no accident that
the present administration is selling the war in Iraq as a battle for
the freedom of oppressed Iraqi citizens. Freedom is a virtue regarded so
highly in this country that we accept it unconditionally, embracing the
good connotations of happiness, choice, and self-determinacy it conveys.
Data Becker brings the story of freedom told by Braveheart to the video
game format, and by the looks of things, theyre depending on your love
of freedom to sustain a whole lot of enthusiasm for a game that is
otherwise utterly generic.
Its
always disappointing to see video game producers falling into the sort
of predictable tropism and formula production that has all but ruined
Hollywood cinema. But Highland Warriors differs as much from any other
RTSlike Microsofts Age of Mythology, for instanceas The Fast and the
Furious differed from its racing movie clones. Even the user interface
in HW handles much like the one in AoM, except that players can zoom
much further into the action so that the camera is level with the troops
and every detail of every tree in every forest can be scrutinized.
On
the other hand, the details of these trees arent necessarily riveting,
and much depends upon the power of your computers processor and
graphics card. But even the hardiest of gaming machines wont enable
graphics any more spectacular than any other RTS on the market. In fact,
HW is notoriously power hungry, taxing even the most respectable gaming
machines down to stuttering camera pans and flagging frame rates. Its
difficult to determine where all this computing power gets utilized.
Its surely not in graphics or enemy AI, which comes off as lackluster
at best. Sure a lot of battling soldiers will fit on the screen at one
time, producing some worthwhile battle scenes, but the strategy in these
battle scenes ends up feeling redundant, especially to experienced RTS
players who are well acquainted with classic strategies like lining up
infantry and sending the archers after them with a final wave of cavalry
to clean up the mess. Also familiar is resource management, which works
exactly the way you remember itassign peasants to harvest stone or gold
or ore to the warehouses, wheat or cattle or hares to the larders,
lumber to the wood mills. One nice change is the ability to train
peasants as master journeymen once theyve toiled long enough at a
particular task, which enables them to perform that task much more
quickly and keeps the resources flowing steadily into the stocks.
There
are other touches like this, though all of them are too small or
inconsequential to render HW unique, or even notable. One thing going
for this game, however, is the aura produced by its setting. The
Scottish people are a proud bunch with a fierce history of fighting for
independence, and HW invokes this history to good effect. The game
begins deep in Scotlands violent past, when clans waged war against one
another for the beautiful mountain terrain and icy blue lochs of the
highlands. Once in a while the clans forged loose alliances and battled
the ancient race of barbarians known as the picts. The first campaign of
HW has you uniting the clans under a single monarch and beating back the
pictish menace. The subsequent three campaigns cover Scotlands battle
for independence against the tyrannical English government, culminating
in Robert the Bruces victory for Scottish sovereignty (freeing the
country to concentrate on perfecting the art of whisky making). The
romance of Celts and kilts is augmented by Druids magic, which your
armies can command as they gain more experience. Or if the noble
conquest for freedom doesnt choke you up with emotion, you can play on
the side of the English and try to keep the Scots under control. HWs
story is sure to satisfy, and with four separate single player campaigns
plus the option for multi-player mayhem, theres plenty of game play to
be had, even if this game play will tend to feel a little familiar to
fans of the genre. The cut scenes provide satisfying narrative to link
the battle scenes. However, not many of the actual battles will prove
very challenging, especially in light of the steady flow of resources
and the massive, ever-reinforced armies they enable.
If
youve a passion for bagpipes and swords twice the size of the brutes
who wield them, if you bought the special collectors edition of
Braveheart and still get misty when Mel Gibson drops his wifes
handkerchief to the floor of the torture platform, or if youre wearing
a kilt as you read this, then Highland Warriors should provide enough
Scottishness to give you pleasure. But veterans of the genre, or those
seeking the thrill of the utterly new, would do better to enjoy their
freedom by curling up with a biography of William Wallace and a nice
glass of Talisker single malt.