Publisher: Aspyr
Developer: SEK Ost
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Release Date: Sep 27, 2006
ESRB: TEEN
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence, Language, Use of Tobacco, Mild Suggestive Themes
ParaWorld's main problem is that its gameplay mechanics just aren't that fresh or interesting. It's not just the familiar blend of resource gathering, base construction, and unit generating that's the issue here, but rather, all of it just isn't well put together. Resources are very, very finite, which means that you're limited in the strategies you can apply because you can't build much of anything. And if you fail, trying to rebuild your forces is that much tougher. Levels are designed so that they lead you by the nose for the most part, which makes it feel like you're not strategizing but rather jumping through hoops. And it doesn't help that your lumbering dino units take a long time to get from point A to point B. Also, the combat is utterly generic while the dinosaur and martial arts units aren't that tough, powerful, or special--when you expect the complete opposite.
There are some interesting ideas in ParaWorld, even if they can't save the game. The army controller prevents you from simply swamping your opponents with sheer numbers because each unit takes up a slot on the army controller, and you only have so many slots. More significantly, the slots are divided into ranks, so you can only build so many level 1 units, a smaller number of level 2 units, and so on. This also plays a role in promotions because you can use experience points (in this case, skulls) to promote a unit to the next level, which means potentially unlocking new powers or abilities, as well as giving more hit points, increased damage attacks, and so on. Meanwhile, the missions in the game are part real-time strategy and part adventure because there are various quests that you can pursue on the side. These quests aren't essential to the ultimate goal of winning the level, but they can earn skulls that you can use to level up your heroes and units. However, we did encounter some bugs. For example, when we accomplished a quest objective, the quest still remained unsolved.
System requirements
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Operating System : Windows 2000/XP
Processor : 1.6 GHz
Video Card : 64 MB
Ram : 512 MB