Stormrise is built by The Creative Assembly one of the best strategy game developers on the market, so I must admit my and others expectations were extremely high, but who could blame us after the incredible Empire – Total War, one of the best games of all time. To say the overall disappointment we have experienced with the game is great is an understatement as we fought our way through the campaign.

Set in a bleak futuristic world which was devastated by some catastrophic deadly event several centuries before. The Echelon (good guys) and the Sai (bad guys) are battling for control of this world after the Echelon wake up from a self induced hibernation while the Sai began to rule the outside world. These two factions (and only two factions) go after each other in continuing larger battles.

Will this console based real time strategy title influence innovation in other games or will it scare companies away from trying anything drastically new and innovative?

When Stormrise was announced it claimed to have a new and completely innovative way to play a real time strategy game on consoles. This was a very bold claim since very few RTS games have been able to say they have innovative controls and most have just cloned the PC way of controlling things and brought that to the console.

Stormrise introduces the Whip control as their brand new innovative way to play a real time strategy title and this concept had huge potential because it would allow for fast and precise gaming, something which was missing from most console RTS games. The problem is while the Whip control allows for fast movement it is so imprecise when you have multiple units or groups side by side you will end up losing time in the end and become frustrated about the inaccurate controls. This inaccuracy also makes for some of the worst and cheapest deaths you will see in a real time strategy game on any system. What would make the gameplay better is if the real time strategy was dropped for a more semi-real time system where you could pause or even slow down the game and issue commands and continue on.

One thing Stormrise does really badly is tell you what is going on or provide enough information to the player to get the most out of the game. Even the bad tutorial just gives the most basic of basic commands and skips the rest of the commands you will be required to learn. You must read the manual, something I almost never do and have not done in a couple of years, plus play the tutorial and move through game in a almost trial and error gameplay mode. It is beyond bad design and poor planning on the part of the developers.

There are more issues with the game besides what I have mentioned above. Stormrise has some of the worst micromanagement system, its User Interface is a joke, the overview tactical map is a major disappointment, the multiplayer is bland and nothing special and when you add everything together this is one of the most disappointing games of the last year or so on any console.

Stormrise does one gameplay feature well and that is the different height levels of the battlefield from rooftops, street levels to underground. This is something they have done better than any other strategy game we have played on consoles and the PC. This aspect to the game is done so well I hope to see it in other strategy titles because it forces the player to think outside the box.

Multiplayer wise the game is boring and bland but is not as bad as the single player game. It does offer plenty of maps and a variety of versus modes of up to 8 players locally and over Xbox Live. With a Join Anytime feature which allows quick game setup and play through the games multiplayer is a slightly bright shining star in this deep despair filled game.

Graphically Stormrise has its good and bad points. The good points include some nice level designed maps built around multiplayer gaming. But the bad points overshadow the rest of the game with some poor animations, low quality textures, just an ugly user and control interface and jagged 3D models which bring the visual quality of the game down dramatically.

The music, sound effects and voice over work is all average at best, with some extremely bad spoken parts at times mixed with some very well spoken parts. The audio almost seems rushed which makes zero sense and makes me scratch my head at why the audio is so bad when all their other games had some excellent audio design.

There is no actual value for this game for most players as I have yet to find anyone who found any part of the game to be fun or enjoyable. This game needed to be worked on for a while longer to improve many key areas where it is lacking.

Considering Stormrise was created by The Creative Assembly who has crafted some of the best strategy titles in the history of strategy games; this game is an incredible and ultimate disappointment in almost every single way. At best it is a rental for those who are interested in console RTS games and for the rest of the gamers in the land, the game is just something to stay away from.