Stein' and a plot that swings between bland and incomprehensible.

The game script is terrible, featuring characters like 'Frank N. The menus are dull and unhelpful, and good luck to you if you downloaded the digital version and have a question – there's no in-game help at all, not even a list of hotkeys. The entire package is wrapped in a presentation that can only be described as 'underwhelming.' The graphics are bright and eye-catching, but character designs are bland and your units are small and lack detail even at the tightest zoom level. Unfortunately, most of the online community seems to focus on deathmatching, so finding an available co-op game can be a rarity. As with all other modes, co-op games provide you with artifacts and battle points used to improve your units. Better still is the co-op mode, in which you can team up with other players against AI enemies in objective-based missions similar to MMO raids. WorldShift's maps are large and dense, with random item drops that award exploration even in the middle of a deathmatch. If you can find some even-matched players to compete with amongst WorldShift's small community (the most players I ever found online was 29), then there is some fun to be had with the online component. With the uneven playing field, it will take new players a long, long time to buff their armies to the point where they can reasonably compete. Even when you lose a match you get to keep the artifacts you discover along the way, but only victories reward you with reasonable amounts of 'battle points,' which you'll need to need to improve your skills. In the next, no amount of strategy will help you overcome the swarm of massively powerful tanks your opponent sends your way. In one match, your skill may help you overcome a player of your same level. To make matters worse, WorldShift features no kind of level-based matchmaking system, you won't know if you're playing against a newbie player or a veteran with high-level units until you meet them on the battlefield. But new players won't be stepping onto a level playing field WorldShift was released a year ago in many European countries. Since WorldShift feature an MMO-style skill progression, the more you play, the more powerful you can make your units. Multiplayer removes some of the campaign's frustrations like the pitiful enemy AI, only to swap it for a major new problem: balance. The story is cliché and boring, and the mission objectives are laughably bad, often involving avoiding enemies with stealth – no easy feat with your units' broken pathfinding. Removing base-building may make the gameplay easier for new players, but removes any sort of strategy at all – there's no balance between attack and defense you'll simply always be massing your forces into one large offensive unit and hunting down the bad guys. WorldShift was clearly designed with multiplayer in mind (you have to create an online account to even launch the game), and the single-player campaign is so bad that few players will muscle through it before heading online.

Worldshift 2