Maelstrom Member Review for the PC

B-?  Game Revolution was on Meth that day

 Maelstrom is the kind of game that feels like a technical demo.  I started to play it expecting the kind of polished RTS gaming I have gotten from series like Command and Conquer and Starcraft.  Only, this game decided that PC gamers apparently don't like useful features and games that are fun and instead went with a poor rehash of the same ideas that have choked the genre of RTS for years with some small resource gathering innovations.

I would go into the story of the game but it is some of the worst writing seen outside of the wrestling game world.  Basically there are races fighting for control of some territory.  I like to think when I do a member review I do a pretty good job of at least acting like I paid attention to the story.  I would have done so again here except that the voice acting was some of the worst in gaming history.  Its like if some kids got their hands on garage band and decided to email in some tracks of voices.  This is beyond poor, this shows that the developers didn't pay attention at all to the basic gameplay. 

Along with voice acting, there is the actual control of your units.  They don't follow your commands, they don't move exactly where they are told to and when they do get to where you wanted sometimes they don't stop moving.  This "rebellious unit" feature is actually the most innovative feature of the game, except its not there on purpose.  What happens when you actually get your units to the point of combat?
  
Then the fun begins!  Now, before combat begins I need to warn everyone out there to turn the soundtrack off.  Its horrible and you don't even need to worry about not hearing the units unique sounds because some of them don't have sounds at all.  During actual combat it is difficult to get your units to engage the enemy you want, not that it really matters because all the game consists of is moving enough units into combat to beat the idiot computer.  This game has to do something right, you may think to yourself.

You get to take direct command of your hero units and guide them into combat.  You can't do anything interesting or cool from this angle but it is available and does break up the combat a little.  That is about all this game has going for it.

It is shocking to me to think that GR gave this piece of crap a B- and makes me wonder if the members who gave it the same grade actually played it.  Overall I was shocked at the lack of quality and the lack of original or interesting design.   I do need to say that  I don't have a high bar for any of those categories but this was so poor as to warrant further comment.

Don't buy this game.