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Harvest: Massive Encounter Review

Now usually I do not play these type of games, but Harvest: Massive Encounter caught my eye and I decided to give it a try. My initial reaction to the game is that it reminded me a lot of the Starcraft or Diablo series. Although I have never really played these games, I know the idea is to create an army or civilization that is sustainable and able to survive enemy attacks. Harvest: Massive Encounter is the same objective, but instead of building battleships, you build defense turrents and missile silos to protect your harvesting. What you are looking to obtain are minerals in the rocks, that serve as money so you can expand your society. However, these harvesters need energy to run, so solar paneled units and orbs that pass the power are built to give the rest of the colony energy. Once these begin to run, you begin to get more and more money to expand to other rock formations nearby.

But just doing that would be way too easy (not to mention boring) so there are aliens that come to attack your humble harvesters. This is where you build defense mechanisms that work to prevent the spaceships from destroying valuable equiptment. The first level is pretty basic, but other levels include all kinds of wars and upgrades that are impossible to describe without experiencing the game firsthand. As the levels progress there are more and more things to build and aliens to avoid. In the opening screen, you choose from three different worlds, each with its own challenges and interesting features, like a water world or an ice land. There are also different challenges within each level, like Normal mode (which is self explanitory), Wave (where you avoid 10 different waves of enemies), Insane (where you build a base deep in enemy territory), Rush (where you build a base in a mineral rich area that is on the brink of war) and Creative (no aliens, only harvesting).

Although the makers of the game market is as, "Easy to Learn, Impossible to Master" I think it should really be seen as, "(Not so) Easy to Learn, Impossible to Master." This may just be my bias against these types of games but I was not interested by the concept. I mean I usually enjoy games like SimCity and Rollercoaster Tycoon, but this game didn't make sense to me. The sci-fi story was pretty cool, but other than that, it was not really worth my time. Maybe I just didn't give it enough of a chance, but Massive Encounter didn't really appeal to me. I would like to say that this game was fun and challenging, but I didn't think it was. I would give Harvest: Massive Encounter one and a half out of five stars.

Features of Harvest: Massive Encounter
-Control Massive Number of Units
-Uniques Strategy Play
-Energy Webs
-3 Planets to Explore

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