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SunAge

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Publisher: Lighthouse Interactive Game Publishing
Genre(s): Strategy
Home Page: http://www.sunage-the-game.com/

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By: Aaron Barnes Jan 09, 2008

A Kick In The Pants To Gamers

Games are evaluated in a certain context, and for better or worse that context often includes some form of judgement regarding price. In other words, a review includes a component which judges value, if for no other reason than to identify a particular game's main competitors. SunAge is a value title (with an expected price of $29.99 USD), and it's tempting to suggest that value titles should be reviewed with a bit of leeway regarding quality. But a budget-priced game should make concessions in scope of content and not quality of execution, and this axiom reveals the main fault of SunAge: the game is simply untested and unfinished. It is an ambitious project that grew beyond its means, and when development resources ran out, the build-of-the-day was pressed to disc and shipped to retailers. Even if the North American release features the patched version of the game, SunAge is still fundamentally a mess, and no degree of post-release support can excuse an early release.

Overly subdued lighting on some maps makes for difficult navigation

My base is under attack. By unfinished game code

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	1.2 GHz Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor	Not specified
Memory	512MB (1GB Recommended for Windows Vista)
Graphics Card	DirectX 9.0c-compatible 128MB 3D accelerated video card
Graphics Card Example	Not specified
Free Disk Space	1 GB
Net Link	LAN or 56K (or faster) Internet connection

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 3000+ / Intel Pentium 4 630	AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ / Intel Core 2 Duo E6320
Memory	512 MB	1 GB
Graphics Card	ATI Radeon X800 128MB / NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT 128MB	ATI Radeon HD 2600 256MB / NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 256MB
Free Disk Space	1.0 GB	1.0 GB
Net Link	Broadband	Broadband

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	40	Out of the box, there is no gameplay, with unwinnable scenarios and frequent repeatable crashes. Once patched, there's little enjoyment to be had in the lackluster single-player campaign, and multiplayer is a bust. Only Battlecruiser 3000AD comes to mind when searching for a more broken commercial game.
Graphics	59	Sprite-based artwork is well-done and animations are capable, though the 2D rendering can be less "retro-love" and more "pain-inducing". A lack of camera rotating and zooming hampers gameplay, and the map design often begs for these simple features. The game does run well on ancient hardware, though.
Audio	43	Not good - not good at all. Audio ranges from amateur (voice acting) to questionable (music and sound effects). "Repetitive" and "glitchy" best describe the audio.
Technology	45	"Retro" isn't a synonym for "buggy". The graphics engine isn't fundamentally broke, but it's a child of the previous millennium. Game-breaking bugs, frequent crashes and corrupt save files, even with the latest patches, complete the messy package.

OVERALL

It's no fun beating up on the little guy, but whoever green-lighted the release of SunAge surely must have known that the release code was beta at best. With recent patches, the game is playable, but the underlying RTS mechanics are frustrating or broken. SunAge is what happens when a hobby project with commercial ambitions is released far too early, and it's ultimately a tale of what could have been.

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A Kick In The Pants To Gamers

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

Scores

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