Perimeter: Emperor's Testament

Perimeter: Emperor's Testament is a 2006 standalone add-on to Perimeter. It was the first game developed by K-D LAB after it's founder and the creator of Perimeter, Andrey 'KranK' Kuzmin left the studio.

Story
The player takes a role of imperial De-Legate, an artificial created mind of one of imperial automatic bases, Vice Frames, who gets a special mission from the Emperor. De-Legate must finish construction of Mechanical Spirit, the latest imperial technology which will allow Empire to discover new Sponge worlds without participation of Spirits, and to perform it's test run. During test run Vice Frame has been transported into distant unknown sector of Sponge. After reactivation of Mechanical Spirit it turns out that it became selw-aware. Mechanical Spirit proclaims self as Messia and makes De-Legate his first Apostle. Mechanical Messiah feels presence of the Spirits in this distant Handful of Worlds and is about to start a war against them.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) Both opening and ending cinematics are just clips made from cinematics from the original Perimeter.
 * 2) Some people find music the terrible, though you may like it if you are into weird and creepy stuff and there are some decent tracks.
 * 3) Many maps have a bland and uninspired visual design.
 * 4) Some people don't like the fact that there is no tutorial; the game supposes that you already played original Perimeter.
 * 5) This "add-on" doesn't give us anything new in terms of gameplay except for three new units and one turret. The turret is an interesting addition, but two out of three units are terribly underpowered.
 * 6) This add-on takes away more than it gives because you cannot play as Harkbackhood.
 * 7) They also changed units physics, and now they actually crawl on terrain instead of hovering. Now units take damage just from standing on an edge of the land, partially being over the bottom of a world without even touching it, which makes no sense.
 * 8) Missions become repetitive after some time.
 * 9) Even interesting missions sometimes look unnatural, like fan mods or chess etudes.
 * 10) Terrible AI. It builds no units except for those underpowered Eflairs/Machaons unless the mission scripts force it to use another weapon. The fifth mission is the brightest example: for the first attack enemy uses much more powerful Ceptors, but switches to Effairs after this.
 * 11) Do you remember those horrific missions in the original Perimeter where the enemy has a large base and you have nothing? Emperor's Testament has a lot of missions like that.
 * 12) For some reason, in the skirmish, each player gets a large terraformed territory which makes terraforming unimportant. Also, the Empire theme music plays even if you choose Exodus.
 * 13) Lots of desyncs in multiplayer.
 * 14) A portion of other bugs and glitches.
 * 15) Despite the fact that the game is called Emperor's Testament, it contains little to no Emperor. After the fifth mission, he doesn't even appear anymore and is rarely mentioned.
 * 16) The Emperor's voice sounds very weird. Also in the English version, Mechanical Messiah for some reason speaks with a robotic voice.
 * 17) The plot is underdeveloped, and most of it's points left completely unexplained. Also, some of the moments are stupid and anti-canon:
 * 18) * In the original Perimeter, Emperor stated that uniting with Scourge is unthinkable. Now he orders you not to destroy Vice Frames infected by Scourge, because he wants to use them for some plan.
 * 19) * Why Spirits would even fight against Infernals?
 * 20) * And why they call their Legate "Child of Earth"? Don't they keep the very existence of Earth in secret?
 * 21) * Also, they state that Infernals want to conquer Earth. Why do they even care about Earth if it is not suitable for life anymore? (Well, there's still a chance that humans adjusted to it...) And why Infernals even bother to use Inforb ships, if (Perimeter spoilers)
 * 22) * The game tries to establish a connection between Perimeter and Vangers continuities, so if you didn't play Vangers, you have no chance of understanding the ending.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Some of missions are actually interesting to play. Also good players can save much time by doing things like capturing enemy cores and attacking crucial parts of enemy base. There is also a couple of solid vs. Scourge survival missions.
 * 2) The Russian Mechanical Messiah voice acting is good.
 * 3) Solid dark and depressive athmosphere. The aforementioned music helps much.