Perimeter 2: New Earth

Perimeter 2: New Earth is a real-time strategy video game developed by KDV Games (formerly known as K-D LAB) and published by Strategy First for PC. It is the third and the last installment in Perimeter series, as well as the last game by KDV.

Plot
(A bit edited intro.)

''In the 21st century the Spirits, prophets and outstanding scientists, appeared on Earth. The greatest gift of the Spirits was the discovery of a new dimension, the Sponge. People rushed to explore the newly discovered worlds, but the gift turned into a curse. Terrible contamination from the new worlds flooded Earth. The planet and all mankind were doomed. But the Spirits offered a way to save humanity by Exodus away from Earth. The Spirits led the people to the Promised Land. The search for New Earth became the fate of many generations. As time went by people began to doubt the wisdom of the Spirits. Humanity divided into two hostile factions. The Harkback decided to return to old Earth, Exodus continued this journey, led by the Spirits. Exodus reached it's goal, and so did Harkback. But for some reason they ended up on the same planet, and the war has erupted again...''

Why It Sucks

 * 1) The opening cinematic is another clip made from cinematics from the original Perimeter, just like the opening and ending cinematics in Perimeter: Emperor's Testament.
 * 2) The music is a torture for ears.
 * 3) Terrible voice acting in Russian version. In the English version it's better... but the game has a couple of moments where characters start speaking Russian!
 * 4) All good mechanics from original Perimeter were thrown away and replaced with new, bad ones. The game has much more in common with their previous game, Maelstrom (this is where this entire thing about struggle between land and water came from), then with Perimeter. The iconic Perimeter forcefield is still present, but it is possible to beat the entire game without a single use of it.
 * 5) Poor weaponry. Original Perimeter had vast variety of units and interesting unit transformation mechanic which was one of the key features of the game. In this game you can build only 4 types of units (light, medium, heavy and special) and the only type of transformation available is switching between ground and aerial modes, similarly to Vikings from StarCraft II, but in this game units in aerial form can attack ground targets. Guess which form you will use 100% of time?
 * 6) The energy (which is the only resourse in the game) extraction speed is ridiculously high. (This goes against the story, which says that planets are far inferior to Sponge worlds in terms of energy collection.) Coupled with the fact that you can construct an unlimited number of structures at the same time, it means that you win this game by spamming structures as quickly as you can.
 * 7) Three missions can be finished in less than one minute by a single use of superweapon.
 * 8) Unlike all the Harkbackhood structures which stand on water surface and take damage from ground, the Harkbackhood Frame stands on land and takes damage from water, which is weird. In the last Exodus mission your enemy can (and will, if you will not prevent this) flood their own Frame and destroy it!
 * 9) In the version 1.0 things are even worse. Exodus cores terraform land inefficiently and can't provide enough room for constructing an unit factory (you have either to search a proper place for it or to dismantle your core and build a factory on it's place). Terraforming can even damage your own buildings! Also the artillery can break through Perimeter forcefield.
 * 10) The plot. It is poor, has breaks from canon and raises more questions than solves. And the worst part is the ending. The Harkbackhood campaign is called "Choice of direction" which probably means that the developers wanted to make alternate endings, but in fact there is no choice! All those warnings and reasonings from the Renegade were meaningless, the player must obey the commands and destroy his own Frame, his native ship city with one huhdred thousands of colonists! What kind of ending is this?!
 * 11) This game costs 15$ on Steam while original Perimeter costs 4$. Also it doesn't have Russian language available and the game version is 1.0.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Nice graphics and physics. The engine is probably good.
 * 2) Unlike Emperor's Testament, this game actually gives us a lot of new mechanics. Bad, but new and somewhat interesting.
 * 3) The Renegade is probably the only sane person in the entire Perimeter universe.