In your offline time: Warzone 2100

In the free time I had in the past few days, without a proper and consistent Internet connection, I spent a lot of time playing Warzone 2100 … again.

It’s a pleasure to watch this game develop. Occasionally I start up old real-time strategy games — in Wine or in Linux, as the case may be — but more and more they seem to lack some of the frills Warzone 2100 has adopted over time.

Plus, cutscenes are downloadable, which makes the campaign version more interesting. Not that they were critical to the action, but the overall presentation is definitely improved.

And every now and again I discover something new (or maybe I just didn’t notice before). For example, you can preset some combat options by right-clicking on a factory. New units are automatically set to those options.

Personally I find that very useful, just because I habitually tell each unit to retreat at half damage. I know, I’m a chicken, but at least I can conserve a little in big battles.

I also notice now there is a tutorial mode, as well as a fast play game, which is fun, if plain. Commander units seem more “influential” now, although that also might be my imagination.

Of course, I still run into little issues from time to time, and wonder if I’m doing something wrong. I cannot, for the life of me, complete the campaign mission preventing the “bad guys” from exiting the map. It seems impossible, since their transport is spawned as soon as you come within firing distance.

So I still, on occasion, rely on cheat mode. The problem was, without the Internet, I had no idea what the cheat codes were. Hmm. … 😐

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