The Collection Chamber: MACHINES: WIRED FOR WAR

2545. Mankind died. But its interplanetary colonization program didn't.

3297. Spaceborne and masterless. Legions of drones, seeder ships, industrial machines and self-aware AI supercomputers continue to execute their prime directive. Colonize. Even if other machines are there before them. Even if it means developing the capacity for destruction. Even if it means the greatest war the universe has ever seen... The Machine War.
MULTI-PLAYER ACTION
Play over the Internet or LAN. If you don't hide, attack, and conduct covert operations, your enemies will, and you will die.
TRUE 3D ENVIRONMENTS
Use 3D polygonal landscapes to your advantage. Attack from hilltops for tactical dominance. Hide behind varied terrain for cover and stealth assaults.
WAGE WAR FROM MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
1st-person lets you explore buildings during espionage missions. Floating 3rd-person camera shows the battle from all angles. Zenith view provides strategic control.
RESEARCH & BUILD OVER 50 DIFFERENT MACHINES
Create Commandants, Flying Machines, Spies, Armored Personnel Carriers and Reapers! Develop a battalion with specific strengths to support your personalized fighting strategy.
SABOTAGE AND ESPIONAGE CAPABILITIES
Deposit mines inside enemy buildings, steal research, and pass back vital information.
CREATE 25 WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Wreak havoc with Flame-throwers, Vortex Singularities, Plasma Rifles, Ion Cannons, and Nukes!

~ from the back of the box

From the people that brought you that crazy Christmas adventure game where Rudolph got drunk, comes a mech-based real-time-strategy called Machines: Wired for War. That's not a sentence I thought I'd be writing. Developed by Charybdis, a small British studio best known for irreverent point-and-click adventures (Spud!, The Quivering), Machines was a hard left turn into serious science-fiction strategy. While they weren't exactly a renowned adventure game developer, they managed to garner modest acclaim. Then Acclaim Entertainment came into the picture when they produced their new release for 1999 - a strategy game!

Machines, for all its attempts at imitation, is par-the-course of every turn-of-the-millennium RTS. The fully polygonal battlefield is appealingly chunky for an era where a lot of its most famous contemporaries were doggedly sticking to 2D sprites, but doesn't differentiate or better itself from the likes of Warzone 2100 or Empire: Battle for Dune. The sound design, while unremarkable, suits the theme with metallic clanks and laser zaps breaking through the stonking trance soundtrack. There's variety in its units, but their design isn't particularly memorable with spider-mechs and big-wheeled buggies so generic you're certain you've seen the exact same models crop up in other games. The terrain is also rather uninspired and uneventful, with little distinguishing features to help you navigate the map. It doesn't help that the fog of war and camera is a little too close, making it intent on not letting you get the best view. Yet, despite its lack of originality, there's plenty to like here.

That big bulb thing holds BMUs or Building Material Units. Select the constructor to make stuff with it (left).
If you build factories, you can call upon other bots to do menial tasks (civilian) or fight (military) (right).

To anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the genre, the gameplay loop will feel familiar. You scout the map, secure resources, build structures and create a powerful army. What immediately sets it apart is how much emphasis it puts on how you control that hardware. Standard RTS mouse controls are here - left-click to select, right-click de-select, click a menu to give orders - but there's another way to issue commands... directly.

Thanks to the 3D engine (which, despite my misgivings, was a rarity at the time for this genre), you can scour the map at any angle or even jump into the cockpit of even the lowliest of grunts. When you do, you'll be sticking to keyboard controls making it play almost like a first-person-shooter. Depending on how good you are at aiming, such a viewpoint can make your attacker more or less accurate, or even weave through danger to reveal some of the fog of war. You can also look into it too. While the screen deliberately glitches into black to represent this fog, the first-person viewpoint will let you see as far as the draw distance will allow, making for an important strategic advantage. Don't expect kind of precision you'd find in the likes of Quake or Half-Life - the machines are sluggish and clumsy - but its implementation is more than just a novelty. It's a tactical advantage.

Use a locater to find a BMU-rich deposit (left).
You constructor can now build a mine for transporters to syphon resources from (right).

Unit and building variety in Machines is deeper than you might expect, but not exactly unfamiliar to veterans of the genre. You start with a Deeding Pod that stores this games currency (BMUs or Building Material Units) and basic mech called a Dozer Constructor. If you click on constructor, one of its actions will be Construct. Your first port of call would be to build a Communication Beacon which will give you a map of revealed areas on top left of the screen. Next would be Civilian Factory from which Locators, Transporters or more Constructors can be creates. Locators are a much if you want any my BMUs. Use them to find areas suitable to be mined (in the early stages, it's safe to assume there will be one nearby). Once you've tasked your Constructor to build that mine, you can assign your Transporter to strip it of anything valuable.

The UI dutifully displays all you need to know. BMU counts, build progress, and tech options, but early on the layout feels cluttered and the learning curve steep. Not everything is as intuitive as you'd want, and the tutorial don't do much to help you learn. The AI of both friend and foe struggle to navigate past the smallest of obstacles and good luck watching them handle the smallest deviance from the orders given to them. You can select its level of autonomy by upping its initiative from medium to high. The idea is to control how much human manipulation is needed, but while each of the three settings do make a noticeable difference, you cannot always trust them to make their own decisions regardless.

Control a bot in first person to directly go on the attack (left) or safely scout ahead (right).

Regular readers will know I'm not the biggest fan of this genre, and it took me a time to get used to it, but I never could get the right balance of building and fighting to consistently succeed at missions. And when trial and error means hours lost, it's demotivating. I find this to be a quirk of the genre as a whole, and the best of them (from Bullfrog or Blizzard) entertainingly ease you in with a nice difficulty curve and stylish panache. Unfortunately, despite the cheeky tone of the developer's earlier games, Machines doesn't do this.

The single-player campaign includes some impressive pre-rendered cutscenes into an impression of a storyline. It's the far future and the human population has ballooned to breaking point. In an effort to stave off extinction, the world leaders have send robots to other planets to work on terraforming them for human habitation. 500 years later, the humans never came, but these intelligent mechs have developed a domineering plan of their own. The campaign attempts to weave in plot points into each stage, with escort and diplomacy missions, but it's all just an excuse for mechs to shoot each other.

While not a genre shaker, Machines: Wired for War is a solid, underappreciated curio from a time when gamers were awash with similar alternative. In 2020, current rights holder Nightdive Studios released the source code, ensuring its preservation and allowing modders to work their wonders to make it compatible today. Even though I haven't tested it, online multiplayer apparently works too. Overall, I'd say its a decent stab at a real-time-strategy. It's not particularly memorable, but it's competently made. It won't entice non-fans of the genre, but for those looking to take a break from StarCraft, it might provide some enjoyment despite its rough edges.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber runs natively on Windows using the Community Fork of the source code by Kaffeine. Manual and Reference Card included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 464 Mb. Install Size: 612 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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