Perimeter Reviews

Oh man, what a surprise this game is. It may be relatively old now but it is the first time I played it and I like it a lot. It has a very interesting mechanic regarding terrain and unit construction which i find unique and interestind. Definitely recomend it.

My favorite RTS of all time. Had it on disk for years before buying it again on Steam. Perimeter provides excellent story, an interesting and unique world, and fun mechanics all wrapped up into a game with far more flexibility than the average RTS. You can really choose your playstyle and adapt as the game progresses. Perimeter has immense replayability and is an excellent experience overall. The standalone expansion, Emperor's Testament, is also worth getting. It adds a fantastic new story arc and some new gameplay mechanics to keep you going.

I could not get it to run. The solution for me was to change the Fullscreen parameter equal to 0 ,in the perimeter configuration file.

Played long before Steam was created. Very specific game. For a RTS-fan it is musthave at least to try. It is a game about defense, resource-management, and fighting not only enemies, but the environment. Do you remember worms from dune? They are just harmless flies. Worlds of Perimeter are much harder to survive.

[i]Perimeter[/i] is a project that falls into a category of 'a truly great game that was not a smash hit but did not achieve a cult calssic status because it wasn't made in the West'. A small introduction, if I may: Once upon a time there lived a man by the alias of KranK. A shooting star of the young Russian videogame industry. Having recently made extremely successful [i]Vangers[/i], he now set out to conquer RTS. And conquer RTS he did. Because here you are in a constant struggle not only against the enemy, but also against the environment itself. Here's the premise. Humanity is growing degenerate. The part of humanity who is actually concerned for anything but indulging their basest desires splits off and ventures into the newly-discovered plane of existence, the psychosphere, the so-called Sponge in search for a Promised Land to colonize. However since it's psychosphere, the darkness of human subconscious manifests itself in the form of monsters, and the landscape itself is derived from the cultural patterns humans know. Aztec pyramids, huge Roman numbers on the ground, giant faces, huge treestumps - those are the kinds of maps you'll see here. Soon enough, under the hardships of Sponge the society of the exodists shatters into a few factions and war begins. [i]Perimeter[/i]'s gameplay consists of four aspects: 1. Terraforming. The ground in the worlds of Sponge is volatile, it shifts under the pressure of subconscious of millions of people. To build anything on it, it has to be brought down to a stable 'zero-level' that cannot spawn aggressive monsters. You will have to constantly expand your base and when you're fighting another faction, disrupt their zero-level with various combat engines. 2. The eponymous Perimeter. The manifested subconscious darkness, the Scourge, is a constant threat for humans. They are ususally weak but numerous. On some maps their presence is barely noticeable, on some you will feel like you're on a vacation to Harry Harrisson's [i]Deathworld[/i]. To counteract them, there's a system of defensive energy domes that cover the whole base. Those can protect from human threats like bombing as well. However, it drains over time and has to be switched off at some point to recharge. This makes combat far more monumental than it is in your regular RTS. 3. Power grid. Power pylons play a twofold role. They are both generators to power your base and sources for the defensive Perimeter. Even the furthest pulons must be connected through a chain of others to your main building, the Frame. And - most importantly - they can be taken by the enemy. If you cut off a big part of enemy grid off and link it to your own - it will expand your perimeter and ground zero. In some missions your goal is to connect your grid to the enemy's Frame and it leads to veritable energy wars. 4. Merging of units. Sponge-venturers have mastered nano-technology. Your buildings produce just the few basic unit types. All advanced types are created by merging those basic ones that form squads. Yes, squads. Before [i]Warhammer 40.000: Dawn of War[/i]. And you can merge and unmergre those units right on the fly. It also creates interesting situations as there is a unit that can desintegrate a strong vehicle into basic constituents rendering it weak and vulnerable. And before you ask it - no, [i]Perimeter[/i] didn't steal this idea from [i]Ground Control 2[/i], because [i]Ground Control 2[/i] came out one month after [i]Perimeter[/i]. All in all: As you can see, it's truly innovative and truly great. It's dirt cheap and has a huge campaign. Plus, its graphics still look quite good thanks to the voxel design and deliberately simple unit and building models. The story may be a bit too pretentious and has a few elements of second-hand postmodernism, but it's generally good. Far better than what we usually see in strategy games. Or games in general. PS KranK pretty much surrendered. His studio released [i]Perimeter 2: New Earth[/i] in the winter 2008-2009. It lost most of the original game's unique features, was criticized by the journalists (2009 game journalists, mind you) and sold poorly. They made a few casual games and a few small B-projects, but nothing outstanding. Now they are not participating in the new post-Kickstarter industry in any noticeable way. Shame.

Well, what can I say? It’s an old game, but it’s a good game. I remember, I couldn’t beat the campaign years back due to the need to distribute your attention, to dispense it on the different tasks. That’s why I think it’s good: you must be in absolute control of situation, of every part of yours and enemy’s forces. Some may call that babysitting, but I think it makes you think, adapt, be fast and precise in your actions. The storyline, its campaign, the world itself together reflect these concepts well, I think. The Spirits, priestly like people with advanced knowledge, discovered the new dimension — The Psychosphere. They said, they found a promised land, full of happiness for humankind, but the way here would be long and hard (as usual, of course). The Psychosphere contains all human thoughts and desires which are embodied into the Scourge: strange and dangerous creatures that are attracted by the human mind itself. Together with the other people Spirits created a floating cities — the Frames. Frame is a home for the piligrims and the way to travel through the Psychosphere in search of the Promised Land. As I said above, the Psychosphere is very unstable, chaotic and creates the Scourge due to the chaos of thoughts and desires. So all pilgrims must be controlled, must be whole and should control their mind in their dangerous travels. And it takes several years to build new portals and travel to new undiscovered worlds. Player begins the game as a Legate of the one of the first Frames. As a Legate you need to watch this chaotic world and protect your Frame and your people. You must terraform every possible place to gather more energy for your next travels, defending yourself from the Scourge, finding new worlds and new, different and heretic and hostile visions of situation from the different Frames. What I can mark as distinctive features of this game: — terraforming is one of the main concepts of the game: you need it to gather the energy, to build your structures from the so-called zero plane; zero plane can be damaged what makes this approach very interesting from the tactical side; — you have a robotic army that contains three basic types of units: soldier, officer and technician; if you’ll build according laboratories, you can transform you squads into new types of units, even on the fly; it creates some possibilities like digging your way underground and then transforming your squad into bombers for heavy damage; — three different factions with three types of special units each, with different views and philosophy; — paranormal bubble-chained world with its unique atmosphere in couple with the futuristic technologies; — some very hard missions that need from you full concentration and distribution of your attention; — you need to use community’s workaround to play multiplayer at the current state.

If you like and have time for td games this is a great oldie it is different than the others, i like it a lot, going back for more now... give it some time if u get stuck replay and learn it gets easyer then hard again but still refreshing from the norm so try it its cheap fun

More of a puzzle game than an RTS. I used to play this game way before it came to steam and I enjoyed it now, after many years. The concept is cool and unique and the campaign is pretty fun indeed. There are several problems with the game though: - Repetitive soundtrack and voiceacting. There is 3 factions in the game and like... 2 tracks per faction in total. So, I would recommend listening to your own music. - Game has no widescreen options and doesn't support multiple monitors properly, so your mouse is going to fly out of the screen if you happen to have multiple monitors. - No online multiplayer. You can still play LAN though and the campaign is good. - There are definitely some balance issues with the game - After playing this game for a while I found that Harkback's Scrourge Shark units are pretty darn OP :D Although it is not a real issue if you are going to play the campaing. On the other side this game has: - Fun terraforming and combat. The goal is to not destroy the buildings but destroy the terraing that these buildings are standing on. Really unique gameplay. - Interesting squad morphing mechanics. The idea is that you can transform your army into entirely different units right on the battlefield. - Good variety of different units: land, air and underground. - Interesting but sometimes stupid mission objectives. You will see what I mean. Overall this game is worth a purchase. This is not a strategy for everyone, but at this price you most definitely should give it a try. -- I have nominated this game for Steam's Autumn 2017 'the Test of Time' award. There is just no such RTS games now.

Perimeter is a Great strategy game! It has its own crowd. It's NOT a game for many... Why really? I explain... Perimeter is like playing an RTS chess game. You play both for capturing and keeping the ground and assault all the time. But now you'll ask.. That's what we do in strategy games,isn't it? The answer is NOT exactly. Before you begin playing the game... Read the manual. I explain some things but I can't cover everything. [url=http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198120665353/recommended/289240/]Here[/url] you can find another's guy review for the expansion and he explains many things, too. The games campaign is designed in a bad way I would say. While it tries to exhibit the game and show you some strategies it fails to the point that pusses you to deep waters without leaving you take a breath. Nothing is explained. It gives you the new units and it's up to you to test and see what they do or WHAT they CAN do. So, if you ever TEST this game have those in mind as there are very few videos even on the internet. A great strategy but ONLY with its own crowd. The men that kept playing and learning it. A small introduction... There are 3 races: The Empire , Exodus and HeartBack. It is supposed that the human race expanded many centuries but their civilization got to the zenith. A great nature call came to bring destruction and stability to the human technological advancement and that was the Scourge. The Scourge are animals or supernatural forces to that attack the civilization. So the humans made Arks, the so called Frames. People live to those GREAT moveable cities and are born new all the time. The purpose of their travel is to find a world without Scourge to inhabit. Off course the game would be completely out if it was ONLY for the Scourge and Human Kind. The 3 races fight each other because there is great distance in their opinions. Like large Nations, their councils decide of them which path to take. The Empire tries to keep things as always were. Trying to keep the power to the Emperor only. The Exodus mission is to find the new world while fighting the Scourge. The Heartback lost their mission and mind and used the Scourge to fight all the others who never let them to get back and see their mistake. End of the story and start the strategy. All depend on the ground. The ground is the source of energy and it has to be terraformed flat to give the energy to the so called Energy cores.As much area an energy core keeps so the better. The Frame is the King in Chess. If it falls, Game Over! The frame has very little power to power up devices around it as it is installed to earth. If it flies it powers nothing. If the ground has cracks you have to terraform it to build upon it and if cracks occur while there are buildings on it they will start being destroyed. That's why the game keeps telling for attacks even if the attack has finished or after it started. Because till the crack occurs takes time. Your eyes have to be peeled to the map all the time for threats. The terraforming is automatic as much the auto repair. That's why while on attack you'll see the energy drain in vast quantities. The buildings try to be autorepaired and the broken land to be terraformed again while at the same time your gun installations hit the opponent. Everything uses power here. You have to produce this power or have to stop it from draining. Because NO energy = Game Over. You can produce many unit types but you have a population cap of 250. There are 3 type of units to produce which can be transformed to any type of unit you want dependant of the quantity of the starting units. There are the soldiers, the officers and the nano technicians. The last can heal every unit because everything is mechanical. eg. If you want a plane it may take 5 soldiers and 3 officers and 1 nano technician for each one. You can make up to 5 squads. Every energy core can have an independant shield or you can call the Perimeter, that is the shield of all cores at the same time. The energy consumption is vast. However the game will teach you how to play chess with it. You'll lose many times to understand the game logic. But after that you'll see it's a great game. The HARD core types of units are the Scummers, the Bombies and the Special units. Yes, every race may have the same types of normal units BUT it has its own special ones. Those units are the worst because they do tremendous damage mainly to the ground. If the ground falls, everything upon it will be destroyed while the base loses great energy to keep it alive. GOT THE POINT? For all the above that noone explains the game has very few followers. So now... Graphics and sounds are great for this game even after many years. CodeMasters is the company and that is a Great publisher of quality games. As for the story, I made the introduction. The difficulty of the game after a point is HARD to VERY HARD. So.. ARM yourself with patience and learn the game, because I think it deseves it! To ALL HARD CORE Strategy Fans!

Perimeter is a little-known gem of the real-time strategy genre. It mixes a rate-based game flow resembling that of Total Annihilation, intensive terraforming, a psychedelic posthumanist story, and graphics advanced for its time.