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Unleash the carnage!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: October 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game offers up some pretty decent RTS mayhem. It's not quite as massive as it could be. I've seen better. Still, Goblin Commander is a charming little game in its own right.

The story is the weakest link in the chain here. It's not a great story by any means. In fact, it's just enough of a story to give us a reason for the battles. The setting is high fantasy, and five clans of goblins work for a human wizard, building a "great machine" for him. There are the down-to-earth Stonekrushers, who work in a quarry. The Hellfire clan plays around with gun powder and explosives when they're not busy cutting down trees for lumber. The Stormbringer clan builds machines that harness the power of lightning and the winds. The ugly Plaguespitters inhabit a swamp, where they harvest noxious herbs and poisons. And the mysterious Nighthorde clan has powerful magic at their command.

Things were going fine and life was good for clan chief Grommel and his Stonekrusher goblins until they found their master Fraziel (the wizard) murdered under mysterious circumstances. The other clan chiefs believe that Grommel murdered their master. So Grommel and his followers have to set out on a quest to confront the other clans and discover the truth.

The Stonekrushers confront one goblin clan at a time as they work their way through a five-chapter campaign with fourteen missions. After Grommel conquers a clan and dispatches the clan's leader, he becomes that clan's new leader, and the newly absorbed clan becomes playable. You can play up to three clans at a time, each with up to ten combatants on the field at a time. In addition, you can have up to three turrets on the field to help defend your home base, and one titan (a larger beast who serves the goblins). Each clan has a different type of turret and a different titan. A large stone ogre, a warpig catapult, lightning elemental, slime, or spiked ball.

Each clan has five units. Four combatants and a support unit who provides healing, defense, or some such benefit. Basically, there are two archetypes of fighters. Melee combatants and ranged attackers. Each unit has his own stats. Fighting power, armor, speed, range, and so on. In addition, you can get three types of upgrades that improve the clan's units. Each clan has different upgrades.

Structures include a Clanshrine for each clan and a Hall Of Titans. At the Clanshrine, you purchase goblins and upgrades. You get turrets and titans at the Hall Of Titans. That's pretty much the depth of this game. Not a whole lot going on.

The controls are easy to master, and the first two missions are guided tutorials. In-game help is available on everything. Even someone who hasn't played an RTS (real time strategy) game before will be smashing boulders, collecting resources, and skirmishing with enemies in no time. Controlling your clans is as easy as setting waypoints on the map for them to move to. You can also enter "direct control" mode, where you move one goblin around and the rest of his clan follows him. The camera starts out in an overhead view, but you can customize it to your liking. While in direct control, you can rotate it to get a better view or zoom in to get a good look at your war party. You can even position the camera behind your goblins to give a good panorama of the dangers they're walking into.

Most of the scenarios involve a "seek 'n' destroy" objective, but there's some variety to it. Your goblins have to find inventive ways around obstacles and sometimes find a way to turn the weapon of the enemy against them.

The visuals are appealing. Vividly rendered and textured landscapes. Great-looking scenery. Forest, ruins of an ancient city, snowy mountain, swampland, and quarry. All look great. The goblins themselves are small until you zoom in on them. There's quite a variety of goblins here, and they're all colorful and well animated. Scenes with dialogue show a picture of the speaking goblin in a corner while he talks in his goblin language with subtitles (a nice touch). The goblin language is cute and adds flavor to the game.

Sound effects are all great. Hacking 'n' slashing, arrows being fired, gunshots... The sounds of intense battle and panicked outcries of dying goblins. Some of the Nighthorde goblins have annoying, high-pitched effects when they attack, though. Background music does a great job of setting the mood for each situation the goblins find themselves in.

The game's difficulty is also expertly engineered. It starts out ridiculously easy and steadily works its way toward hard. This progression is as it should be, offering an easy entrance to the campaign while you're getting used to the controls and such. By the time you've got it mastered, the challenges begin. Each new scenario gets a little tougher, culminating with a pretty difficult end-game scenario.

My biggest complaint with this game is that there's only one thing a single player can do with it. The campaign. There's no one-player Skirmish mode. It's for two players. After you've completed the campaign, the most you can do with this on your own is... play the campaign again.

All said and done, I had a great time with this game. The limit of ten goblins per clan is kind of... limiting. There are RTS games on the PC that offer more massive carnage. But as small in scope as Goblin Commander is, it was fun and addictive. I'd say its strengths outweigh its weaknesses.

a supreme innovation in the rts genre

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 18 / 22
Date: December 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Goblin Commander has its faults. The worst of them is the inherent low resolution of the television set, which means you just can't see much detail when the camera is pulled back. The game is also completely lacking in bells and whistles -- no single player skirmish maps, very basic music, and a silly linear storyline. With all that understood, this is not just the best console RTS, but the most innovative RTS on any platform to come along since Dungeon Keeper (a game that it clearly draws on; GC is almost a cross between DK and Warcraft), and probably the most innovative game of any kind since Grand Theft Auto 3. The major ingredients are: A, the great control interface, and B. the ability to direct-control units, which is seamlessly integreted into the gameplay as a strategic element. If you are an RTS fan, its almost worth buying a console just to play this game; if you are a console-only player, my goodness, are you in for a treat -- good RTS games were formerly the exclusive domain of the PC. You'll find out what you've been missing, and then some. (RTS, by the way, means real-time strategy -- do a web search for details).

Get Your Freak On, Baby!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: July 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Drop what you are doing tonight and go buy this game. I bought it just because I like the title, ;) but I'm SOO glad I did. Seriously, it's loads of fun sending goblins to rampage and destroy the countryside - and the enemy in the process!

It's designed from the ground up for console, to need a small number of buttons, instead of stripped down from a PC game. And that, boys and girls, is why it works. The controls are simple not to baby you, but just because you won't want an interface that gets in the way of Whuppin' Booty!

Instead of unit-based (as are most RTS, I think), this is more solidly squad-based (more like Warhammer, in that sense); you get up to 10 goblins of a given clan, and they always move around together, which makes it superfast to get them on the field. You can command up to 3 clans (so 3 squads on the field) per battle, and with literally 2 instant button taps, you can say "Stonecrushers, go over Here! Stormbringers, wait over Here!" or say "Stormbringers, you follow Stonecrushers!" It's easier than moving miniatures on a table!

You'll constantly replace the goblins as they die by summoning more. They don't "take time to train," they just pop out of the clan shrine and immediately run off to join their brothers in battle! Huzzah! Though you do have to watch out for that; if you don't want your new guys to leap into the ambush that killed their predecessors, be sure to reset the rally point back at camp!

The giant lumbering support Titans are brilliant to smash things with, and even more impressive when you zoom the camera down to goblin's-eye view. Oh, yeah! You can select a single goblin in a clan to be the "lead guy," which means your controller now moves Him about instead of your Commander cursor. All his buddies of course follow him, and your other 2 clans can be set to follow them... This way you can easily steer the Horde of 30 slavering goblins around the map, and zoom the camera down to their level and swivel it around to get a good look at the enemy's face when they see you coming! (all right, thier expressions don't change, but you can imagine they do) I don't know another RTS that gives you both the bird's eye view and the shoulder-level view.

I don't give it 5 stars just because there's room for improvement, but that should NOT stop you from enjoying this game. OK, enough of me. Go buy this game so they have money to make a sequel that includes online play! Go! Go now!

pretty simple

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: July 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

kinda dissapointed after reading the reviews, game was very easy to beat and after you beat it there's not much use for the game anymore cause you can't play skirmishes against the computer

Hands Down the Best RTS ever made on Console!! Believe it!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Any one that has ever played an RTS title on a console know they SUCK!! They Just do. This is the first RTS title that really works and its a Blast. Direct control over clans and Titans is just Freakn Cool and takes you all the way into the world unlike any RTS title has ever done.

Has all the high action of a Console game with cool strategy elements. Highly recomended!! Five Stars!!

Gem

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 13
Date: November 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is one of the best games i ever played. a game like this is perfect for console because it isnt complicated like other RTS games. First night i had this game i was up till 2 in the morning playing it. a true gem

This game ROCKS!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: December 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome!!!!! It is a lot of fun for people that like GREAT games, let alone RTS games. There hasn't been anything like this before that I've played, cuz all the other RTS games on the PS2 have been weakass. This is the game you want to be playing, want to be asking your mother for, or using your gift certificates on....then you can play it lots, get good at it, then come over to my house and I will skool you in multiplayer.

Hah ha, take it!

I am so glad I traded in my old games...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: February 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Oh...my...god...THIS IS THE BEST RTS GAME TO EVER BE RELEASED!!!!!!! I at first looked at this game and thought that it would just be one of those games that had no effort put into it. Well, this teaches one thing: "Never judge a book(or video game) by it's cover". Though the graphics aren't the best that I have ever seen, they are great. The missions get longer and longer, making a great challenge that will have gamers up all night staring at their t.v. Now then, to bring out this game's full potential, make sure you have someone to beat in multiplayer. I was dissapionted that this game had no computer a.i. to play in multiplayer. One more dissapiontment is that there is no online feature for this game(though I am unable to use online). Even so, rush out to your local game store and purchase Goblin Commander: Unleash The Horde. You won't be dissapointed.(Also check out Starcraft for the PC.)

Goblin Commander

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: November 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This PS2 game is one of the best RTS games I have ever played! The graphics, sound, and gameplay in 'Goblin Commander' are awsome! This game is very addictive and fun because you go around killing other enemy goblins and destroy enemy territory cammanding an army of your very own goblins and titans. I highly recommend that you buy 'Goblin Commander' for the PS2! Another game which I highly recommend you buy for the PS2 is 'Giants: Citizen Kabuto'. It is also a great game and, in my opinion, it is a little better than Goblin Commander.

Rating ('Goblin Commander'): 5/5

a good RTS

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: February 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

first RTS I've seen with split screen multiplayer action and easily the best on any console

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