The story of Uprising is your typical affair. You're part of a rebel faction fighting against a large common enemy, in this game, the Imperium. The story will take you across numerous worlds in your fight against the Imperium, and you are the only one with the technology to stop them. This technology, called the Wraith tank, was stolen from the Imperium and is now under your command. You must use the amazing technology of the Wraith in order to stop the Imperium's advance.
While said story might sound derivitive and cliché, the gameplay in Uprising is certainly not so. Uprising, at its core, is a typical real-time strategy game, in that resources must be collected and units built to carry on the war. Where Uprising gets its unique difference is in its control and perspective of the battle. The game is controlled from INSIDE your Wraith tank, letting you get up close and personal to the battle.
The Wraith tank is the pinnacle of military technology. With the Wraith, one can beam in forces to and from any point on the map, effectively making the Wraith a rolling army. Uprising allows you to beam in infantry, tanks, fighters, and bombers, to any area within your field of vision. The game is also smart enough to allow easy targeting. If you have a building targeted, for example, beaming in infantry would automatically tell them to detonate the building. If you beam a unit in while targeting a friendly unit, the newly beamed-in unit will defend the targeted unit. If you merely beam troops in, they'll await your orders while attacking any nearby enemies. This makes command and control quite easy to accomplish.
Uprising, as stated earlier, allows you to control four different troop types, and each of these types serve specific functions. First, you have infantry, which are good for going up against other infantry or blowing up buildings. Secondly, you have tanks, which are the workhorse of your army, and can take on most enemies. Thirdly, you have your fighters, which can be used to defend bombers or attack other fighters, as well as attacking some ground targets. Finally, we have bombers, which is good for taking out enemy buildings and installations. These tactics are key to proper usage of your troops, and therefore a key to success.
Gameplay in Uprising revolves around the acquisition of Citadel's. These bases are where you'll build the buildings and resources to give you your army. The kicker is that one can't just build a Citadel where they please, because there are a fixed number of Citadel locations on the map, and the more Citadel's you have, the more troops you can create, as well as create them faster. Since you can't be at a Citadel at all times, these Citadel's can be heavily defended. You can not only place turrets and SAM sites around the Citadel, but you can also take first person command of the Citadel's main cannon, while leaving your Wraith vulnerable.
Citadel's are controlled and managed through an innovative satellite map screen. This screen allows you to take a look at the battlefield, as well as managing which buildings each Citadel will have, since each Citadel can only have a finite number of structures. These structures range from power plants, tank factories, barracks, bomber factories, plane factories, and so on. It's through use of these buildings that you have an army to control. Citadel's also have facilities to repair and rearm your Wraith tank.
The main focus of the gameplay is the campaign, which is randomly generated. There are training missions that can be accomplished beforehand, and these give you a general rundown of what you can do with your wraith. The campaign itself consists of conquering planets in succession so as to take resources and territory away from the Imperium. If you win planets, you're given points to which you can spend on research in-between the campaign missions. This research can go towards improvements for your Wraith, Citadel improvements and upgrades, unit upgrades, and so on. This adds a nice strategic flavor to the game.
The game is presented in beautiful fashion. The game uses 3dfx Voodoo graphics to enhance the gameplay, and while a software engine is available, it doesn't compare to the splendor a Voodoo will give. The worlds you'll be fighting on are widely varied, ranging from snowy to tropic to lava, and so on. The unit graphics are lovely as well, with great death scenes and explosions. The sounds of the game are a real feast for the ears, as the sounds of war come alive around you. There isn't too much in-game music, per-se, but there's plenty of vocal chatter and enough sound effects that you won't even notice.
The game does have one or two problems, but these are minor and some have been fixed. First off, the game has the dreaded 2MB Voodoo problem that other games share. When this game was released, the majority of 3D cards, which were Voodoo based, only had 4 MB of memory split into two. If a card had more than 2 MB of texture memory, the game would refuse to run. A patch did fix this problem, but you should be made aware of it. The other problem is that, given the game's first person nature, combat can be confusing at times, but one does get used to it.
Overall, Uprising is a real blast to play. It's got good looks, playability, and plenty of freshness to keep you entertained. It's one of those genre-crossing titles that actually works and those are few and far-between. I'd have to say that if you're interested at all in real-time combat, but want to get more intimate with your troops, then give Uprising a try.
Graphics: Great Voodoo enhanced graphics.
Sound: War rarely sounds this good.
Enjoyment: Fast and furious, yet easy to control action
Replay Value: Randomly generated campaigns insure lots of longevity.
People who downloaded Uprising have also downloaded:
Uprising 2: Lead and Destroy, Urban Assault, Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy, UFO: Enemy Unknown Collector's Edition, Total Annihilation, Ancient Conquest: Quest for the Golden Fleece, Warcraft 2, Uncommon Valor: Campaign for the South Pacific
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