Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Phr00t
Price: £4.99
To say that 3079 is rough around the edges is an understatement. 3079 is a copy of the Rough Guide to roughness that has been printed on sandpaper, given a special edition hardback binding made of granite and asphalt and then wrapped for delivery in a particularly itchy burlap bag. There is nothing about this game that doesn't need refinement, polish or just ditching entirely; from its poorly optimized Java based engine that clunks along slowly, occasionally skipping frames or getting stuck regardless of graphics settings to its utterly shoddy graphics full of inconsistent textures and some of the silliest looking character models I've seen since the times of the original PlayStation, the game is nothing but a shoddy mess of unfinished ideas and extremely poor procedural generation.
The fact that it looks ever so slightly like Minecraft isn't a good start. Taking the Minecraft approach (well, okay Infiniminer approach, but we spent three years referring to all first person shooter games as 'Doom Clones' so it's a bit late for pedantry now) to your engine is a double edged sword; whilst it allows for simple, practical solutions to things like terrain deformation, construction and procedurally generated 3D landscapes, your work will immediately be compared to that of Minecraft, and generally unfavourably. Whilst 3079's building and mining is far more limited in nature than that of its far better known forebear and the focus upon combat is far, far higher, there's enough Minecraft DNA in here that the game's author has felt the need to post a quote from Youtube reviewer 'SeaNanners' which declares the game to be "nothing like minecraft", and the top sticky on the game's forum is about the fact that any and all topics about comparisons with Minecraft will be deleted on sight.
The player controls a human soldier who is sent down to an alien planet to investigate the reasons for their state of constant warfare. Then you fight demons, because the reason is demons. Talking to allied commanders (generally humanoid chaps with stars on their uniform) will give you missions to complete, which generally involves killing a specific enemy, derstorying a set number of enemies within a time limit, protecting an ally, all that sort of filler-level MMORPG nonsense. Whilst you are initially given some basic equipment with which to do this, you will be constantly upgrading and replacing your stuff with loot either collected from enemies, found in buildings or bought from traders (identical to the commanders but with a dollar sign instead of a star). You'll also need to improve your skills, which comes through performing tasks that require said skills ingame.
There's a lot to 3079, but everything seems to have been implemented in such a half-hearted or badly thought out way that it really ruins the game. Take, for example, followers. Players can convince allied locals to team up with them by pressing the F button; if their charisma is high enough, then that individual will start following the player around until they are either killed or told to stop. This is thrown massively off balance by the fact that players gain charisma from being near their followers, meaning that once one follower has been recruited, it's only a matter of hanging around with them for a bit before you can recruit an entire horde of useless blobby Humoids of varying sizes and expertise to be your mindless bodyguards. Not that they're much use; the game's AI is almost nonexistent, and with a lack of pathfinding you'll usually find that your allies will soon be gone, having gotten themselves stuck on a bit of wall, or not managed to find their way into a doorway.
The procedurally generated content is also pretty awful. Despite trying to evoke the feeling of a warzone, 3079's world mostly just looks like chaos. There are no territorial borders to this conflict, instead just randomly placed NPCs fighting with other randomly placed NPCs all over the place. Buildings for the factions are placed randomly across the map, and in some cases Humoid and Neander HQs can be placed side-by-side, with NPCs from either faction spawning directly into each other's green zones. Maps are large, sprawling and so insanely generic looking that it's incredibly easy to get lost. and never actually wander back to familiar locations. Not that that matters, as there's absolutely no reason for the player to get attached to a particular area or character as they are all near-identical and void of any kind of personality or design.
As for the combat, well I won't split hairs; it's pretty awful. Weapons are uniformly inaccurate, and thanks to the game's linking of ammo with stamina, you don't get to fire off many shots at a time before waiting around for things to recharge. Melee combat is even worse, with a single unconvincing smack animation (to which the enemy doesn't even react) making up the player's entire repertoire of melee moves. Even worse, the only way to beat demons appears to involve hitting them with Demon-Smiting swords, meaning that players HAVE to use the utterly awful Melee attack on occasion. Just to make it even worse for the player, death is punished by having a random item disappear from their inventory, so if you die in the middle of nowhere, you might suddenly find yourself removed of your gun, a factor which is about as fair and fun as it sounds.
Whilst there was promise in 3079, it's obscured by piles of half-finished or just downright awful content that will never be fixed thanks to the developer moving on to the far more promising looking 2089. There are certainly moments of brilliance somewhere in here, but getting to them means slogging through awkward and unfair combat, some absolutely terrible ideas, nights that aren't merely dark but instead completely black, and quests that completely fail to take into account your current location, skills or equipment. It's probably more fun in multiplayer (but as I've said before; there's very few games that aren't more fun when you've got other people to enjoy them with in some fashion), 3079 makes constant chaos uninteresting and soulless.
How long did I play? - 4.0 hours
Did I finish it? - No
Would I finish it? - No
