Executive Assault Review

Early Access games have a bit of a bad reputation at the moment thanks to one or two titles that have not done themselves any favours by failing to meet expectations. Thankfully Executive Assault has none of those failings. Being a hybrid RTS and FPS game it looks a bit “Derek Smart” at first glance, but unlike that luminary of gaming’s past titles it meets and “in many ways” exceeds its expectations.

The game itself has a really rather simple set up. You are the CEO of a super corporation out to do what mankind does best, strip everything in sight of resources, killing anything that gets in the way. The simplest way to do this is build a shedload of units and buildings, steamroller the opposing Corporations own buildings and units and then shoot their CEO in the face. Simple isn’t it?

No, it’s not. As the CEO you are using a neural interface to connect to the facilities of your own base, designing new things (weapons, units etc.), building new things, and defending yourself from the opposition. Said opposition is of course trying to shoot you in the face in turn so you better watch out for that.

The game has five resources for you to juggle, the basic one is Iron. This is what you make almost everything from so make sure you have buckets of it. Next up is Electricity, without this you’re stuffed, leading to instances of your thinking (in the words of fictional astronaut Mark Watney) “I’m f**ked and I’m gonna die!” because nothing will work and your opponent will just wander right in and you won’t be able to do a thing to stop it. After this you have Thorium and one named after the developer (Heskosium) for the more complex bits.

Gameplay in Executive Assault is smooth, with A.I opponents having some brain to them as well as amusing names like The Janitor and The Shift Supervisor, and the switch between RTS and FPS is easy to manage thanks to a UI that makes sense and is a nice and clear, you have no idea how pleasing that is to someone who has had to wrestle with far too many clunky RTS UI’s in the past (I’m looking at you Battlecruiser 3000ad).

There are one or two downsides to the game though, the inability to blow up the other sides buildings is an annoyance and some of the visuals for the resources are a little on the small and difficult to spot side, but that could just be my ageing eyes failing me once again.

Researching new designs is done through another clean and easy to understand UI which displays exactly enough information without being needlessly cluttered.

The surprising thing about Executive Assault is that it’s the product of a one man studio. Yes you read that right, this is all the product of Robert Hesketh, he of Hesketh Studios.

All in all, this is a tight, funny, enjoyable melding of two disparate genres that works rather well. If you enjoyed Carrier Command : Gaia Mission you’ll love this one too. The extensive research tree allowing you to create gigantic robots piloted by Martini drinking pilots, orbital strikes that obliterate the whole map, direct control of any unit you choose, cooperative or adversarial multiplayer and continuing updates from the developer all combine to make this one to buy, play, and keep an eye on now it’s out of Early Access and at release stage.