ParaWorld | |
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Developer(s) | SEK |
Publisher(s) | Sunflowers Deep Silver Aspyr |
Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
Release | September 15, 2006 |
Genre(s) | Real-time strategy |
Mode(s) | Single player Multiplayer |
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ParaWorld is a real-time strategy PC game released on September 25, 2006. It was developed by the German company SEK (Spieleentwicklungskombinat), based in Berlin. The game features more than 50 prehistoric animals, especially dinosaurs and Pleistocenemammals. The game uses TAGES, and therefore installs a driver on the system for copy protection.
ParaWorld is a real-time strategy game like Age of Empires but with a few tweaks. The main difference is the Army-Builder and the Army-Controller. Before you start a. The Dustriders are one of the three playable factions in ParaWorld, and the second faction of the campaign mode. Natives of the Savannah and ancient founders of the Holy City, they are focused mainly on mobility and cavalry. All of their infantry units are capable of erecting structures, and buildings may be taken down to recover resources. They are based on historical North African nomads.
Gameplay[edit]
The game-concept is similar to 'Age of Empires', which is a real-time strategy game. ParaWorld features food, wood, and stone as resources. Food can be picked from bushes, hunted from animals, fished from the sea, or farmed. Stone is located in limited deposits, and wood, cut from trees, is generally scattered throughout a map. Battles can occur on both land and sea.
The story takes place in a parallel dimension, where prehistoric life thrives alongside diverse human civilizations that are not technologically advanced. As a result, dinosaurs take the place of traditional wildlife and livestock, though some of the dinosaurs in-game are highly stylized and not necessarily scientifically accurate. Wild-living dinosaurs can be hunted for food, though some are of dangerous and aggressive species and will attack any player unit that wanders too close. Other prehistoric creatures make an appearance as well, for example woolly mammoths are used where other games might feature elephants.
Players advance through epochs in order to unlock new technologies and upgrades.
Plot summary[edit]
ParaWorld ('parallel world') is an alternate universe where dinosaurs and ice age creatures never became extinct. A group of 19th-century scientists, the SEAS (the Society of Exact Alternative Science) led by scientific genius Jarvis Babbit, discovered the parallel world where dinosaurs and primitive human tribes coexist. When they subsequently learned that people don't age in this dimension and that the concept of electricity is inexistant, they decided to remain there to rule.Later, three young scientists are led to Jarvis Babbit: the Americangeologist Anthony Cole, Swedishbiologist Stina Holmlund, and Hungarian physics genius Béla András Benedek, all of whom having discovered elements in the 'real' world that point toward the existence of a parallel world. Jarvis Babbit decides to send the three scientists into 'Paraworld', seemingly for an expedition. However, when the three heroes discover the true intentions of the SEAS, they have to rally all the parallel world's warring inhabitants in order to defeat the SEAS.
The three scientists serve as the game's core 'hero' units. Their main goal is to return to their home world, but to do this they will need to enlist the aid of enlightened natives and battle against the hostile creatures, tribes, and ultimately the masterminds trying to stop them. Along the way they'll meet several characters who are seemingly based on classical scientists such as Nicola Tesla or Charles Darwin ('Nikolaj Taslow' and 'James Warden' in the game). They eventually discover that a man named David Leighton, who is one of Babbit's men, is orchestrating events on the parallel world, and pursue him. They also learn of a plot to permanently seal the world away by moving the planet out of orbit, which will also trigger a cataclysm.
In order to save the planet and secure their own escape from ParaWorld, they are forced to assault Babbit's fortifications. They manage to stop the countdown and Cole kills Leighton in battle. Babbit makes a last-ditch effort to stop the heroes by using a giant robot. Having failed, Babbit falls into lava and presumably dies. The heroes finally go back home. However, Cole is awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call of Béla telling him that the dinosaurs have come through as well. The chaos of ParaWorld now ensues on planet Earth.
Paraworld Digital Download
Reception[edit]
Publication | Score |
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4Players | 85%[1] |
Eurogamer | 5/10[2] |
GameSpot | 6.2/10[3] |
IGN | 7.8/10[4] |
Jeuxvideo.com | 15/20[5] |
Upon release the game was met with fair reviews with an average critic score of 72% at GameRankings. The developing company SEK shut down due to insufficient sales, and Sunflowers ended their partnership with it. The previously announced expansion pack was cancelled. A German-only Booster Pack for the game was released with Gold GOTY Editions of Paraworld, containing new maps, heroes, and missions, and was only compatible with German copies of the game. However, members of the ParaWorld gaming community 'Para-Welt' have created an unofficial downloadable version of the Booster Pack for all regions that incorporates updated community content (such as modifications enabling players to utilise the previously NPC 'SEAS' factions) alongside the official SEK Booster Pack content. According to German newspaper Die Welt, ParaWorld was commercially unsuccessful, with sales of around 100,000 units.[6]
References[edit]
- ^Luibl, Jörg (September 14, 2006). 'Test: ParaWorld (Taktik & Strategie)'. 4Players. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
- ^Allen, Darren (November 13, 2006). 'ParaWorld: Stone aged'. Eurogamer. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
- ^Ocampo, Jason (November 3, 2006). 'ParaWorld Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
- ^Adams, Dan (September 29, 2006). 'ParaWorld Review'. IGN. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
- ^Superpanda (September 14, 2006). 'Test : Paraworld'. Jeuxvideo.com. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
- ^https://web.archive.org/web/20181210201501/https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/webwelt/article710868/Dinosaurier-bringen-PC-Spielestudio-zu-Fall.html
External links[edit]
While Homo Sapiens was still learning to daub pictures on cave walls using his own faeces, Godzilla Jurassicus had already been extinct for several million years. There has been much speculation about how, had both species coincided, man and dinosaur may have learned to pool their efforts in the areas of resource-gathering and real-time strategy. Rejoice, then, as Para World answers all our questions on such an inter-species link-up.
Paraworld
Para World is set in a land where Vikings rub shoulders with velociraptors, and Zeppelins float above herds of Mesozoic grazers. Flung into the midst of this era-muddled realm are a bunch of groovy modern-day scientists, led by Anthony Cole, an ordinary Joe wearing a jacket from TK Maxx to prove it.
And what a land it is he finds himself in. You don't often get to see these kinds of vistas in the isometric, polygon-lacking world of the RTS. Yet here's an environment as lush as Kew Gardens, as teeming with life as London Zoo, and as utterly pleasing to the eye as one of those postcards of Switzerland when it's summer.With a decent graphics card under the bonnet, we're talking 'every blade of grass' levels of detail here. We're talking night turning to day in front of your very eyes, the weather changing and the seas lapping gently against white, crystal sands. For a moment you're tempted to sit back and watch the herbivores graze peacefully, before the irrepressible urge to brutally slaughter them for food takes over. Yes, to do anything, first you need to collect that unholy trinity of the fantasy/history RTS: food, wood and stone.
Paraworld Torrent
There really ought to be a law against having to collect berries and logs in RTS games. How many times do we have to do it? Fruit-picking may have been quirky back in the Age of Empires, but industrialscale blackctirrant-harvesting is hardly the stuff of gaming dreams. With its stubborn insistence on old-school resource collection and base-building, Para World, for all its exotic trappings, is at its core a deeply conservative RTS that probably voted for Michael Howard in the last election and thinks that 3D is a bad idea, but one it will grudgingly accommodate.
Back For Maw
But you know what? Despite the aching familiarity, the game keeps you playing. Perhaps the ease with which you can sink into this exotic world is its strong point. Or perhaps it's the slick presentation that makes everything so easy on the eye. Or perhaps it's the surprising, incident-filled levels, which, while they often boil down to you building a big army to go and smash the enemy base, manage to throw some curve-ball sub-quests into the mix.
Paraworld Game
You know the main disappointment, though? It's the dinosaurs. You want gargantuan prehistoric killers locked in savage, bloodthirsty, barbaric tooth-and-claw battles. Bone-crunching, visceral carnage that kicks you square in the plums with its white-knuckle, 10ft-lizard-based gore.But what you get is something a lot tamer. Huge, hulking behemoths, instead of flinging corpses this way and that, tend to nuzzle their foes until their health bar turns red and they keel over. Instead of stomping buildings into Ikea flat-packs, they stand next to them, waving their mighty necks or tails gently until the building collapses in a jumble of flames. These dinosaurs may be beautifully drawn and animated, but there's just not enough blood and thunder pouring out of them to generate that shaking-glass Jurassic Park 'Oh my God, here comes the T-Rex' moment. They sure got the dandelions right but not quite the dinosaurs.