Dropzone

RTS and I games generally don’t go together.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, I’m just not all that good at them.  Admittedly a lot of that is just not having a lot of time to put into them while another reason is just not figuring out what I need to build in what order in a timly manner.  When I got the opportunity to check out Gameforge’s new RTS Dropzone, I was somewhat surprised to find out that it doesn’t quite work like the typical RTS games I’m used to such as StarCraft and Command and Conquer.  Instead it reminds me more of MOBAs like Heroes of the Storm or League of Legends, though I’ve never played a MOBA so I’m going on purely what I’ve seen on live streams.  That said, let’s take a look at Dropzone.

To start off with, instead of building various constructs and armies like you do in traditional RTSs, in Dropzone you control a squad of three mechs and you have to collect cores.  This is done by defeating enemies scattered around the maps which will drop the cores for your mechs to pick up.  Each mech can only have one core at a time and to count towards your score, you have to upload the cores at a central upload point.  Sounds simple enough but at the same time, another team of three is trying to accomplish the same task.  Each mech has special abilities they can use as well as their standard attack, plus they can attack opposing mechs to kind of prevent them from gaining any cores.  Whoever has the most amount of cores uploaded in fifteen minutes wins the match.

While on the main menu you can choose to purchase new items or pilots, then head over to the Build option and change up the layouts for your pilots.  You begin with nine pilots split into three categories: Tanks, Mechanics, and Gunners, and each one has three slots for activated abilities (Body, Weapon, and Utility) and three slots for passive abilities (Class, Propulsion, and Offensive).  These can be customized however you wish so no two teams of mechs will likely be the same unless your opponent thinks the exact same way as you do.  Each pilot/mech has their own traits so you can setup your teams and loadouts however you wish.  The three activated abilities are utilized in combat with the Q, W, and E keys and will usually have a cooldown period, so you’ll want to spend some time going over the different abilities and create a layout that works for your particular playstyle.  Once all of that is set, it’s time to head out to the main game…kind of.

This is probably where my major nitpick lies right now in that there’s no campaign.  Your battle options are the tutorial, practice, and matchmaking.  The tutorial does an okay job of running you through the absolute basics, but what really irked me at first was when it told me to do something and I saw nothing on the field.  The camera was situated in the center of the map and I couldn’t move it, yet I had to move my mech somewhere on the field.  Kind of hard to move something that isn’t there, right?  Well the mechs are there, but you have to hit “1” on the keyboard to select it…which the game doesn’t tell you so I initially thought the tutorial was glitched.  In an actual match, using 1, 2, and 3 will select the individual mechs while 4 will select all three.  You can eventually use the mouse to move the camera around the map and hitting the space bar will center the camera on the selected mech.

When you’re ready for a skirmish you can choose to practice if you wish before heading into Matchmaking.  Here you can either choose your three mechs or have the game draft three mechs for you, and the match begins.  Matches are three-on-three and in a skirmish you take on a team of three AI controlled mechs.  You can also go into Matchmaking and take on players around the world.  After a match and also a skirmish from what I’ve seen from other people online, you’ll earn some experience and currency used to purchase new abilities and pilots in the shop.  There’s also a crafting ability where you can use blueprints and gear, but I was unable to obtain either and there’s a good reason for that: I’m not that good at this game.

If you’re like me and are absolutely horrid at the game (then again, RTSs aren’t my best genre to start with, but I digress), you can watch previous matches from other players to maybe get some tips on where to start or how to progress.  To be honest, I’m pretty sure I know where my problems lie and like with a lot of RTSs or MOBAs, it’ll take some time to get the skills down to be competitive in the game.  That being said there’s also a Tournament option which I’d guess will be utilized for official tournaments down the road, but right now it’s not active.

That’s Dropzone in a nutshell…or mech shell I guess.  It may look like a simple three-on-three mech battle but there’s quite a bit of strategy that goes into it.  You can control any number of your three mechs at a time which is useful if one has a core that you want to upload while the other two can take down more enemies.  That’s also provided that the opposing team isn’t near the upload point themselves where they can wipe you out while you’re busy getting that core uploaded.  The controls aren’t that difficult to get used to once you learn how to control the camera and what keyboard controls do what (I kept forgetting that there’s a key to direct a mech back to your base).  Much like with Monster Hunter Generations, my horridness at the game all comes down to skill, not the game itself.

As stated, there is a lot of strategy to implement from how to outfit each mech to suit your needs and playstyle, to which three mechs to use in each fight, to even controlling the mechs how you want in a match and having them do what you want them to do.  My biggest issue starting out was I was too worried about what my opponent was doing and was trying to prevent them from getting any cores, and that consequentially led me to obtaining no cores of my own.  It’s also worth taking the time to learn the skills of each mech and what they do and trying to put a team together that meshes well in combat.  While the game is currently in beta and things can change between now and the final release, Dropzone is a pretty fun and strategic RTS/MOBA hybrid, as long as you’re pretty good at those types of games.