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CNET editors' rating:
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Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 11/05/2002
- Updated on: 05/17/2006
- Released on: 11/01/2002
- Originally published on GameSpot: Project Nomads (PC) Review
CDV's colorful hybrid game Project Nomads features elements from some of the most unique PC games ever produced. It has the backpack-jumping action of Giants: Citizen Kabuto, the third-person real-time strategy-style base building of Sacrifice and Battlezone, and, perhaps strangest of all, the islands-in-the-sky fortresses of the obscure 1997 game NetStorm: Islands at War. But the pieces fit together in a puzzling manner. Though Project Nomads draws inspiration from some truly original games, the game itself ends up being a fairly generic shooter. Once you get past the quirky decor, you'll find a game that's more akin to Incoming (or its recent sequel, Incoming Forces). In the game, you spend the majority of your time manning turrets and gunning down enemy buildings and units, occasionally jumping into aircraft or running around on foot to the same destructive end.
You'll spend most of your time in a turret.
Project Nomads is set in a strange world of floating islands and evil insects. You choose one of three characters--John, Susie, or Goliath--and then set out to find the other two, who are captured during the game's opening sequence. At the outset, you will be given an island that will serve as your base. As the game progresses, you'll collect artifacts that let you construct buildings on your island. There are buildings that generate energy (the game's only resource), hangars that produce bombers and fighters, and turrets that defend you from enemy units. The buildings look distinct for each character, but otherwise the game plays similarly no matter whom you choose. The game's unusual visual design is accompanied by a disjointed and nearly nonsensical fantasy story--the kind in which strange names, titles, and places are referred to commonly, but never really explained. Not that it matters much. By the time you're told to go to the second level to find the "master builder," you'll know that it just means you need to go shoot a bunch of stuff.
Project Nomads' real-time strategy elements are limited to building on your island. You don't have much room, but there isn't much in the way of strategy in determining where to put what. Resource collection is likewise not too much of a problem, and once you set up your main power generator, you won't have to think about it too much. If Project Nomads required a bit more strategic planning, it probably would have been much more interesting.
The game's action elements are better. Many of your guns will work automatically, and most will be better at shooting down the enemy than you will. You get cannons and guided missiles you can control yourself, and these will be employed to shoot down wave after wave of enemies and destroy their bases once their offensive units are incapacitated.
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Project Nomads (PC):
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