Tryst Review

Bugs are also prevalent, though not significant enough to ruin the game. Error messages occasionally pop up, with messages of missing special effects and errors that are logged and sent on to the developers. Pathfinding is a pain, especially with larger units, because they often run into one another on the game's mostly narrow roadways and wind up taking circuitous routes that can put them in harm's way. Even smaller units sometimes stop well before getting to their destinations near groups of allies, even when those destinations are clear and in the open.

Where's Jim Raynor when you need him?

Additionally, saving is erratic because the game doesn't always sync properly: you might save with troops fully healthy and ready to rock, but then reload the game and find that you're back a minute earlier and in another part of the map. The game might even load in the middle of an enemy assault that was not present when the game was saved. Load times are extremely long, which is maddening in the later campaign missions, where you get wiped out a fair bit. Crashes are another problem: the game locks up often when loading a save or trying to exit. Thankfully, crashes don't occur when missions are under way, so game progress isn't usually affected.

From a production standpoint, Tryst provides just what it has to, and no more. There are no animated cutscenes beyond the opening of the game, for instance, and even buildings don't so much explode as they suddenly turn into blackened rubble. The graphics engine keeps up with the action with minimal slowdown even during intense firefights, although detail is limited, especially when the camera is in its default position. You have to zoom in pretty close to tell one unit type from another, which isn't advisable given the speed of battles.

In which we see both the character and the inspiration for his hairstyle.

Alien backgrounds set an atmospheric scene at least, with standard turf and dirt tracks combining with unworldly fauna and glowing swamps. Music and voice acting underscore the game's limited budget. While there are a full cast of voice actors and plenty of scripted plot points, the voice actors themselves are a United Nations of odd accents. And the order acknowledgments are so limited that you will be climbing the walls before the end of your first mission, after hearing comments about covering the six and hoping that the objective will soon be something shiny. Grunts would have been preferable.

Even with its negatives, Tryst can provide some entertainment for a few hours. There isn't anything here that stretches your RTS skills, so you can sit down and start playing on the fly without bothering to learn anything new. Such easy accessibility means that you see just about everything that the game has to offer in too little time, though, which is enough time for the game to completely wear out its welcome due to its many bugs and design flaws.