When you think about it, it’s amazing how a single gameplay tweak can change how a well-established genre feels and plays. How awesome was it playing as one of the infected in Left 4 Dead for the first time? What about the games that have included first person racing? Valcon Game’s recent strategy title Greed Corp does what these games did for their respective genres, but for Real Time Strategy games, making it one of my favorite and most unexpected gaming experiences of the year.

From the outset, Greed Corp plays like any real time strategy game you’ve played in recent years – you’re going to plan attacks, move in on enemy territory and harvest for resources, but here’s the twist: you’ll be playing on an ever changing battlefield of falling and rising tiles. It may seem simple, but it adds an amazing amount of depth to the genre that you didn’t even know was missing.

"...a great source of excitement."

In Greed Corp, you take control of a ruler in an almost apocalyptic world, there are little precious resources left and you want them. The only problem, everyone else does too.  What results is a series of battles that take place above a barren abyss for the world’s few natural resources. If you approach Greed Corp like any other RTS and throw your entire army at your enemy you’re going to fail miserably. The floating tiles that represent the only fertile ground left in the world are very fragile and too much action on one can send it tumbling into the abyss below. The question then becomes how important is this one piece of land to your overall plan? Do you sacrifice it and purposely send it crashing down in order to take out a number of enemies, or do you play it safe and hope to mine its resources? The gamble is a heavy one, and a great source of excitement.

Even after you win a battle and take control of a series of tiled land, you’re going to have to be careful, placing harvesters in areas to search for gold and resources will further weaken an area, so it’s extremely hard at some parts of the game to get resources in heavy traversed areas. This can be used to your advantage as well though, as if you place a harvester carefully, you can take out its surrounding tiles as well, sending an opponent’s resources and troops to an infinite grave.  Still though, there’s an extremely satisfying feeling of reward when you are successful.  The obvious initial choice may seem clear then, maintain control of a small area, build cannons (the game’s only ranged weapon) to defend and carefully place harvesters to take out and harvest areas to expand your area. Think again, your resources are going to go fast, and your armies (called walkers) are going to have to almost constantly be on the move.

"Practice, practice and more practice."

Greed Corp is a deceptively deep game and as a result, you’re bound to fail when you first start playing – and often.  Sure, there’s a tutorial and it shows the basics of combat and gameplay, but it doesn’t go much further. Early on, you’re likely to make dumb maneuvers and destroy valuable pieces of land by mistake. The only way to fix this? Practice, practice and more practice. Greed Corp features a lengthy single player campaign, as well as local and online multiplayer. You’re obviously going to want to take on the single player campaign before jumping online, as you’re not going to want to look like a total spazz online.

It’s tough to assess the visuals in Greed Corp, as for most of the game, a never ending abyss serves as the background, so there’s no environmental effects, no weather – but what is here is pretty darned good looking. Your fleets animate marvelously and there’s a lot of detail in the pillars as they rise and fall. True, it’s nothing spectacular – but it’s enough to serve as a distinctive background to the action.

For a title I didn’t even see coming, I truly was pleased and surprised with Greed Corp. There’s a deceptive level of depth here, and if you’re able to overcome the rather steep learning curve, you’ll find an addicting and deep strategy game that’s sure to take up a large amount of your time. I expected to play a lot of Command and Conquer 4 this summer, but with that biting hard, Greed Corp is more than capable of taking its place.