Sources: SunAge. Vertex 4 & LightHouse Interactive

Every year, we see games coming out with steadily increasing budgets. We see expensive ad campaigns and all the bells and whistles that were once the sole province of other big media entities like feature films and television. When you check gaming news sites and magazines, the big budget titles and companies always get front page love over their lower budget peers. This is not necessarily a good thing. A bigger budget does not always mean a better game.

Titles like Kane & Lynch, Empire Earth 3 and others had relatively large budgets, but produced sub standard products. This year (or the end of ’07 depending where you live) developer Vertex 4 unveiled a semi-indie title that showcases just how good a game can be without costing millions of dollars. I’m talking about SunAge, a new RTS published by LightHouse Interactive, that delivers a straight upper-cut (and hopefully reality check) to its big budget older brothers.

Check out why this title is so special and why the little guys still deserve respect after the jump! SunAge is almost an unknown in North America, despite its upcoming North American release (you can buy it online now as a direct download) at the end of this month. The title features 2D graphics, an incredibly small development team (only 3 people and later 9), cool Sci-Fi setting and three unique races. I know what your thinking, “2D? WTH?!” Trust me when I say that 2D is definitely not a negative for this low-budget rebel.

Despite what I can only interpret as slanted, unfair and down right insulting reviews from Jolt and Ace Gamez (did you guys even play this game for more than an hour? I doubt it.), I was blown away. 2D or not, the game looks gorgeous; from Earths barren deserts to its Dome Cities to the jungles of Elysium, what Vertex 4 has done with 2D is beautiful.

The titles three races; the Federals, Raak-Zun and the Sentinels are not only a blast to play, but also amazingly unique. They don’t have a special unit for every single situation, rather each race gets a good dozen race specific units that have very different strengths and weaknesses that require actual strategy and forethought to use effectively (you hear that CnC3?).

Rather than race X having a heavy tank which has an equivalent race y heavy tank to match it, SunAge’s design means that your chosen race may match that tank with a small party of smaller units rather than the standard tit-for-tat we see in all the newer, big money RTS titles today. The game has four armor and weapons types, though they are not spread out equally between the races.

Which means again, you actually need to THINK (a word unknown to pop culture, cookie cutter developers everywhere) and use your chosen races specific strengths to combat situations where the match up is not ideal. You may not have excellent lasers for instance, but you may excel at using explosives. What this means before anyone screams BALANCE at me, is that you can’t mindlessly send units into the fray. On the large scale the races are incredibly balanced, they just require much more forethought when it comes to attacking and countering your opponent

On top of the immediate differences between the three factions, you also have the dual functionality of every unit in the game. Every unit gets a secondary weapon or ability that you can unlock that can totally change your path to victory. The diverse units in SunAge compliment the intrinsic base design which also requires some actual planning. The base building in the game is setup upon a grid, and requires careful planning of your power lines. Buildings must be connected to power in order to function, meaning that you need to connect every building to your core power source, be they far flung outposts or resource locations. OMG! A valid reason for raid tactics! I think I’m in heaven!

If you have not guessed already, this game is a challenge. Not in a smash your keyboard, rage at the world kind of way, but rather in an addictive “I know I can beat them THIS time” kind of way. I think what the initial reviews were, to some extent, influenced by the numerous bugs and missing features that plagued the initial release. However, to call some of the reviews I have read accurate is like saying you can tell a movie is good just by watching the intro.

Anyone who has ACTUALLY played this game knows that it is awesome, and subsequent patches should fix its numerous glitches. Vertex 4 shows no sign of stopping their tweaking of this ten year in the making labor of love. Expecting absolutely everything you would from a big money studio is also a little naive. For $29.99 you’d be hard pressed to find a better bargain when it comes to cost vs. quality.

Considering just how good this game is vs. how small the budget and development team who created it is, I now look upon many major developers with a certain amount of a disdain and disappointment. Why the hell can’t I see the things that make SunAge so great in titles that actually have huge studios? Universe At War came close but even that game ended up being shoddy with a bare-minimum of originality. Hopefully, the spectacular talent of the Vertex 4 team will get them more financial backing in the future, because if the SunAge can be this good with limited resources what they can do with all the money Sierra and others piss away on titles like Empire Earth 3 could shake the industry to its core.