Stargate: Timekeepers Review (Julien P. E.)
As a long time Stargate and strategy game fan, I really wanted to like this game. Unfortunately, I didn't.
The game feels rushed in many respects. Up to a point that the basic game mechanics do not work well, yet. I say yet, because I feel that the game could actually be pretty good if the developers would rework the underlying mechanics a little. It plays like a proof of concept or early test, as many of the flaws can be traced back to a lack of feedback from actual players.
Stargate Timekeepers is a stealth strategy game. However, the game runs in real time whereas the controls do not facilitate this in the slightest. Doing anything required a lot of focus and giving commands is very slow, especially when commanding more than a single character at a time. It truly feels like the controls were made for a turn based game.
The graphics are a positive note. The levels look very good and feel Stargate-y. Just look at the images on the store page and you can see what it looks like.
As for story... oh boy. Characters are flat, some are never even introduced and are just disembodied voices, and some lines feel disconnected to what was said right before. The game does not even try to connect the missions together.
The worst part is that the game is not loyal to the source material. For example, the first mission is about stopping Anubis' forces in Antarctica from shooting a big block of ice (?) behind which SG1 supposedly is in the Ancient outpost. This makes no sense for several reasons:
First, there are ring transports that allow Anubis to teleport his soldiers to the outpost. He does this in the series. He does not need to dig into the ice.
Second, the outpost is miles below the surface and the mission is above ground (the warriors also make no progress at all).
Third, Anubis' army is using hand weaponry to blast the ice while they litterally have a big cannon at their disposal. This cannon is the focus of the mission and the player uses it to (you'll never guess this) DESTROY A HUGE BLOCK OF ICE.
Fourth, the bulk of the army is just standing around, waiting for the handful of warriors to blast away the ice in a very time sensitive scenario.
Okay, to fix all of these problems at once, they could have simply had the army construct some sort of super drill and have the player stop them. That would have made some sense and be believable. What we got, for anyone who has seen the series, just doesn't.
One last thing I want to mention is the AI. You probably read it in other reviews, but I had to include it myself. The enemies are really simple. They ignore having been knocked out after waking up. They will ignore missing friends. They will even walk into bushes one at a time after seeing three of their friends dissappear in that same bush. Once, I tied up all enemies except the last, who I knocked out before running on. I was on the other side of the map when I realised I could no longer save the game. Apparently, the enemy had woken up and was alarmed to find all his friends tied up, and was looking around for me. I was long gone, and had to go back the entire way to take care of an enemy that was no longer relevant just so I could save the game again. I still wonder why he didn't just untie his friends... maybe they slept with his Jaffa girlfriend...
I really wanted this game to be half decent and give me an excuse to throw some money to the franchise I love. But I cannot rationalise spending 29 euros on this game. I refunded it. Maybe, after the devs fix the most glaring gameplay issues, I'll buy it again. But I doubt we'll see such major improvements to core game mechanics. Very disappointing.