Now, not being able to control single units would be easier to swallow if the targeting A.I. was halfway decent. However, if you are attacked by a large group of units in Oil Rush, your units will attack the closest target. The problem with this is the small and squishy targets are usually first while the beefy, high damage units sit in the back and pummel your army. Since this is how the targeting occurs, the battles come down to the hope that my army is upgraded and much larger than their army. If you happen to see your army dwindling in a hurry, you need to move all of your reinforcements to a nearby platform or else it will take forever to get the help you need.
The last mission in the Story mode is especially tough to manage since reinforcements are required and required in a hurry. This can be a problem since, in most cases, your opponent likes to send troops to uninhabited oil rigs or storage facilities (these cannot be surrounded by defensive buildings) which make you run from place to place. A remedy to this would be having the ability to “patrol” This would be invaluable since you could set a certain group to patrol designated areas rather than designated platforms which waste your precious unit count. Rarely are battles in the open sea, most take place at the platforms themselves. This leaves a guessing game to what your opponent may capture. While this can make the game interesting to some, having the patrol function would leave a person to focus on the task at hand.
One more quick area to touch on are the upgrades. As you capture and conquer your opponent, you level up throughout the game which gives you upgrades to unlock. These upgrades can be anything from weapon/shield enhancement, faster building speed, or heavy weapons. Upgrading is the key to success and on more than one occasion was able to turn the battle in my favor. There is a fairly consistent sequence one must take in order to make the upgrades truly help with what you are doing so upgrading is a breeze and does not take a lot of time. I really liked their implementation of this and it brought a lot to the table.
Oil Rush Graphics/Sound
The graphics in this game are beautiful. RTS games tend to have weaker graphics due to the sheer number of units and actions going on at various points in the game. The original Supreme Commander is a great example of this. Top of the line PCs can be brought to their knees if multiple armies meet in a massive battle. In Oil Rush, I had zero instances of this happening playing on my PC, even during the most stressful moments of the game. My gaming rig is not the best by any means but I was able to play with zero hiccups on maxed out settings at 1920x1080 resolution. Even if there were minor slowdowns, they would not take away how great this game looks.
