There have been more than a few games over the years that have tried blending together turn-based and real-time combat, and depending on your opinion, the results of such a blend can vary all over the place. But notably, most games that attempt such a combination tend to fall under the genres of RPG or strategy games. So it’s intriguing that developer Implausible Industries' first original game, Research and Destroy, bills itself as a “turn-based action” game. It is very much still a strategy game, mind you, but one that puts a heavy emphasis on third-person shooter action as well. So does this attempt at the blend result in a rather scrumptious strategy smoothie or something more sickening?
The setup for Research and Destroy is that after the majority of its inhabitants gave up on truth and facts and instead settled for knee-jerk reactionism, the Earth was eventually destroyed by ignorance. Well, ignorance and the monsters known as the Supernatural who swooped in to take advantage of things. Thankfully, the descendants of the survivors include scientists who have now taken up various arms, and now use the power of science to drive back the Supernatural and reclaim the Earth for themselves, which a trio of heroes setting out in their van across Europe and Northern Africa in order to investigate things.
Sadly, that will pretty much be all that we get for the story, as Research and Destroy is light on plot. Not that a lack of plot is a true dealbreaker for an action game, but given the retro pulp sci-fi comic book aesthetics, style and inspirations in general, the lack of any narrative that takes advantage of it feels like a disappointment. Not that there isn’t any humorous dialogue, but it mainly only comes from your team’s talking van and the occasional monster. But again, the graphics are at least the most impressive part of the game, perfectly capturing that zeerust feel along with the impressive soundtrack as well.
The main hook of Research and Destroy, though, is that each of your team’s three characters – Larry, Marie and Gary – only have eight seconds each turn to move and act. Not counting the use of the camera to look around, every action including running, shooting, aiming, climbing, recovering from certain attacks, and more use up the eight seconds on their meter, which you can pause by stopping. Likewise, your enemies get a limited amount of time to make their afterwards as well, with each opposing team stuck in place until the other’s turn is finished. Hence the turn-based action, which makes for a unique and fun experience.
But that only makes up the “destroy” portion of the game’s title. The “research” part comes in between missions, where you use the “$cience” currency gained after completed missions (or through researching corpses in the field) to build universities in reclaimed territories where you’re able to develop and upgrade new weapons and gadgets or research enemies encountered in the field after enough encounters, allowing you to earn better ways to annihilate undead forces. But there’s a twist, as after so many days, the Supernatural make their move and can attack universities, requiring you to enter a tower defense showdown to stop them from being destroyed and having to be rebuilt. Luckily, you can also upgrade universities with defenses like land mines and electric screens, helping you even the odds.
So between the unique and fun action, nice varieties of weapons and enemies to use them on, a good batch of objectives to keep you busy across several missions and several tactics to try out, Research and Destroy makes a good first impression. It’s a great mix of third-person action and strategy, requiring a great mount of thinking in order to succeed, and always putting up a nice challenge, especially as you try to measure if you can make it to that temporal fragment an enemy dropped to get time back and go that extra distance, or see if you can line up a shot from a Higgs Boson gun well enough to hopefully eliminated as many enemies possible in one shot. A lot of tense scenarios that always keep you on your toes, which is always welcome.
And yet while I genuinely enjoyed Research and Destroy overall, something just feels…off. There are certain enemies that can deliver cheap hits, like mummies that can throw devastating area of effect attacks from long distances or ghosts that deal low damage, but have the benefit of being able to be stuck in between buildings during your turn, where you can’t reach them. Getting to high ground can also be a pain unless you figure out exactly where to go, which also hinders the ability to retaliate against certain foes. But most iffy is how repetitive things can quickly get, with a limited offering of maps and settings, and the feeling that you’ve already seen a huge chunk of the game early on given how quickly certain enemies can be introduced.
Part of this, however, may be the fact that Research and Destroy greatly emphasizes co-op play as well, with each player controlling a different character. Not that you can’t play the game on your own, it’s well-designed enough and mostly avoids the typical pratfalls with solo modes in games such as this. But when you notice certain enemies such as the Boogieman that only one character can see but only the other characters can hit, and given how it feels like assist while judging distances with certain weapons and spotting enemies are appreciated, it becomes clear that the game is best played with friends, making for a better multiplayer games. That said, it’s also a game where you get to activate a set of rays in order to allows a character to springboard into a wicker golem in order to blow it up, so any way you slice it, things are still a blast.
Closing Comments:
While Research and Destroy has a few flaws and comes across as way better when playing in co-op, it can’t be denied that it’s still a great blend of action and strategy, one that embraces classic science fiction and crafts spectacular moments of action out of it, eight seconds at a time. The thrill of successfully taking your time to eliminate a horde of supernatural by using a series of quick actions is something players will love, and has indeed made for a mostly terrific turn-based action hybrid that the developers should be proud of.
