Earth 2150: The Moon Project

aka: The Moon Project, The Moon Project: La suite officielle du jeu de stratégie "Earth 2150", Zemlya 2150: Deti Seleny
Moby ID: 4112
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Description official descriptions

In the year 2150, Mankind are at war... The three factions: Lunar Corporation, Eurasian Dynasty, and United Civilized States are battling for control of Earth and who gets to get off... While the battle for Earth itself rages... News came from the moon... The Lunar Corporation has a secret project on the dark side, known only as "Project Sunlight". What kind of secret is Lunar Corporation hiding? A UCS fleet was dispatched to investigate...

The Moon Project is the sequel to Earth 2150, a 3D real-time strategy game. While adding new campaigns, new technology, new units, and a brand new terrain, TMP also adds more, such as a full editor that allows the player to create their own textures for the vehicles and buildings, even EarthC, the internal programming language used in the creation of the series.

Spellings

  • Земля 2150: Дети Селены - Russian spelling
  • 月球计划 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

154 People (120 developers, 34 thanks) · View all

Coordinator
Mission Programming
Graphic/Mission Design
Test
Scenario
Cast
Director
Assistant to the Director
Script
Bluescreen Operator
Camera Operator
Makeup
Wardrobe
Studio Director
Assistant
Composite/Touchup
  • ARTCORPS GmbH
Voices
Special Thanks To
  • Cochise
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 20 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 11 ratings with 1 reviews)

Excellent 3D RTS

The Good
Rarely does a game create such a great experience that it finds a permanent home on your hard drive. This game is almost timeless. Almost.

First off, the graphics are stellar. Some of the best I've seen in an RTS. In comparison to Warcraft 3, the textures in Warcraft 3 are better and the units move smoother. But this game has excellent special effects and just look at the weather! It's some of the best use of 3D I've seen in a long time. Plus, you get to experience it in all of it's glory through a fully pannable camera.

The Music is great. While some tracks aren't great, many of the tracks are excellent, from riveting battle music to the Pseudo-Russian style ED music, the music is worth listening to outside of the game, something very rare.

Deformable terrain killed Tiberian Sun. Well, it had a hand in it at least. In the Moon Project, however, it works VERY well, since it corrected Tiberian Sun's fundamental flaws with deformable terrain: interactivity and speed. In TS, you couldn't modify the terrain any way but with weapons, something not very practical and quite annoying in the heat of a battle. However, TMP let's your construction unit for 2 of the races (making it one of the 3rd race's cons) flatten and entrench terrain. You can also use them to build bridges and walls, something I can't say for Command and Conquer or Starcraft. The second flaw TMP fixed, speed, was inherent. TS was a 'pure' RTS, where speed was at a premium If you couldn't keep the pace up, the game suffered, especially when you threw in deformable terrain. TMP is a slower paced game that the traditional RTS, although not as slow as TS or Age of Empires. Deformable Terrain adds a lot to the interactivity of the game.

Speaking of Tiberian Sun, remember those subterranean APCs? Or maybe you always wanted to see the base complex without a hilariously out-of-scale mission (like the grunt being 1/8th the size of the building in one mission, and in the next inside it's 250,000 squares (snicker). In this game, you not only get to go into the tunnels via friendly Teleports and Lifts, you also get to dig them (with all 3 races now) and use them for strategically advantages. Example? There's a new weapon called the Earthquake Generator that can hut buildings through tunnels. So you can dig a tunnel under his base and let lose. Just remember, your opponent can do the same to you.

This game doesn't have 'units' in the traditional sense, but rather chassis and weapons which you can use to create a great number of vehicles. This works as both a pro and a con. On the pro side, you have a lot of variety in the game (on top of the 3 distinct factions) and just that 'personal' feel to it. On the con side, it's hard for beginners to grap, especially if they're long time CnC or Starcraft players. Thankfully, Topware added a building called the Headquarters that can take over this task for you. It does a fairly good job of it, but it's worthless once you figure out how to do it for yourself.

Finally, the gameplay itself is awesome, with a huge research tree, many changeable options, powerful, but not too powerful, superweapons, and 3 VERY distinct factions (they make Starcraft's factions look like Homeworld's), it's a great experience and a game that let's you easily develop your own style of play.

The Bad
The camera controls are a bit hard to get used to. Think Homeworld and you have a good idea here. However, once you get used to it, the camera works very well.

This game is pretty demanding, especially for one so old. True, I'm running it with an 800mhz Duron and a GF4 MX 420 (and 128 mb SDRAM), but an 8mb card is DEFIANTLY not enough to run this game smoothly. Especially if the Max. Zoom scroller is set to high.

The documentation with the game is sparse at best. It doesn't even explain the option menu at all. It does explain how to get to the good tutorial missions, but that's just not enough in my book (pardon the pun).

The sound effects leave a lot to be desired. They sound as if they were bought at Real Time Strategies'r'Us. But hey, at least the rockets sound like rockets and the guns sound like guns.

The story isn't original. But hey, we can't all beat Blizzard,eh? Plus, Command and Conquer wasn't very original, but no one complained, right? :)

I already explained the units.

There are a plethora of options in this game. In fact, there may just be too many. There are a lot of buttons and tabs I don't use. I know that it allows for many playing styles, but if you could just turn off some of the tabs, I wouldn't complain.

The pathfinding is much improved since Earth 2150, but there are still some quirks. While the diggers no longer get 'stuck' as often, a godsend, large groups of units still go off in 30 million directions, which is quite annoying and tactically impairing.

And FINALLY....What's up with the voice-overs? They make the Gundam Wing Dialogue sound interesting.

The Bottom Line
Despite it's flaws, it's a great game and quite an experience. On top of that, the flaws really don't take away from the experience.

Windows · by Redwolf (3) · 2002

Trivia

German release

In Germany, the game was published by Topware. But there is a problem: Topware never bought the license from the developers, they just released it and hoped for the best. The result? Every copy produced by Topware is a pirate copy. Really! Stores are not allowed to sell it any longer, since the original rights owner doesn't permit it.

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  • MobyGames ID: 4112
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kasey Chang.

Additional contributors: Rebound Boy, Unicorn Lynx, phlux, jean-louis, Ivan Napreenko, Klaster_1, Zeen, Patrick Bregger.

Game added May 20, 2001. Last modified March 16, 2024.