Trash Review

Trash is another one of those real time strategy games where you build your base, collect resources, build a massive army and attack the enemy. It is presented in nice-but-not-too-impressive looking 3D graphics but the camera position is very limited and the gameplay is 2D only.

When you look a little closer you see a few details that make it at least more interesting than the newest Age of Empires. The scenario is yet another one of those post apocalyptic sci-fi ones. However, it’s not an uncreative one. There are two factions, the humans and the mutants. They share two resources. The first one is energy. This not only means that you have to produce enough of it to keep your buildings running, it also means that you have to connect them all with pipes. The second resource is trash. There are car wrecks, crashed planes and ghost towns everywhere for you to harvest. It’s a post apocalyptic world after all. When units or buildings get destroyed, they also turn into trash.

There are two more resources. Gas is only used by the humans and harvested at special sites. The mutant’s special resource is people who are harvested at huts. Huts are not useless for the humans. They can arm them making them into some pretty effective defensive buildings. Gas sites and other special spots can be used by both parties to build special upgrade buildings.

There are ground and air units. Only the air units can get over hills at first but later an upgrade allows the humans to build streets on steep slopes thus allowing ground units to climb them. All in all the game has a great variety of tactics, beating many other RTS games. So, how is the single player campaign?

There is no single player campaign. Trash is pretty much multiplayer only. Why didn’t I tell you earlier? Because that really should not put you off. The game is a lot of fun against real opponents and there is the possibility to play in teams. You can connect your pipe system to the one of a teammate allowing you to share resources and upgrades.

There are a number of different map types to play, all with their special features, but they are always randomly generated for the number of players that are playing. It is no problem to find a game to play. The only problem is to find a game with players as strong as you. I am not very good at RTS games and I lose all the time. That does not mean it is no fun, though. If you are willing to climb the steep learning curve, which requires a little effort since there isn’t really any documentation, you should definitely try the demo of Trash. It is not too special but still quite a fresh RTS game.