Real-time strategy games tend to have the focus on micromanaging the battlefield in order to succeed. Learning all the hot keys, build orders, manage squads while attacking different parts of the map are just some of the things you need to split your attention between to survive. For those of us who love real-time strategy games but don’t have the mental dexterity to play them well, Rocket Bear Games’ Infested Planet takes away some of the micromanaging and adds a little tower defense that makes for a surprisingly fun mix.

Infested Planet is a real-time strategy game that has players controlling a bad ass group of five marines that are tasked with cleaning out the alien bugs that are running rampant. There is a story buried in the depths here yet it ends up being a little shallow. All of this is inconsequential in the long run once you start the campaign. You will have far more pressing matters to worry about than story progression. If you want, you can do what I did. I treated each battle as a test to see who will move on to the final round to become the most bad ass, bug squashing magnificent killing machine of the human race.

Controlling these five elite marines may seem easy at first. Travel in a group, overpowering the resistance at each of the bases as you claim them for your own. The real challenge comes when you have to split your team up. I haven’t found an easy way to break my marines into smaller teams while having the ability to quickly swap between them. There are plenty of times where you have to hold the line at different sides of the map and not being able to hot swap to another group is more difficult than it should be. This gets even worse as you gain the ability to increase your soldier limit for battle points. Gaining these battle points come from either capturing bases or little crates you can drag back to a base you control. Some of the other frustrations come from the constant zooming in and out of the map to get a more precise click on something. There is a sweet spot with the zooming which lies in the middle of the slider. Even then, you will occasionally run into wrong clicks or commands.

A good mixture of soldier types help in Infested Planet. Once unlocked by complete missions, these upgrades to your basic soldiers will be critical in survival. Snipers are great for taking out enemy towers from afar that would otherwise tear through your whole squad before they even get in firing range. Flamethrowers are your best bet for holding down a base. It takes just one flamethrower to spit hot fire to hold back early swarms. Scouts are your scavengers being the fastest of the soldiers. They are very fragile but amazing against enemy hives. You’ll want to pair them up with flamethrower to clear a path to hives. Shotgun-totting soldiers are stronger against groups with very little range reduction from the rifle they start with. The officer class boosts everyone around him to shoot and move faster. My favorite class by far is the mini-gun soldier. Made for complete devastation, you’ll want to upgrade to this class as soon as possible. The mini-gun is whatever you want to be. Holding a base down? No sweat. Clearing a path for your soldiers by turning the bugs into shredded wheat? Too easy. The best use for the mini-gun is demolishing enemy hives. With being so versatile, the mini-gun will be your best friend in this war.

To balance things out, Infested Planet makes every mission procedural generated. Maps are never the same and neither are the alien bug mutations. The mutations can be anything from exploding bugs that spawn eggs near your bases, spore mines and armored bugs that take more damage to eliminate. With 33 mutations in all, Rocket Bear Games made sure to keep things fresh. With each enemy base you take over, the alien bugs will adapt with a certain mutation. Depending on what you’re doing, the alien bugs will mutate to combat your progression. This push and pull mechanic is great for keeping players on their toes as to not get comfortable with the same strategy over and over again.

Learning the hot keys for building defenses is not too difficult, though end up a little cumbersome in the heat of battle. Memorizing the hot keys to build such things as turrets, air strike bases, shield generators are essential for survival. You will need everything given to you in order to keep a foothold on all the bases you claim from the alien bugs. If you’re in need of more money to buy one-time soldiers for hire or more upgrades before missions, Infested Planet has bonus missions outside the main story path. Most of these missions have players try to survive for set period of time or to capture all the enemy bases. If you’re tired of banging your head on the later story missions that tend to spike in difficulty a little sharply, take out your frustrations in the skirmish mode. Change the settings to make everything in your favor and take the boot to those disgusting bugs. If you get tired of stomping on the AI, you could also try out multitudes of strategies to figure out ways past missions you’re stuck on.

Despite the late-game difficulty curve, Infested Planet takes you on a exciting tour of duty squashing alien bugs with your elite group of soldiers. Although this is a real-time strategy game at heart, I found myself comparing it to a intense game of chess. The constant change in strategy to adapt when mutations would happen at a rapid pace made my brain work overtime. If only I could use a shotgun to blast the opponents king piece and exclaim, “CHECKMATE!”

Score: 4/5