ParaWorld: The 3rd Best German Game of 2006
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- Опубліковано 17 чер 2024
- ParaWorld is an RTS with dinosaurs. It is the second and final game released by the Berlin-based studio Spieleentwicklungskombinat GmbH (SEK), known to many of us as the developers of Diggles: The Myth of Fenris.
It was a very expensive game to develop, costing well over $8,000,000, making it the most expensive game developed by a German studio at the time. It did not sell very well, at less than $100,000 copies, leading to the immediate bankruptcy of the studio. And as far as German games in 2006 goes, it was overshadowed by both Gothic 3 and Anno 1701. ParaWorld just didn't do enough different from the other RTS games that came out 10 years prior. And the RTS genre in general had already began a decade-long decline in popularity by 2006, making it an even more difficult game to sell.
However, if you have the patience to play through the game's 20+ hour long campaign, then you'll appreciate it for what it is. It's weird, funny (by German humor standards), and lovingly-crafted. Although, if you don't want to play it, I don't blame you. Therefore, I've created this almost hour-long deep dive into the game, explaining basically every aspect of the game so that you can get enjoyment out of it in far less time.
Hope you enjoy this Retro Review!
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
4:00 How it plays
10:59 How it looks
15:41 How it sounds
18:47 The Story
52:20 Closing Thoughts
#Review #Retrogaming #ParaWorld
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B-Roll footage and music credits:
pastebin.com/vHKNP66w
Games shown in the intro in order of appearance:
Warcraft 3
Command & Conquer
Warcraft 2
Starcraft
Total Annhilation
Emperor: Battle for Dune
Machines!: Wired for War
Populous The Beginning
Dark Reign 2
Sacrifice
Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth 2
Warhammer 40k Dawn of War 3
Dune 2 - Ігри
Thanks for watching! Have you ever played ParaWorld? Was this a "childhood gem" of yours? Let me know what obscure early 2000s game I should play next!
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Hey Jauwn, I do have a very obscure German game from my childhood, but I am not sure it'd be up your alley: Desperabis.
It was released in 2000, but not commercially, no, this is a freeware first person action adventure created by one or two guys on a custom engine - for MS-DOS. It was the type of game you'd find on those CDs that came with gaming magazines around that time. As far as late 90s/early 2000s freeware games went this one had a lot content for such a small team.
I last tried to play it ages ago, but DosBox never wants to use the right speed. There are videos of someone playing it normally however so it should be possible. Also: there is no English translation.
Keep up the good work! It's always nice to see someone shine a light on games that kinda came and went or where never really noticed at all!
Less obscure, but my absolute favorite childhood game was Heroes of might and magic 2
While you are on a sort of streak looking at german RTS games, I’ll pitch in both the settlers series as well as SpellForce (the latter being a true childhood classic of mine)
Edit: I’ll also add Earth 2160, the factions in that one were super cool back in the day
I personally recommend Goblin Commander : Unleash the Horde! It's a fairly obscure console action/RTS hybrid with a lot of jank, but also a lot of charm :)
Paraworld looks like a game I'd have loved back in the day. Gives me real Age of Mythology vibes.
And Startopia would be my suggestion. Or Republic The Revolution (A political/revolution sim set in a post USSR hellhole from the makers of Evil Genius). Still never seen anyone cover that game.
RTS games have gravitated from "some of the greater games there are available" to "at least it's not Warcraft 3: Reforged"
There's a really cool indie RTS that came out recently I like called Against the Storm, but other than that I really have only been playing Age of Empires 2 and Starcraft 2. D.O.R.F looks awesome too but that's not out yet
@@jauwnI forget the name but there's one being developed currently that looks like a spiritual successor to Command and Conquer. Ok, looked it up it's Tempest Rising. Looks pretty cool.
@@jauwn I came to comment about DORF.
Hey, Sins 2 is finally a thing!
@@2stroke438 yeah DORF is also on my wishlist, looks sick
Everyone's playing PalWorld but my boy Jauwn is playing ParaWorld 😂
Wait, I thought this was what everyone was talking about?
@@jauwn Thanks for the reply mate, I found your channel not long ago and I'm glad the algorithm pushed me some quality for once. Cheers !
I got this game, so far the tutorial is a bit slow, can be managed a bit.
ohh, THAT'S the joke!@@jauwn
Ah the classic 00's dilemma... Blond hot girl with exposed mid drift, or exotic hot girl with exposed mid drift.
Midriff
a dilemma I miss having
@4nn4h but mid drift is way funnier
The funny part of this is that, at least in real world fashion, crop tops are just as popular again as they were during that time
@@jakel2837 -my knowledge of fashion terms showing, lol-
Totally intentional malapropism on my part.
I feel bad for SEK, I didn't even know their games existed until now but they all seem so cool and original and it feels like they deserved more praise.
Diggles deserves no praise, but the concept maybe did.
Bro, i have waited 20 years for someone to mention paraworld to me. This game was my life for a summer and I regret nothing.
"Moooooooove it!"
You German?
@@kallmannkallmann nope
ParaWorld was a great title.
I remember game journals back then lamenting that the game as prone to fail because the RTS genre was as good as dead back then.
If I am correct, it was the most expensive german videogame back then.
Yes you are correct, it was the most expensive game ever made in Germany at the time, costing 8 million Euro!
And meanwhile we pay Til Schweiger with way more tax money to make his... "movies". :) @@jauwn
@@cbhldewait does he actually get our hard earned money? I don't want my tax euros be spent on trash movies
Yes, he does. "Filmförderung" take a look at Google. :) @@MarcoMaurice
@@cbhlde but with his movies he's usually able to pay the money back.
I'm sure you've grappled with what to do once NFT games stop being interesting to talk about, and I think you've definitely found your stride with these deep-dive essays on obscure foreign games. The amount of work you put in is impressive. Thank you for the great entertainment Jauwnathan
If you're on a "weird RTS with innovative stuff that is actually just okay overall" streak, I would LOVE to see a video on LEGO Rock Raiders (or its fan remake, Manic Miners)
that game was my childhood :)
That's a very confusing title because I'd immediately think it was a remake/sequel for Manic Minor on the ZX Spectrum, rather than having any connections with the Lego game
Nitpick: seventy year old bones aren’t fossils, they’re just bones. Fossils are bones that have been fossilised - replaced with stone.
The gay might have called them fossils
It cannot be understated how high quality these review videos are. It’s remarkable for these videos to be this good given Jauwn hasn’t even been making them for too long. They remind me of Mandalore Gaming videos.
thank you :)
@@tsartomato That's kinda just how a lot of old games are.
@@tsartomato It might not all be his footage. It was just for the intro clips idk I don't think it's a big deal.
Basing this on info from another review.
The unit management system was so good apperantly that the founder of the ESL (a german gaming Esport organization) left a quote on it stating that they knew what makes a EXCELLENT Esports title "The creators of ParaWorld have understood what ingredients you need for an excellent eSports-title"
Also there are apperantly still people that play it, you just gotta search for them, a video creator by the name Doped Bones did a review where he coverd the game and talked about the mod side of it and included instructions how to help play the Multiplayer if someone here would be interested.
With that said im glad to see this game has some attention thrown its way, speaking as someone who had a poster of this game hang on his wall for at least a decade with that Glorious Trex hanging above my bed.
Thanks for covering it.
Man, what a blast from the past. I thought I misread the title and thumbnail first, but no, it was actually ParaWorld. One of my most beloved games of all time because of how unique it was and sadly still is. We need more dinosaurs! (And bring back Dino Crisis, Capcom!) Also, even as a German myself I never realized it was actually developed here until the studio had announced their closure back then, shattering all my hopes of a sequel to it.
24:50 Actually you can queue construction and attack targets by using CTRL instead of Shift and you can even combine them. Just throwing it out here.
dude WHAT?!?! I tried so many times to figure it out, I even read the whole manual looking for that and swear I couldn't find anything explaining how to do it. I guess i gotta re-do the video now lol
@@jauwn Glad I could help even if I am a beginner at this game.
Why the fuck would the "heroes' want to leave the Parawolrd when they're fucking immortal there???
haha, exactly the story does not make much sense if you think too critically
Indoor plumbing?? ...ladies????
and why are the "bad" guys "bad" for wanting the benefits of no longer aging + wanting to do science in peace?
@@thomasvleminckx something something world domination
@@thomasvleminckx they pretty much capitalised on the indigenous people of paraworld, they were like the American colonisers enslaving the inhabitants and destructing their ecosystem
Paraworld was one of my favorite games growing up in Germany. This video is unlocking a lot of memories
"Sees the SEAS attempting to seize the seas" made this whole thing worth it, incredible
SeeS
That timing is impeccable.
I just finished a 4 day 100% playthrough of the campaign on hard difficulty yesterday, and have been giving Mirage mod a shot now that CEP mod has been discontinued for about 10 years already, been playing around with the map editor again, took me right back to my childhood. It is a very janky rts compared to the likes of SC2 but still holds a special place in my heart til this day.
I loved this game as a kid! I think my dad got it for me out of the Best Buy bargain bin and I got way more than his money’s worth out of it.
I do like the OG style of the Jauwn vidoes but Im also enjoying the newer game reviewers/video essay videos! Keep it up!
Gotta branch out, ya know. NFT games won't be around forever (plus they're getting old)
@@jauwnI mean you branched out right, doing obscure retro games.
@@MyDude199 More specifically, obscure retro PC games. There are way more of them than console games, and the vast majority of them have been forgotten. It's nice to see another channel cover games that people most likely have never seen or heard of before.
@@percher4824 yep, PC games is my niche. I never had a console growing up until the PS2 and my dad had a “gaming” PC in the late 90s early 2000s when I was young so I really only knew PC gaming
Oh! That's Richard Epcar! Voice of Bato from Ghost in the Shell, Ace from the Nonary Games and Ansem from Kingdom Hearts.
Always love when he shows up, one of my favorite VA's
Instantly recognizable! Some really notable people did the English voices for the game. My favorite being Neil Kaplan as the narrator / Mentor. For some reason he sounds a whole lot like the narrator for How It's Made
@@jauwn I really miss a lot of these late 90s/mid 2000s voice actors.
One of my all time favorites is Mona Marshall who did the voice of Izzy in Digimon (happy 25th birthday), Kite in dot.hack (RIP) and Junior in XenoSaga (which Richard Epcar is also in as Ziggy).
I know it's probably just nostalgia but I miss when games used mostly anime voice actors.
I literally cannot play XenoBlade Chronicles because of the British voice actors (and that's coming from someone who is British)
RTS games went from one of my most played, most beloved game genres to the one I straight up won't play anymore because I've had more than enough of them for the rest of my life. I wish I'd played this one back in the day though, it looks like fun
Yeah, like I said in the video, the strict adherence to the "RTS formula" means that basically every variation of the genre had already been done by 2010. Plus with how complicated they are to make, it seems that most devs moved their resources to other more popular genres
@@jauwnThe future of RTS is in hybrids.
Either grand scale like TW, or small scale combined with tower defense and meta progression as Rogue-like.
I stopped playing them because they didn't evolved. I wish the 90's mindset would be still here where developers would care less about money and more about creating something what doesn't exist yet.
The paraworld OST is a gem.
It has those orchestral Jurassic World'ish vibes.
And the menu theme is an absolute BANGER
I will not tolerate slander against my boi 😠
Haha it’s a good soundtrack I just think it’s way too epic for how silly the game is
@@jauwnLooking at it from the eyes of a grown man, It's silly and funny.
But from the eyes of a 10 yo/early teen, Dinosaurs fighting vikings was unironically epic and cool, so the soundtrack was a good fit in that context.
But, fair enough.
I can see your point about the vibe missmatch between game and music.
Yep it's genuinely one of my favorite OST of all times. This game had a big production even with music.
The music is a real banger. So epic it slaps even harder in the cutscenes xD
One of my greatest childhood games. Music always brings me back and now I want to listen to it for hours straight again 🥲
I think I might be one of the few people on earth who had some pre-release hype for this game. My friends and I played a lot of Warcraft 3 and Age of Mythology from 2003 to 2006, and we all bought the game roughly around release. Turns out my laptop who could run 2002 games fine couldn't handle the game, so I played the game mostly at my friends house using his dad's pc.
When I finally got a real desktop pc in 2008, I finally played the campaign the whole way through (I believe I had to buy the special edition because my first game got the disk scratched). The special edition was interesting (not in a good way). The manual was bound together wrong, with pages missing and other duplicated. The game had 3 additional campaign missions that were way harder and had less voiceover, in retrospect you could clearly see the financial porblems after release.
I think there was actually a lot of hype for the game. I don't remember seeing any of it so I don't have any personal anecdotes but I did find a ton of articles / forum discussions online from 2005 hyping the game up
idk how you showed up in my recommended but dont ever leave
I still have this game. Haven't tried playing it in a really long time, but the CD sits in my collection. I remember it being a good game.
I remember reading an article about this game with pretty impressive screenshots of dino textures. If I remember correctly they were amazed at bump mapping on each unit (that was before normal mapping was a thing). I was curious about it. And then completely forgot about it.
The game had some seriously impressive texturing and modeling, especially in that intro cinematic. I saw a lot of articles from during the game's pre-production hyping that up
45:07 "The 12th chapter, Sea Battles, sees the SEAS attempting to seize the seas" freaking brilliant.
So nice to see some one play this game. I still have the box copy of it and it holds a place in my heart.
From what I know, the expantion works only in german and polish, but there is a dedicated community on discord keeping the game alive, both with multiplayer and patches, of which I'm a proud member. This is still one of my favourite games of all time, even after playing over 1000 games from different genres. This game may be a relic forgotten by most, but it still lives on in it's full glory with us, the players
The soundtrack slander is insane here.
I always thought a remake of this game would make for a rather solid game in the current day, if you flesh out the story and polish up everything, you honestly have a very grasping theme: Cool asf dinosaur combat
I love your deep dives into obscure, old, games.
These retro game deep dives are great! Keep'em coming!
great video!
love you deep diving into old wonderfull games.
These retrospectives have been really cool! I'm glad you branched out.
The art style is so beautiful, I really love the colors.
You put a lot of effort into your videos and it shows. Thanks.
27:58 oh my god larry really makes me think of danny devito LOL
im not too interested in RTS games but! i really like watching your videos :) nice video again jauwn !
These kind of videos are my favorite from you
I'm glad this game is getting a bit more attention because for freaking years I felt like I was the only one who even knew of it and wondered if I hadn't dreamt it all up or something.
Never forgot the badass pulp-style movie soundtrack either.
Loved the YTP-like edits in this video. If you ever released a YTP I would eat that shit up
I just love your videos. They're like therapy for me
Subbed after reading the video title - this is the kind of content I need in my life
Really interesting video again! I love people talking about (obscure -ish) video games, especially if it's in a way that someone who doesn't know anything about the game can still follow along.
While I found this channel for the Crypto/NFT content, I can only take so much of that crap (NFT, not ur videos) so these deep dives are very welcome.
And yeah, German games kinda seem to be ... special usually. I don't know why. I'm pretty sure there are also tons of "english" (ie language of the country) games that are... interesting. But somehow these german games are wild (and these videos def unlock some memories of weird games i played as a kid).
(also thank u for adding the video to the all-videos-playlist already!)
Jauwn, i just want to say. I really enjoy these videos of yours, where you go in-depth and make a long-form video on some obscure ass game. Keep up the great work
Reeeally enjoyed that game back in the day. Thanks for covering it.
Wow, what a shocker to see anyone cover this! My mom bought me a boxed copy of this from Big Lots years ago (I'm sure it was super cheap) and I didn't get super far as a kid but I loved dinosaurs and it always stuck with me
That's Richard Epcar as the voice actor for Cole. He's a fairly prolific voice actor, and the voice he's using here is very similar to his role as Daisuke Jigen in Lupin the third.
I always enjoy your videos especially these longer ones, very detailed and insightful, I am confident when I say you are better at videogame journalism than the entire IGN team combined, amazing work as always.
Love the video!
I've only watched a few minutes but I can already sense that this is going to be good content!
Such an amazing trip down nostalgia lane. This was by far and away my favourite game for many, many years. For a kid in its early teens and really into dinosaurs, with a love for strategy games, but limited access to them, this was basically crack. Just hearing some of the lines or parts of the OST feels amazing. Speaking of, I get the point on the OST, but I have to disagree. Looking at the individual tracks, it's really cool to see that some of the themes have different versions for each faction, using slightly different instruments and changing other elements, depending on what faction you play. I feel it makes them more immersive and it also gives an uncanny ability to evoke associations with a specific player facton, enemy faction or campaign map, just based on what song you're hearing. Anyway, me coping aside, great video that paints an accurate picture of this hidden gem.
i missed the diggles vid, going to watch it right now
I always love hearing the SS1 elevator music at the end of your videos :)
Glorious algorithm, thank you for sending me to this "childhood gem" - I'll never forget seeing this game box sitting on the discount shelf and whipping open the cover to see... age of empires but with dinosaurs. I, of course, was sold immediately, although the game proved too difficult for me to beat until I revisited it when I was older. I went and played it again with my own old CD key more recently and had a blast. The multiplayer isn't half bad, either. I really miss these kinds of creative RTS games - derivative in a few obvious ways for the sake of genre convention, sure, but there was a lot of heart to this game.
>The intro song is Dreamscape by 009 Sound System
That’s a 2000s YT flashback and I welcome it completely
I adored this game and played it a ton back when I was a kid and still play it occassionally. Absolutely loved the story of the campaign as well, it's a genuinely good and interesting plot
Man the intro sequence hits hard
thanks bro its one of my favorite
I like how you use Lego Island music in this video. Also I never heard of this game and found your channel in the weirdest way to begin with. Cheers.
I remember playing this game the year I graduated High School. I remember it being both fun and unlike any other RTS I'd played to date. Tried to look it up again for nostalgia sake awhile back, and couldn't find it anywhere, so thank you for this.
Personally, I play most games for the setting and storyline. It not having a bunch of new and/or original aspects to its gameplay loop is seldom if ever enough to ruin the experience for me. Also, if you don't consume literally every single game in a genre, sometimes the lack of originality isn't even a factor for me. Paraworld's visuals and the presence of dinosaurs was enough to capture my interest. With Rise of Legends the DaVinci aesthetic. With Empire Earth, the fact that I could build mechs and larp as the prophet Elijah. Most of the time, when I watch videos like this and people cite an issue that a lot of people might have with the game, it's news to me. Maybe I'm different from a lot of other players out there though...?
Damn, Frank Reynolds really does turn up in the damndest places...
Gives me lots of Impossible Creatures vibes from the cutscene and setting.
i liked the "i fucking love dinosaurs" turning into "i love fucking dinosaurs"
You’re the first to notice that
Always nice to see someone discovering this game, not an easy task :D.
I just wanted to give my opinion about the slow speed you were talking about. It's definitely not a fast game, mostly the slow unit movement.
But the economy is actually quite fast, you made the mistake of building not enough workers and not upgrading there resource gathering abilities (for dust riders in the main building, other factions in the resource gather buildings), these upgrades double the amount of resources you gather. So you want all 25 slots in tier 1 filled with workers and all the resource upgrades asap in each epoch.
Also I have seen you level up a lot of infantry and "small (relatively i guess :D)" cavalry units to t3 and above. This locks you out from building the actually good units which require a minimum of tier 3 to produce. This of course made the missions a lot harder, because you essentially fought missions that expect high tier units with low tier units.
One last advice, you can speed up the game with the + and - buttons on your numpad.
If you're still interested in this game and want to see how it could like, you can skip trough some of my old videos. I did a complete play trough of the campaign 10 years ago and spent a lot of time on this game back in the day.
OH SHIT, another Jauwn video. Enjoying the content my dude, even if it isn't shitting on NFT "games".
A gem of my childhood, I wish it was more popular
I want to see one of these endings where the bad guy jumps into the lava in the end with their cocky speech but then starts screaming with anguish and horror as they realize lava is FUCKING PAINFUL
I love an RTS with building animations. I think Dawn of War was my first game with those. Loved seeing how each faction got things done, like the grots swimming through the pile of guns that served as the Ork research building.
the sentence mixes were great
24:30 minor correction: shift-queueing villager actions in AOE was not in the original release. It was added in DE alongside a bunch of other QoL features
Yeah someone else said that. But apparently you actually CAN shift queue in paraworld, it’s just Ctrl, and it is never explained or listed in the controls 😂
I have never heard of this game but would play this if they remastered it on steam. Great vid.
Always fun to find a video and go "Hey, I had that game! I forgot about it, but I remember now!"
Wild that this came out the same year Rise of Legends did, must have been something in the water.
A lot of Impossible Creatures energy too, of course.
Also if you want real primo obscure early 2000s RTS you should check into Perimeter
I liked the dreamscape remix in intro
This game is such a hidden gem, I loved when I was a child. Other super underrated RTS from that time is Impossible Creatures by Relic, never saw anyone talking about it.
I'm not really into these kinda games, but looks kinda cool. Ich werd es mal ausprobieren, danke Mr. Jauwn.
Pretty crazy that Richard Epcar voiced Cole before becoming the voice of Joesph Joestar. That dude is an awesome va.
Honestly looks insane and fun. I don't play much strategy games but I would have tried this. Also I love all the Lego Island music playing
Cheers for this review of a nostalgic favourite, it really made my day. Still bums me out that this game bombed like it did, because ancient civilizations astride armoured dinosaurs is still one of the coolest concepts ever to be committed to a game. Even more pleasant to hear someone embrace the often derided campaign for its campy pulp fiction charm.
Edit: The Dustriders were my favourite faction too, their theme music was up there with Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Mummy.
On a sidenote, the main trio of Cole, Stina, and Bela bear more than a passing similarity to Brendan Fraser, Scarlett Johansson, and Orlando Bloom around the mid-2000s. And since a pre-release trailer for the game claimed it was "a campaign ripe for Hollywood", I can only hope there's a parallel Earth out there where that did happen.
I remember watching the 1999 tv series Lost World, so this game would have been right up my alley. But somehow I completely missed it at the time. Will have to give it a try :)
The frustration is palpable around 45 :D I SEA what you did there !
Is this foreshadowing your entry into the wonderful German RTS clusterfuck of a series known as Spellforce? I really enjoyed your videos about NFT games but I discovered your channel from your Diggles video and I'm really happy to see someone cover ParaWorld, I have a bit of a soft spot for that game.
Haha many people have recommended Spellforce. Might have to add it to the list
@@jauwn You should try it,series still alive in nowadays)
The deep dive I didn't know I needed.
Would love to see you make a video on the Spellforce series
Early 2000s RTS games have a special place in my heart. One that I still think about a lot is Warlords Battlecry 3, which worked with what little it had and managed to create a singleplayer campaign that could easily rival contenders like DoW Dark Crusade.
Finally some recognition for this gem.
BTW each faction has different tier 1 types. Norsemen have warriors as tier 1, nomads have spearmen (or rather spearwomen) and the Dragon Clan has archers as their tier 1. And there's a highlight option for units so that you can see them through trees or behind buildings. Overall good video, even with the mistakes
this video was not recommended to me even tho i have the bell active. i had to manually search your channel to see you uploaded
Yeah, UA-cam does that sometimes.
I got this game on the free DVD of a PC magazine (yes an actually printed one) and spent a summer vacation going jurassic. Good times.
JAUWN UPLOAD
Enjoyed the random YTP parts, lol.
i still remember in 2007 going with my dad to a store where you could lend games and movies and finding this gem i bought it after trying it and its still the best RTS game for me personally
im checking every few years if there would even be a hint for a paraworld 2 release but i guess it will sadly never happen
More obscure RTS games please!
thanks for the palworld review
I’m loving the older game series!
This is my childhood game 10/10 wrote a massive fan fiction over it too when I was 12
Haha that's awesome
Honestly this game was so charming
That’s a banger title for a video
came for the crypto scams, stayed for the game reviews!
Maybe the real Palworld was the Paraworlds we made along the way