The guys over at S2 games were kind enough to invite us over to play their new game, Savage 2: A Tortured Soul, with them. Being a fan of the original game I jumped right on to this opportunity.

In the time before the game it was fun to joke around with the S2 crew, they seemed to be a great bunch. I can tell you for sure they are a fun group of players to game with.

The first thing I noticed playing this game is that they kept the gameplay mechanics that worked so well in the first game. Savage is truly a game in its own genre, a FPSRTS game. One player per team chooses to be commander. In the game with S2 one of the employees over there took the commander spot.

In this game having a good commander is the key to a win, so I openly welcomed an experienced commander. Anyone who played the original game knows just how important this is, but I'll give you a quick rundown as best I understand it.

The commander, first and foremost, is the one who builds the base. All the structures to make different units or upgrades, base defenses, even building mines in the field, this is all done by the commander. Not only does the commander build, but he also buffs and heals units in the combat, so you can imagine how important this can be in winning a battle.

Commanding isn't really my thing, so I don't want to get too much into detail and give the wrong details. I prefer to be down in the action, tearing a beast limb from limb, and that's just what I did. Our commander was helpful by targeting enemy units for us, so that way they couldn't get the drop on us.

From the human side, once we took some ground, a few mini defenses were built. An arrow tower was constructed to keep enemies at bay, and an ammo tent. At an ammo tent a human can refill ammo to full by pressing E.

One of the keys to winning is to keep the enemy from having mines. Mines are your standard RTS resource points. Mines mean more buildings and better units for all. If you can't manage to hold a mine though, you can always donate some cash out of pocket to your team, and help things along.

Each team has its own unique units, although I don't want to go into too much detail about them at this point of beta. I did see some cool stuff being done by the beasts however, including summoning pets to aid them. I'm still unsure if the pets are player controlled or just protect the player.

Savage 2: A Tortured Soul is looking like they will have a great product that will hopefully catch more publicity than the original. The original was a great game, despite its flaws. S2 seems to be going at things a bit better this time, despite some humps in the road along the way. Here's to hoping this game gets more polished and to a bit of balancing of the teams to make this game make an impact. So far it seems pretty fun, we'll get back to you with more information as things go along. Keep checking bbck for more Savage 2 info.