Under Siege Release Date Announced

Back in December we had a good play with upcoming PSN real-time strategy title Under Siege (no relation to the Steven Seagal film). It’s since been delayed by Sony’s QA process but we were happy to hear today that they’ve finally received approval and the game will be out in Europe on April 27th.

It’s an interesting take on the genre for a console. This game is much lighter on the resource-mining and base-building than your typical RTS, choosing instead to focus on combat tactics. You’ll find that it’s impossible to zerg the maps; the typical campaign mode pits you as a small elite team against overwhelming odds. That’s not to say that the whole game is like this however – even though it’s a PSN-only title, Under Siege will ship with a fully-featured level editor with a hefty logic system and the ability to add your own cutscenes.

The dev team themselves are hoping that people will branch out from RTS and create all sorts of things, as with Little Big Planet. “What we expect is to create a new community for RTS-style maps and levels on the console” producer Filipe Pina told us in an interview. “You don’t know what people will do with your stuff and I think that’s really interesting and exciting. It’s for us to just sit and see and play the games made with our engine from other users.”

One of the most frustrating things about playing an RTS on a console is the lack of a mouse cursor and proper controls to select different units. By providing PlayStation Move support, Seed Studios have given us a handy alternative control method. It’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into the interface, with button combos to select certain unit types and the D-pad to assign custom battle groups. You can read more about the game in my Under Siege hands-on preview and check out our 2-part interview with Filipe Pina.

Under Siege will be available from the European PSN store on 27th April for £11.99 and €14.99.