Gettysburg: Armored Warfare - Initial Thoughts

About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)

 The outcome of the Civil War is in peril. Weapons, armor and machinery have been sent back in time. The Confederate forces are now attempting to overthrow the Union and change the course of history. Take control of either side and engage in massive online battles with unique Real Time Strategy / Third Person Shooter gameplay mechanics. 
Customize your army by combining both futuristic and period soldiers, tanks, boats, zeppelins and more. Control your army from above using traditional real time strategy controls. Then take control of any unit in the third person perspective for direct combat. Large scale multiplayer battles, customizable armies and multiple game modes await. 
Prepare for the Alternate American Civil War…

Key features:

• 64 players per server 
• 4 maps (9 km x 9 km in size) 
• Over 1,000 controllable units on the battlefield at once 
• Play as Union or Confederate 
• 14 unit types (infantry, cavalry, tanks, ships, zeppelins and more) 
• Persistent Point/XP system and Statistics Tracking 
• Steam Achievements 
• Army Builder with Steam Cloud support for saving your armies 
• Multiple gameplay modes including Army Skirmish and Deathmatch 
• Integrated World Editor for creating your own battlefields 

Previous Play Time

0 hours

Prior Experience

None. This game wasn't even on my radar before the challenge. I did do some preliminary research, checked out the game's Steam forum, and apparently, this game was a one person project which ran out of funding and released in an incomplete state, and that accounts for the 22 metascore. The dev seems like a pretty cool guy, though, so I'm going to try my best to be respectful.

Expectations

The above being said, I'm not expecting to enjoy this game. As I mentioned with A Game of Thrones - Genesis, RTSs are not my favorite genre, and playing an incomplete RTS is not how I would ordinarily spend my time. My biggest worry is that I'll run out of things to do after about 5 hours, and will wind up playing the same repetitive maps over and over again until I reach the deadline. Still, this game was clearly a labor of love, so I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised.