Beyond All Reason steps above
Aug. 7, 2025, 1:08 p.m.
Beyond All Reason also know as BAR is an open source, real-time strategy video game. I downloaded BAR, a while back, and I believe it is still free as of this day (8-7-25). The pacing of this game has been phenomenal, even paradoxical, something which I would describe as “chill-tense”.
BAR eases you in with the building mechanics and resource management and then ramps up the intensity as enemy’s start sending their forces until somebody’s hero piece commander gets destroyed. The game is robust, maybe even overwhelming, but it goes hard if you are into that type of game-play; you can mine, build, help builders, set queue commands to the units and structures, the list goes on.
The price for this game was/is free and it is impressive, the quality of this video game matches, in my opinion, those of triple-A titles. Personally, it checks a “bang for buck ratio” very nicely; the amount of fun to the amount I paid. This can be an important aspect if you have friends/family who you want to play with. Generally, one would have to buy a game and convince their friends/family to buy the same game and generally life would get in the way and things would fizzle out. This video game doesn’t have that, as one can now just download the game and requires less convincing because it doesn’t cost money. The quality of the game and the quality of life features for this game are impressive.
The pacing for Beyond All Reason can be difficult to explain, as it is both slow and fast. My experience has been, you start out with a commander; in chess terms a strong queen unit that acts as a king, once he’s out you’re out. The commander can build structures used for economy and an army, in addition, can also build other defensive structures. This can quickly start to speed up as you are now juggling between incoming enemy forces, resource management, building, etc. In other words, the pacing works. Previous titles of a similar genre would have good mechanics but the pacing can sometimes be slow as things can take time to ramp up, however, BAR makes it work great, in my opinion.
The quality of the game was unexpected to me as it was very robust for it’s price. Sometimes, with anything being free there might be an inclination to believe that it’s cheap or of low quality. BAR turns this train of thought on it’s head as it was freely accessible and the quality is superb. It has campaign scenarios, multiplayer, terrain quality of life features, awesome graphics, the list goes on.
Closing thoughts: as I was outlining the talking points of this blog regarding BAR, I wrote a backlog of blog topics and about 3 talking points per blog topic. I noticed the same talking points coming up frequently in regards to open source software that being price, quality and capabilities. These same topics appeared so much that I believe it might even be a function of “open source-ness”, further, it seemed like every blog I wrote going forward might be dull and monotonous. Now regarding BAR; the price, pacing and the robustness of features makes this game one of my favorites and if you the reader likes real time strategy games I recommend this as a game to try out. For more content check back soon!, maybe try out Beyond All Reason while you wait for more exciting blog posts!