Imagine sending a legion of German soldiers across the battlefield to face a row of heavily armored enemy tanks. Now, picture your minions turning around to flee as your enemy begins to decimate them. What is this? Retreat?! Zat is Unakzeptible! So you deploy two ruses. One is the 'Blitz' ruse, which increases your units speed in a specific sector, and the other ruse makes them fight like rabid feral hyenas- All thoughts of retreat null and void. They fight to the death and by God, my little infantry units take down enemy tanks! The fatherland is pleased!
How awesome is this game? Hard to quantify its greatness, but suffice it to say its one of the best RTS games I've ever played. There are a multitude of reasons I say this.
Let's face it, initial attraction is a big thing in kicking off a good romance, and this game? She looks Awesome! You start out looking down on the playfield which, at this point, looks like a beautiful, perfectly scaled model. You're the commander, you're calling the shots, and you're standing over the elaborate model moving peices here and there like the most engaging game of chess I've ever played. Even the background sounds put you in the mood. Then, you scroll in a little. The background starts to change, the model springs into detailed life, and suddenly you find yourself on the battlefield squinting against the rain in your eyes. The sounds of warfare surround you and those little chess peices are suddenly bigger than you are. Wow this game looks good.
But even if she looks good, you'll get bored of her if she's only skin deep. This beauty has the attitude to match her charms, she's functional! The task bar is easy to use. Just select what category you want (buildings, artillery, tanks, air, defense etc...) and a drop down menu appears with the available options. Ex: Say you build an airbase. A convoy will depart from your HQ to build the airbase, and in a short time its up and running. Then you can select the air category (the little plane symbol ofc.) and choose which types of aircraft you want created (bomber, fighter, or maybe a new upgrade is available.) Oh, yeah, you can even find some paratroopers in there! CHOICE! The options are vast.
The units aren't free, though. Each one has a specific cost, but the your costs are met by selecting a supply depot from your bases menu, and then clicking on a supply area on the map (A square with gold blocks in it). You'll see a little convoy of trucks head out there to establish the supply depot, and soon they'll be trucking in the cash. Also, I like to build one admin building tucked behind my HQ, that sucker generates a lot of cash on its own. I love bombing the hell out of enemy supply depots and then taking them over. Its MY land! Get off!
Depending on what nation you play, you'll notice the behavior of your units is pretty similiar to the stuff they taught you in history class- If you were paying attention, that is. For example the German's Flak88 makes air attacks against me result in epic fail. Also, depending on who you play as, you'll hear nation specific marching/commotion going on amongst your troops- an added bonus to the feel of the game.
And of course there are ruses. Ruses last for a set amount of time and effect whichever sector of the map you choose. There is one to enforce radio silence, one to block the enemy from seeing what you're doing, one to launch a fake offensive, one to send out a spy, one to order mass retreat... the list goes on to create a nice set of opportunities to meet your strategical needs on the fly. Ruses are limited though, so use em wisely.
You might think all this would make the game longer than a real life version of RISK, but it doesn't. You can set time limits at which point the score will be added up and a victor declared, but I've never played a game where action failed to raise its head. Either I began an assault or the enemy did. You probably won't get bored either. You can play in different time periods, with different maps, or in teams in online play!
Now, the only thing I don't like about the way the game works is how you create ground units. When creating an air unit, after your airbase is made, you can just click on what type of unit you want- say I click the fighter plane... Well, it will get to work building one and once its finished a menu will show me how many of that plane I have ready to deploy. If I want to deploy it, I click on the menu that has appeared, then click on what I want it to target, and it goes out to attack. If it survives, it will come back and notify me once its deployable again.
Not so for ground units! I went and spent a ton of money on tanks (different amounts, and different types), then tabbed over to something else while they were being built...only to find out...NO tanks were ready- They were not being built! You have to build tanks one type at a time. Click how many of the one type you want, then you actually have to place them somewhere on the map before the order goes out to build it. I wish they'd just put another menu beside the plane menu and have the tanks hang out in the appropriate base like the planes do, or even show a tiny icon by the mouse pointer to signify you've "selected" something and now need to "drop" it. I guess the issue is easily resolved once you realize whats going on, but it could be a frustrating turn off for the beginner. Sometimes I forget when I have a tank go destroy something, and find it later across the map just lazing about. Its a welcome suprise, at any rate. Same with infantry. When they reach their destination, it would be nice to have a small icon appear to signfy they're ready for their next orders.
Other than all that, I really enjoy this game. With my Germans I build up my depots, protect my bases and HQ with AA and Siegfried Blockhauses, and use the privacy ruse to disguise my actions. Then I launch my offense to cut the enemy off from his supplies. While he's busy trying to stop me, I've found the infantry is suprisingly good at following up to take over bases while the enemy's main attention is diverted to my blitzkrieg offense. I'm looking forward to seeing where the game goes next. What have you noticed? What are you hoping to see? -L.R. Scattergun
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Release date September 2010... Since they've pushed the release, I hope they open up another beta to test out the stuff they've been workin on.
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Cool! Beta is still free, jump in and fight with me!
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Havent had a chance to play it, but the review makes me want to go out and get it.
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