Yes, the [semi] new RTS has hit me finally. Actually it hit me last week but I haven't had the time to post about it since it's so much fun to play that it became a large percentage of my relax-at-home time. That means it's time for another mini-review.

For obvious reasons, this game appeals to me. Being a WWII buff makes it interesting regardless of whether it's fun or not. But it is fun, and this game did a lot of things good, but a few things bad. Let's discuss some of the good things first.

It's very immersive. The sounds are awesome, especially when set to max settings and turned up, and played on my Altec Lansing speakers makes it a real treat. The graphics and effects are pretty good too. The world is almost completely destroyable as far as I know. You blow up a building and you can watch it collapse. Later on the rubble can turn into cover. The rubble can eventually be blown up even more if hit with a strong enough explosion. You can create craters on the ground with artillery or missiles, and craters within craters, which can be used as cover as well.

The gameplay is interestingly different from regular RTS's. All infantry units come in squads, except for snipers, and have to work together to achieve maximum effectivity. For example, you can't send a lone rifleman out to capture a sector (it works like capture the flag btw). He's almost sure to get killed. You need his whole squad to cover him, and another squad, possibly an MG and/or mortar crew to cover.

That being said, you can't even control individual infantry units. They always move together unless they're from different squads.

Tanks can be controlled individually, though. And it's a bit of a challenge because it's probably a good idea to micromanage your tanks. If you just send them into enemy territory they'll probably get blown up within seconds, because the enemy AI is smart and always maneuvers to outflank the tank and hit its rear armor, the weakest spot.

There's also another interesting gameplay feature. Since obviously there were only two sides to this war (Allies vs. Axis, but in this game it's only America vs. Germany), it would be wrong to make American soldiers fight against each other. People might be clamoring for variety. So instead of allowing that kind of insanity, they made 3 different kinds of play styles per side. This means that even if you're playing 4 vs. 4, each player will have their roles to achieve victory.

Finally, the game is pretty in terms of graphics, especially if you have a good video card and enough memory to take advantage of that. Unfortunately I only have a middle-class PC set up, but it's good enough for me to enjoy if I don't zoom in too much (cuz you'll see really ugly splotching on the mip maps on my machine). But I've seen a demo video of this being played on a better computer, and I know it was designed to be eye candy.

Now for the bad parts. I'm sorry but this game has a plethroa of unrealistic qualities to it, which was probably unavoidable to make a fun game. I guess the developers were trying to decide on whether to make a game that truly stuck to what warfare was really like in WWII, or make a fun game that would appeal to both hardcore gamers that know nothing of WWII and WWII buffs like me that just want another WWII game.

One of the unrealistic companies is the combination of various types of armies into one "company", or even in one battalion, regiment, etc. What I'm talking about is having armored units in an infantry company, and dropping paratroopers in them, and so on. Any WWII buff or anyone that knows anything about the military would know this doesn't happen in real life. They work together but independently of each other. You can't be infantry with tanks. You might have armored escorts but they won't be part of your unit for sure. You can't even have regular soldiers with paratroopers. They're from different branches of the army.

Now some people might think I'm getting it wrong or something. Cuz what if you're actually commanding a lot of different divisions? But that's not the case. How could Able company be a regular infantry company on the beaches in Normandy, while Dog is a paratrooper? If they were from different branches of the army, they wouldn't be calling each other just by their company names. The guys on the beach should be saying "the airborne" or something like that.

Anyway I won't nitpick more than that. That's all I have to say about it. Even with all that, they managed to make a really fun game.

I rate it. 8.9/10