Theatre of War
User Rating:
  Log in to rate this game!
ESRB:
Publisher: Battlefront.com Genre(s): Strategy Home Page: http://www.battlefront.com/product...
Never in the field of human conflict...RTSs can be complicated beasts, so starting off with a tutorial is a wise choice. ToW offers a few training missions which cover the basics, but the instruction is sparse. Training scenarios had clear goals, but at times the game didn't recognize when I'd successfully completed those goals. Alternately, the simulation would run indefinitely after my last soldier was killed, forcing me to manually quit and restart the tutorial. One training scenario, Defensive Tactics, kept getting the best of me. I don't play professionally on the South Korean Starcraft circuit, but I know my way around an RTS. The ferocity with which the German tanks overran my poor Russian soldiers time after time in this particular scenario left me feeling a bit impotent. But even with the training missions' flaws, I was able to pick up the basics quickly.
Still stinging from my vicious trouncing in the training missions, I was eager to redeem myself in the full-fledged campaign mode. The dearth of keyboard controls in ToW is deceiving. What appears, at first, to be a simple RTS is instead a complex simulation. Each scenario begins with troop and unit placement, before the action begins. This stage is critical, as imprudent placement of key units such as artillery can mean certain defeat. Battles take place on predefined landscapes; being a simulation, ToW doesn't have resource gathering or construction elements. Air support can be called in, but only at certain points, and new troops and units will filter in occasionally. Defending troops and maximizing existing units is of utmost importance. The missions flow nicely, with staggered objectives driving the gameplay.
I was particularly impressed with the AI. Each solider behaves in an individual manner: troops will move in formation, but some units will fall behind and others will reach the destination quicker. Pathfinding is well-done, and I rarely saw a unit get hung up on an object during battle. Morale – an option which can be turned off on lower difficulty levels – is applied to each solider. When the battle is leaning in your favor, troops will behave according to your orders and with no delay. If a trench is taking heavy fire, however, and casualties are mounting, the remaining troops may decide they've had enough and head for the hills. When a soldier is panicked in this manner, you lose the ability to order him to do anything. Each solider has a set of attributes, such as Marksmanship and Intelligence, which play a role in determining how he behaves and performs in battle. It can be maddening to not have complete control over troop behavior, but the level of realism is striking. Overall, it feels as if you're directing the battle and not simply reaching down from the sky and moving game pieces.
While the campaign gradually ramps up in difficulty, I found that I was losing soldiers and units at an alarming and unsustainable rate. It took a few hours of playing to master the nuances of combat. Even with practical initial unit placement, managing the battlefield can be difficult. The strict line-of-sight mechanism, which determines whether or not a unit has a clean sight on the target, adds to the difficulty. For some strange reason, enemy infantry and tanks have near-infinite visibility and no apparent line-of-sight restrictions. The resulting (and sometimes instantaneous) massacre of troops by the enemy once a battle begins is frustrating to no end.
Related Stuff Games: Theatre of War
Games: Supreme Commander
Tags |
 
 
See if your PC can handle the latest games:
 
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
