YouGamers.com

Reviews

Theatre of War

Creating a real-time strategy game is a lot like a good soup: by carefully selecting the right ingredients and balancing individual flavors, a cook can create a tasty dish – or a bad one. Developers face a similar challenge in balancing the numerous elements that constitute any good RTS. A game universe must be chosen and created, units have to be developed, gameplay mechanics must be implemented, an interface has to be created to tie the experience together... the list goes on. Finding the magic balance between these elements and others isn't easy, which explains the large number of forgettable RTS games.

With Theatre of War, published by Battlefront, Russian developer 1C Company throw their hat into the brutal RTS arena. Clearly gluttons for punishment, 1C Company chose to set their military RTS in the ground war of Europe during World War II. This setting is well-worked territory for video games in general, let alone the RTS genre. Mess up the details here and the gaming public will dismiss your game and fill entire message boards with criticism. And, unlike contemporary titles such as Company of Heroes, Theatre of War (ToW) adheres to a more strict simulation doctrine. The RTS kitchen doesn't have any room for posers – does ToW have all the right ingredients for a five-star dish, or is it just another deep-fried RTS dud?

Theatre of War is available in both DVD and downloadable flavors. ToW uses ViaTech's eLicense system to validate copies of the game. I had no trouble validating my copy of the game, but Battlefront's support forums indicate that others haven't been so fortunate. I'm still not sold on digital distribution, but at least Battlefront provides the option of downloading the 1.8GB install package in several small chunks. Refreshingly, the game's license does allow two simultaneous installs on different machines with the same license key, which is nice for LAN play on a home network.

Despite the fact that I didn't have any issues with licensing my copy, I'm always wary of a product that phones home to verify that I'm not stealing software. After installation, I was pleased to see a complete set of documentation in the ToW program group. A professional-looking game manual in PDF format is accompanied by a thorough set of documentation for setting up multiplayer and a pair of documents covering the included mission editor. In an age of incomplete or non-existent documentation, it's nice to see such well-done manuals.

Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Page 5

Related Stuff

Tags