Despite having the least
imaginative name for any game ever, Men
of War is actually one of my favourite strategy games of all time. Set in
World War II (keeping up the originality), the game has three campaigns;
Russians in Europe, Germany in North Africa and ‘The Allies’ in North Africa.
Each is incredibly difficult, and you’ll struggle on the easiest difficulty on
some of them. As well as these campaigns, there are a bunch of extra, even harder
bonus missions. So far, so standard.
What really makes Men of War so different is the way that
the soldiers are presented. Every soldier is named, has an inventory, and has a
helmet in that inventory which can be
shot off. That’s true for every single soldier on the battlefield. He can
then, if you tell him to, go and pick up a different helmet, and put it on. But
it isn’t just this craziness about inventories which makes Men of War so different; it’s that the soldiers are smart. If you leave them to their own
devices, they’ll return fire, take cover, run from grenades, pick up ammo, heal
themselves, anything short of advancing. When the campaign really starts
getting going, this is infinitely useful, as you’ll be flying around the
battlefield, trying to keep everything in check.
Every vehicle also has an
inventory, right down to the motorbike which you occasionally find. They each
also have their own damage models, meaning tracks, turrets and weapons can be
destroyed, and individual crew members can be killed inside the vehicles. They
can also be repaired, meaning you can steal enemy tanks and then use them
against them. One area where Best Way (the developers) haven’t slacked is the
modelling of ballistics. Each tank has at least two types of shell, if not
three. You have your high explosive for taking out infantry and light vehicles.
You have your armour-piercing for taking out tanks, and then another type of AT
sometimes, which I have no idea about. Not that it matters, because one AT
shell seems much like another. I think the ballistics model is best illustrated
by the common conundrum of you with a tank on one side of a building, and them
with an AT gun on the other. If you drive around the building, you’ll almost
certainly die. So the best tactic becomes to load a HE shell and blast the wall
out of your side of the building (buildings are fully destructible by the way).
Then you load in an AT shell, and literally snipe the AT gunner. Brilliant.
So now the game’s starting to
look a little more defined, a little more unique, but how could the AI ever be
able to do something like that? For all of its brilliance, it’s programmed, and
can’t possibly comprehend solutions like that. Fortunately, it doesn’t need to.
Every unit on the battlefield can be controlled directly by the player. Obviously
this is hugely impractical in a strategy game, and don’t go in expecting Call of Duty or anything. But it’s just
a cool feature to have to be able to drive around in a motorbike, or line up a
precise sniper shot. It does work best with vehicles, as you don’t exactly need
precision to drive a tank through a building. It also gives the game scope for
you to do incredible and hilarious things. The time when you ran out with a single
AT grenade, and took out a Panzer IV, was you, not some psychic AI or anything.
Or when you and your co-op buddy have both grabbed motorbikes, and decide to go
for a last ditch drive at the enemy, before falling into a trench and getting
stuck. And suddenly the game proves its brilliance.
The
best description I’ve heard for this game is that it’s like managing three
different war films at once, each with hundreds of extras. The first mission
does not show this well, the second mission does, and is a strong contender for
the title of Best Strategy Game Level Ever Made Ever. The setup is simple;
defend a train station from a huge German assault. You have a few squads, a
couple of AT weapons, some light vehicles and three entrances to cover. But
with all of the different situations created, craziness soon starts. To begin,
the attacks are weak, easily dealt with affairs, as Germans throw themselves at
you. And then you lose a single, crucial
AT weapon, and your entire defence is put on the edge of collapse. You drive
vehicles over to the breech, weakening another entrance, and if that gets
sniped by an AT gun on the way over, well, better rethink. So you pull your men
back and tighten the perimeter, perhaps leaving some men behind to delay the
enemy and try to do some damage. But they don’t stop, they keep pressing and
pressing and you know you can’t possibly stop them, and then something
incredible will happen.
In
my mission it was the antics of a lone soldier. In yours it might be a AT gun which
takes out tank after tank, or a vehicle which fearlessly drives at the enemy
lines, gunning down enemies left and right. But mine was a lone soldier, whose
name I forget, so shall henceforth be known as That Guy That Was Pretty
Awesome. I had accidentally overlooked TGTWPA when I pulled my guys off the
front line, leaving him stranded below a high wall, not 20 meters from my main
line but with no way to climb up. With Germans pressing in, there was no possible
way he could ever make it without getting hit. So I ordered him onto a nearby
MG position and let him open fire. For the next five minutes he stood there,
firing round after round, belt after belt of MG ammo into the German forces,
slaughtering them as they tried to get close. Elsewhere, German tanks were
closing in, cutting off his escape route. He was trapped, with no chance of a
breakthrough and nobody coming to the rescue. And then a tank drove around the
corner.
Its
barrel swung around slowly before coming to rest upon TGTWPA. Unfazed, he kept
firing, aiming for the Germans cowering behind the tank. The tank fired,
hitting the sandbags around the MG and throwing him away from his position. A
tense few seconds as he lay on the ground, and then he got up, a sliver of
health left, no helmet, no ammo, no weapons. Well, maybe one weapon, a single
AT grenade. I ordered him to start moving up the side of the street, building
by building. Then I got to the last building before the tank, and realised he
was about 50 meters short. There was no way he could throw it that far, so I
told him to do the only thing he could, charge straight at the tank, grenade in
hand. Bullets whizzed past him as he sprinted straight towards the metal beast,
and just as he let the grenade go, a bullet hit him in the chest, taking his
final morsel of health with it. The grenade flew true though, hitting the
engine compartment and igniting the tank, and those within. TGTWPA, a true
Russian hero.
-Tom
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