(Old review – from the original HNTDAAB) Publisher: 1C Developer: Best Way/Digitalmindsoft Year of Release: 2009 Platforms: PC Russian games are special. Being from a primarily PC gaming orientated country...

(Old review – from the original HNTDAAB)

Publisher: 1C
Developer: Best Way/Digitalmindsoft
Year of Release: 2009
Platforms: PC

Russian games are special. Being from a primarily PC gaming orientated country means devs can make some completely off the wall games or use ideas that western developers would run away screaming from crying for their mothers. We have seen overly ambitions games with real character (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), traditional games with some truly entertaining plotlines (King’s Bounty) and now we see what would have happened if COH crashed into Sudden Strike at high speed.

Men of War is the latest in a long line of detailed RTS games from the developer Best Way. If you’ve never played Soldiers of World War 2 or Faces of War, the best way to think about MoW is that is a much more detailed version of Company of Heroes, with no base building and most of the “Americanisms” of Relic’s game pulled out. Some of these “Americanisms” include well designed UI and gradual learning curve.

These points sound incredibly negative and that’s because they are. Parts of the game do feel really rough especially the voice acting and UI. The voice actors are atrocious and they get worse in the German and US campaigns. Most annoying though is the briefing guy, whose monotone strikes fear into the heart of even those who knew the Miller of Benton. The UI is also clunky, with some decisions making absolutely no sense. I mean come on, left click controls? They are terrible. To the casual person who spends 5 minutes with the game, they will think it’s terrible.

But spend more than 5 minutes with Men of War, and you start noticing things. Things like every soldier has an individual name, individual inventory and are actually reasonably intelligent. They will switch to grenades, dive for cover and pick up helmets after they have been pinged off. Tanks will rumble along, switching rounds from AP to HE depending on whether it fighting squishies or other metallic boxes. Similarly, the moment you notice artillery ripping the buildings apart or a tank crushing its way through a small French church will have you giggling like a small child who’s just been told they have the keys to the world’s biggest toy box. And you do, as the unit list looks like the devs were using Jane’s WW2 stuff book as a design doc. additionally all the units look exquisite, with details really standing out in all fields. Tiger tanks look menacing and sound like the rumbling of thunder. They look even better when a British tank has blown the turret off igniting the ammo and setting the trees around it on fire. On the topic of looks, I make mention of the requirements. I’ve tried it on my laptop on it runs it perfectly at high settings. The Russians didn’t fully polish the game off but they optimised the engine so you’d be hard pressed to find a modern pc that couldn’t run this game.

When it comes to content though, the game does slightly slip up. There are three campaigns (Russian, German and American) alongside a set of bonus missions. The missions are all interesting and will take a long time to finish, but after that there are no skirmish modes. The online is good fun, but at time of writing, the version numbers of Russian, European and America all are different meaning player counts are very limited. Hopefully the first full patch will fix this.

Men of War is a brilliant game, but only if you are willing to learn the games little intricacies and get used to having to replay missions every once in a while. The engine is great, producing a realistic world in both looks and physics but sound and UI slightly let it down.