Men of War: Assault Squad - Demo Impressions

"Hardcore RTS fans will want to keep an eye on this raw and deep strategy title."



Developer: Digitalmindsoft
Publisher: 1C Company
Release Date: February 25, 2011
Platform(s): PC
Genre: Real-Time Strategy


Men of War: Assault Squad is the stand-alone expansion to the 2006 strategy title Men of War. While the original game was created by two developer studios, namely Best Way (Ukraine) and Digitalmindsoft (Germany), the latter was fully in charge with the development of Assault Squad. Despite the absence of Best Way in the development process, the series' Eastern European roots are still very noticeable in this expansion pack: Assault Squad offers incredibly deep gameplay mechanics and relentless difficulty, while also being a bit rough around the edges.

The developers obviously weren't afraid to confront players with this truth in the Assault Squad demo, which is currently available on Steam. From the start, the game pretty much leaves you on your own, forcing you to learn the basics of this game the hard way.

 

Some of Assault Squad's complexity is derived from the fact that it offers several ways to command the troops at your disposal. Naturally, there's the classical way of commanding a squad to move to certain points and perform certain actions. However, by selecting one of your men and pressing 'E', you can also take direct control of that unit. This can be very effective if you quickly need to take out a specific enemy unit, or when you want to provide more effective covering fire for the rest of your team. You can even switch between weapons and fire modes, and browse through the inventory of each soldier. This fleshed-out combat system allows Assault Squad to put more emphasis on tactical combat with relatively small squads than on mass warfare with large armies. As such, the game bears more similarity to the close combat chaos of Company of Heroes than to the epic battles of Age of Empires.

If the demo is anything to go by, though, Assault Squad will be much more difficult than the series mentioned in the previous paragraph. You will constantly have to keep an eye on your supplies and the health of your soldiers. Even more importantly, you will have to pay a lot of attention to what the enemy is doing and react accordingly. If enemy tanks appear on the map and you don't have any AT support on the field, don't be surprised to see half of your squad being wiped out before reinforcements even arrive on the spot.

While it is always good when a game offers a decent challenge in a time when most games can be completed with one hand, Assault Squad seems to be overdoing it at times. Even on easy mode, you will often find yourself deadlocked in tedious combat situations that seem like they can go on forever. The enemy is pretty predictable, seeing as it sends in the same couple of units every few minutes, but especially an abundance of tanks on the battlefield can make progress seem near impossible: By the time the enemy tanks are destroyed, new ones are bound to be on their way already.

 

The difficulty of Assault Squad is not necessarily a bad thing, but the ruthlessness of the demo in this respect implies that this game aims to please the established fanbase of the series instead of trying to attract new fans. This loyalty on the developer's behalf is certainly admirable, but a full tutorial mode or a bit more forgivingness in easy mode could have made the demo a bit more accessible.

Despite its difficulty perks, however, Assault Squad's demo is a worthwhile experience. The amount depth displayed in the few hours of gameplay you'll get out of the introductory mission already indicates that hardcore RTS fans will probably be able to sink plenty of hours into this rich strategy offering. Still, gamers who aren't familiar with the series will want to try out the demo to see if they fit in the niche audience Assault Squad is targeted at.


Jesse Dolman, NoobFeed.