Publisher: Aspyr
Developer: Best Way
Minimum requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista; 1.7GHz Processor; 512MB RAM; nVidia GeForce 3/ATI Radeon 9600 video card or higher; DirectX 9.0b compatible sound card; 4GB free hard drive space; DVD drive
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Release date: Available now

I often talk about the game Dungeon Keeper 2 as being one of my favorite PC games of all time. I think what stood out to me the most about the Bullfrog RTS/sim mash-up was that your minions were in your capable hands at all times. If you didn’t like how the AI was handling itself, there was always the option of possessing the henchmen and taking care of business yourself. This is perhaps the most tantalizing part of Best Way’s Men of War, and the main reason I requested the opportunity to review it.

You read that 100% correctly. I requested a World War II game. As if I hadn’t already had enough of period warfare, I threw myself at MoW like it was a live grenade. You can take control of your units and attempt a one-man-army scenario at almost any point in the game. So, how is that not satisfying? Direct a tank here, station some troops behind a house over there, and just pray that the bad guys aren’t pulling the same shtick on you.

There’s a little bit of everything WWII in MoW. Three different single-player campaigns (Soviets, Germans and Allies) are here, each with their own backdrops and stories in the European and North African conflicts. All of the weapons and vehicles are period-specific, too, which should satisfy the detail-oriented among us. Also, all of the aforementioned manners of conveyance have sectional damage, meaning that you can focus on just the treads to immobilize tanks or just the guns on a bothersome troop transport. This adds another level of strategy that must be calculated carefully, especially since the enemy can do the same to your vehicles as well.

Technically speaking, MoW’s traits are equally good and bad. The graphics serve their purpose well at a distance, but get obscenely low-res when zoomed in. Sound effects are varied and proximity enabled, which adds a lot of immersion, yet the voice work and music are amateurish at best. You can always disable the voices, and you never really have to zoom in too far, other than to enjoy the surprisingly impressive destruction. The play-feel is a bit off kilter because of a convoluted default control scheme (which you can customize, thankfully), and after that, it still feels like too many steps are required to get your troops out of their vehicles and into position before the enemy attacks.

And attack they will! Your adversary is always flanking, always advancing and usually has you outnumbered by a healthy margin. Sometimes it feels hopeless, for example, when your tank is stuck in an awkward position and out of gas on the side of a hill. Do you try to evacuate everyone from the doomed death can in the hopes that you can get to cover in time, or do you stay and fight the enemies until their numbers are thin enough to overcome? This decision making process had me restarting missions left and right, learning how the enemy attacks and trying again using that little bit of wisdom. Frankly, it’s brutal even on the “easy” setting, and I’m usually no slouch in the difficulty department.

Overall, I’d say I like Men of War. It’s not a stellar performer like I had hoped it would be, but the foundation is good, there’s a lot of game to play and the challenge should appeal to a minor cross-section of masochists out there looking to get “whupped on.” If you’re an RTS fan who wants a little more control over a game, you should probably pick this up. For $30, it’s a steal.

Our Score:

Our Recommendation: