Men of War Demo Impression

God awful voice acting and clunky controls. Despite the way I started my impression of the game, Men of War, is a gem of a game. Published by 1C company and developed by Digitalmindsoft(developers of Faces of War), Men of War is a tactical game that centers around the Russian campaign of WWII. With the demo recently released, I took the demo for a spin.

The Men of War demo is relatively short and only has one mission. But this single mission will have different objectives that open up the map(similar to Supreme Commander). The first thing you will notice is the atrocious voice acting that borders on the humorous. Once you have been briefed by the overly enthusiastic commander, you start the demo being attacked by a German Armoured car.

Men of War isn't an RTS, it is a tactical game that puts more emphasis on tactics. There are no base building or build orders. It's all about how you use the men at your disposal in the beginning of the mission to accomplish your objectives. You get a bunch of men(go figure) that have an inventory and a role. Some of them may be important characters in the main game.

You can pick up equipments from dead soldiers and manage who gets a fancy rifle or who uses the sub machine gun. To do well, you need to utilise cover, the environment and your men to their best ability. Your men have no fancy abilities like an action RPG. Everything is grounded in reality and a careless commander can lose his men in a matter of second under machine gun fire.

Your men can be commanded by moving them around objects. You get to see their outline to see where they will be facing and their positioning. A handy visual hint but it doesn't show the firing arc of your men. So you need to move them to cover as well as in the right position to return fire and also guess the range of their guns. Your men are also smart enough to move to cover if under fire and duck down if there is an explosion nearby. Very life like.

Apart from the infantry action, you can move your men into tanks and vehicles and use them. You will find vehicles strewn accross the map and in many cases they will be vital to your mission. Vehicles take postitional damage, so make sure not to get flanked or get shot from armor piercing rounds. To improve the chances of your vehicle survival, you need to use your troops to clear armor piercing artilerry positions and cover its flanks(enemy units that get close your tank may lob a grenade that can disabled your tank if unlucky).

While the tactical options are great for any strategy game afficianado, the controls however literally are like made for a tank. Downright atrocious. By default, you control your camera by using the numpad(not the arrow keys, or WASD keys). Moving your mouse to the edge of the screen moves the camera too fast.

It doesn't help that Men of War doesn't follow regular RTS controls with the mouse too. You select by left clicking and give more orders also with the left mouse button. This leads to a lot of frustrating moments when you moved a unit when you wanted to select another unit or vice versa. To deselect units, you use the right mouse button. To get past the frustrating mouse controls, it is key that you use the right mouse button to deselect everytime.

Men of War is is good looking game. It's not a technical masterpiece, but it has got all the necesarry bells and whistles to make the battles look good. Physics, crumbling structure, nice smoke effects, they are all there. While it is not as impressive as say Dawn of War 2, it at least runs well on a wide range of system while looking good. A great testament to the developer for being able to develop a good looking game that performs well.

The sound effect in game is convincing. Your units shout in Russian as they are under fire, your tank commanders chatter in the radio as you move the tank about, enemy soldiers bark orders in German as they move around.The sound of tanks and vehicles sound very good and it is clearly distinguishable when you hear the whine of a diesel powered tank. The machine gun sound doesn't sound that great and punchy like Company of Heroes.

Men of War is a very good game that will satisfy the tactics freaks. It oozes in old school hardcore gameplay quality that is a little hard to find these days. The game takes a bit of time to learn the ropes(especially the control), but once you get used to it, you will love this game.