Men Of War review

[Herbert1405241469 0]

I was looking for a real time strategy game where I could command troops through realistic combat, and picked up Men of War after seeing some youtube videos and reading reviews... I've gotten through a few levels, and here's what I think thus far...First of all, the game interface holds a lot of different buttons, and I'm sure I don't even know half of them, but overall the game seems pretty intuitive. If you're used to micromanaging in a RTS, then you shouldn't have a lot of trouble here. I've played games in the Total War series, so I have some experience with this type of combat.The first level they put you in is HARD. Even on "easy" mode, they force you to take 4 guys in a tank to kill an entire town full of Germans, followed by a whole supply line of trucks, tanks, and motorcycles of Germans... if your tank takes too much damage and your engine fails, it's game over and you have to reload from your last check point. The mission after that, you have a whole base filled with Russians you can control, and you are assaulted by waves of Germans you have to fend off until they finish loading supplies onto a train, indicated by a percentage ticker at the top of the screen. This takes about a half hour of real time (just guessing) so the missions themselves take a long while, and you really need to focus on strategy to survive.The missions themselves, while hard, are very engaging and varied. It's not like Battlefield 2 where you have to sit and capture control points, every level, for the entire game... There are objectives in Men of War that help push the game forward and keep it fresh.As for graphics, the game runs very smoothly on my 3ghz core 2 duo, with a GeForce GTX 260, and 2 gb RAM. The buildings and environment is all destructible, which is nice. I like the fact that if I shoot a forest with a barrage of missiles, the trees will be blown down, rather than being static. Just the same goes for buildings. If you want to get at the enemies in a building, but don't want to run suicidally through the front door, you can throw grenades at the wall, and punch a hole in the wall to make your way in.Sounds are awesome, but the voice acting is just ... bad. They try pulling off Russian accents, and I don't know if it's a Russian trying to sound "American" or an American trying to sound "Russian" but either way the effect is just, weird.Gameplay takes some getting used to. You can use point and click on the ground to tell the troops where to go, but it is also possible to take direct control of a person or vehicle in the troops and shoot manually, which comes in handy a lot if you want to be precise in your shots. There are targeting reticules that indicate where the shots will hit which is nice, because it's hard to control the guy as well as the camera at the same time. Walking can be awkward, as side stepping doesn't really work like a typical third person shooter works, but it's nice to be able to walk around.So, thus far, the campaign for single player is awesome, but a bit hard and can frustrate new players. The experience of beating the level makes you feel like you've accomplished something though, which is good. You can tell yourself... "Yeah, I just kicked a whole army of Nazi's asses. I rock" when you're done with just the first level!Now, if this were the only part of the game, I'd be a bit disappointed, but there is also multiplayer. I've tried it and it is a bit confusing. You are limited in how many units you can spawn but it's cool because you can spawn just 1 guy, or a whole platoon of guys, and vehicles. This makes the game very laggy (for me anyway) because of the sheer volume of data being processed by all the units running around. The game ran slow as molasses due to the fact that I had higher ping, as well as if someone's computer can't handle the game, the game itself pauses waiting for that player. I don't know if it's trying to be "fair" or what, but it totally interrupts gameplay.I am going to try it again on a server with better ping rates and hopefully it will go better. I know it wasn't my graphics, because solo levels run great. They need to tweak their multiplayer net code I think.Over all worth the money for $29.99, though comes with a bit of a frustration factor.

[Quatrux 4]

I just read your review and watched the Screenshots on their official site, looks very promising, will need to try it sometime, but it's a pity I don't have to much time for playing games.

[yordan 10]

it's a pity I don't have to much time for playing games.

Exactly like most of us. Fortunately, Herbert tells us which games we should try first, if we happen to have time.