War Front

World War II is a popular theme for real-time strategy games. It's perhaps a bit too popular, as the genre has been flooded with World War II games over the years. War Front: Turning Point, the upcoming World War II real-time strategy game from CDV and developer Digital Reality, hopes to break out of the pack with its unusual take on history. Rather than reenact all the famous battles of World War II, Turning Point takes an alternate-history approach to the war and wonders what would happen if Germany managed to get all of its secret prototype weapons into mass production. In War Front, the result is something that's a bit like World War II meets Command & Conquer, as tanks and infantry will battle alongside power armor and other high-tech weapons.

We recently had the opportunity to play some multiplayer of the work-in-progress version of the game to check out War Front up close. The game features three playable factions in the form of the US and UK forces, the Germans, and the Soviet Union. These aren't your usual World War II factions, though, as each side has, in addition to the expected infantry and tank units, advanced units, such as surface-to-air missile launchers, jet fighters, and exoskeletons, the aforementioned power armor. We played team games, with up to two or three players on a team, which let us mix up the different factions and see many of the unique units in action on the screen.

The game mechanics in War Front are virtually identical to a traditional real-time strategy game. You start off with a single command center and a build unit, and you must work your way up from there. The build tree requires you to put down lots of different buildings in order to create a well-rounded base. In addition to the command center, there are supply depots, electrical generators, barracks, tank factories, radar installations, research labs, bunkers, and more. The key resources in the game are supplies, which are gathered by trucks that deliver them to the supply depot. Supplies are used to purchase units, buy upgrades, and construct buildings. The other key resource is power, provided by the generators.

Once you have the basic infrastructure for unit production down, you can begin to churn out units. At first, you'll be restricted to basic units, such as regular infantry and light tanks, and while these aren't quite world-beaters, they're useful for defending against early rushes and for scouting the map. In order to build heavier units, you not only have to build the appropriate structures, but you also have to increase your "tech level," sort of like going up an age in Age of Empires. There are three tech levels in each match, and the third unlocks the really powerful toys.

As you'd expect, your main job once the base is complete is to churn out as many powerful units as possible and use them to crush enemy assaults, and then hunt down and destroy the enemy base. Balance is usually important, as you want to bring a combined force with you to take care of all eventualities. Tanks kill other tanks, mobile antiaircraft guns take out bombers before they can drop a devastating load of bombs, and artillery makes short work of fixed defenses. Speaking of which, the game does feature a first-person mode that lets you jump into the gunner's seat in many vehicles and gun emplacements, though true real-time strategy gamers will eschew this to stay focused on the bigger picture.

Since we played against fellow human beings, we experienced a seesaw multiplayer battle, as attacks were blunted and then counterattacks were launched to try to exploit the tactical opportunity. In order to break this cycle, we had to quickly ramp up the tech tree, build heavy units, and research all the key upgrades at the research lab. These upgrades may increase the rate of fire for tanks, or bump up their armor. Higher tech levels also unlocked more powerful weapons, such as the V1 rocket launcher, and humongous tanks armed with multiple turrets.

The work-in-progress version that we played still had some issues, most notable in the pathfinding department. Watching your mass of tanks and infantry untangle themselves and do certain tasks, like crossing a bridge, can be a bit painful at times. The visuals were good, even though the frame rate struggled, but the game still might need to be optimized. Still, War Front looks like it will provide the explosions and massed tank battles that we've come to expect from World War II real-time strategy games, though it'll be interesting to see how players take advantage of all the exotic new units in the game. After all, when you think World War II, you don't really think power armor. War Front is scheduled to ship later this year.

Source : Gamespot