Men of War

[Kastrenzo Benelli]

I'll start off by saying that there are some seriously underrated and virtually unknown games out there that when someone goes out on a limb to try, they are shocked as to how entertaining it is.

With the exception of the STALKER series, and Metro 2033, Most of the developers who reside in nations that exist east of the former Berlin wall are virtually unknown in the gaming industry, and most of their games they turn out arent all that impressive. A lot of the time they simply make localized games for their own populace.

Men of War, developed by Best Way in Ukraine,and published by the Russian Media conglomerate "1C Company" is one of those exceptions, although it hasnt been given much attention. It has however made it to the Steam sales stage, Although it hasnt caught up in the popularity contest by far, Men of War is considered to be the arch rival of the Company of Heroes series. Much like Battlefield and Call of duty are trying to derail each other in a gaming pissing contest.

Men of War is the third installment of a game engine that has virtually been the same, Men of War is a Series within a Series. It's predecessors, "Soldiers: Heroes of WWII" and "Faces of War" both look virtually identical, however the developers finally decided to stay with the name "Men of War" and since then 3 Titles under that name have been released and a 4th is being developed.

Men of War is a World War II RTS Game unlike any other. It's one of the few games that the Singleplayer and Multiplayer are equally entertaining and easy to waste hours upon hours playing. I'll start with the basics of the game.

You control Units from one of 5 Factions, the major players in WWII, United States, British Commonwealth, Soviet Union, Germany and the Japanese Empire. Various Mods have been released trying to introduce smaller batches of units and vehicles for other participants like Romania and Italy. as far as the game plays overall it's very similar to Dawn of War, Company of heroes, or any other RTS. Click on dudes and tell them to go places and shoot people. That's about where their similarities end however.

Men of war is an RTS/RPG/Shooter hybrid. You can peel a squad of 10 infantry into 2 of 5, or you could pick one unlucky grunt to leave his squad and bumrush the enemy with explosives. Infantry have individual inventories, filled with ammunition, grenades of various types. And other battlefield treasures you can order them to collect. Soldier's helmets can be shot off, they are not cosmetic or decorative, they literally will save a soldiers life and if they expect to survive, your soldiers can pick their helmets back up, or grab an enemy helmet.

The individual inventory system is as much a cool realistic thing as it is an annoyance. In earlier installments of the game infantry had by default, low levels of ammunition and such, and were often charging at the enemy just to loot ammo off dead bodies, the developers fixed this in the latest game, Men of War: Assault Squad, each soldier has enough ammunition to last him his entire virtual life, As most of the time they'll die or the game will be over before they get to use it all.

This Ammunition management is more useful in artillery and vehicles as they often run out of ammo quickly. Supply trucks can be sent to distrubte everything from medical supplies and fuel, to machinegun ammo and 105mm mortar shells.

Vehicles do not have health bars, each vehicle's armor peice has a set "toughness" that can resist X Caliber under Y Condition. Sloped frontal armor on a Panther Tank is often impenetrable by most vehicles, Forcing the enemy to target flatter surfaces of the vehicle, or flank it.

Even a group of British Conscripts can take out a King Tiger Tank, Bumrushing infantry with armor is disasterous in Men of War, as most infantry squads carry Short range AT Grenades that can damage the engine and tracks on heavier tanks, and outright blow up lighter tanks. Vehicles have several "body parts" each that can be damaged and destroyed, resulting in different ways of killing or disabling a tank.

Hull, Turret, Engine, L and R track, and Main gun.

When the turret is damaged, the vehicle can no longer traverse it's turret and must turn the entire body of the tank to aim it's gun, if the gun is damaged, the vehicle is no longer effective and must retreat for repairs.

Tracks are pretty self explanitory, the vehicle cant move until its repaired.

When the Hull or engine is damaged or destroyed , the vehicle has chance of catching fire and exploding, Often if the vehicle catches fire most if not all of the crew bails from the vehicle burning to death. When a vehicle explodes it can no longer be looted, removing the possibility of stealing fuel or ammo from that T-34 that just blew up in a glorious fireball.

The terrain is completley destructable, craters appear in the ground from explosions and stay there permantley, buildings have about 30-40 different areas that can be picked apart by explosives. And there is a fully functioning cover system. Instead of using a "cover area" like in Dawn of war, you send your soldiers to hide in a trench, in a crater, behind a car, behind a Tank turret that just blew off an enemy tank. You can even use the destruction engine to your advantage, I've taken out a Tiger tank before by missing a shot with an artillery gun, only to cause a tower to collapse on it.

There is also what is called "Direct Control mode" allowing you to control any Soldier, Gun , Tank etc and play with it like it was a third person shooter. There is also a function to go into first person mode but it's relativley useless. The direct action mode is most useful on tanks and AT Guns, letting you use a tank to do exactly what you want it to do, aim it yourself. etc. Making a unit much more deadly

I'll wrap up with these two notes, since I imagine people would rather see gameplay than listen to me rant.

The Multiplayer is much like World in Conflict, there are no bases, you get points to spend and you "Call in reinforcements" you can call in squads of soldiers, individual tanks, supply trucks, artillery, and even hero/special units, Like for example the SdKfz 303 remote controlled mine for Germany, Or a massive ISU-152 Heavy mobile howitzer for the Soviets. Each faction has several unique units *Mind you all the new stuff is from Assault Squad, the MP for Assault squad is the most refined,*

Lastly, the singleplayer, I will admit the vanilla campaigns for all the games are mediocre at best, because they're very difficult, and some of the voice acting on the earlier games is -Terrible-. Most of the community generated mods and campaigns are just garbage, There are plenty of SP and MP maps out there that are good, but the gold of the singleplayer side is the GEM Editor.

Men of war features a real time editor that lets you load up a pre-existing Multiplayer map or SP campaign map, edit the map to your liking, change missions. Or make your own. My favorite thing to do is just place units down, and hit the "START" Button which lets you play the editor as if you were playing the game. and you can do -anything-. Want a huge trench war with 1000 soldiers fighting? it can be done, want a tank battle with King Tigers vs Pershings? it an be done. There is no limit to what you can do in the editor.

There are 3 games in the series, and 1 being developed

Men of War
/>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_of_War

Men of War: Red tide - Singleplayer expansion with a campaign featuring the story of the Soviet Naval Infantry, Adds Romanian and Italian units. No Multiplayer features however

Men of War: Assault Squad - More refined and tuned version of the original game, better graphics, new units, Focus on Multiplayer but SP skirmishes and editor still exist.

Men of War: Vietnam - Self explanitory, not released yet

VIDEOS

I'd like to mention that the first two are trailers of some sort, but aside from the funky camera angles, it is all 100% in game footage.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzISDtcZ72k

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdbeFlJYjYQ&feature=related

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BSVDkL4-Wk&feature=related

If you have contemplated on trying this game, I implore you to, and even if you don't like World War II games, there are several mods in development that focus on other eras.

I absolutely love this series, I recommended it to anyone who likes any kind of action game.

Except you Eriksson. Gave you a free copy of it and you never played it. sheesh

Edited April 23, 2011 by Kastrenzo Benelli

[Kastrenzo Benelli]

All men of war games are on sale on steam. you can get the entire series for $20, 30 less than what you'd normally pay. and you can get Assault squad for 11, individually. or the original men of war for like 5.