Men of War's granddaddy: Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2
Mornin' folks! Amalia here!
And i did it again. I got Michael to dig out an old game from his childhood (this one's from 2004) that he never finished, and we rectified that, together.
It actually shook out a fair bit better than it did with Will Rock, too! Lemme tell y'all about it, but first, a bit of background. What -is- this game, and why might it look familiar to some of you?
Well, Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2 (Abbreviated to HOWW2 going forward) is the first game made by Best Way, a Ukranian studio known for the Men of War franchise. And that's why this might all seem very familiar to some of you. HOWW2 is effectively Men of War's grandfather. It came first, followed by "Faces of War", and only then did we get to MOW, and it's 5 gazillion standalone expansions.
And that then developed further (with a different dev team) into "Call to Arms", and "Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront", The latter clearly honoring it's roots with that unwieldy title.
(We actually haven't played the CtA games and only just recently found out that they're are an evolution of this series, but we'll get into some of that later on.)
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| Fully animated Choo-Choo train! And you even get to drive 'em a bit, later on in the Soviet campaign! |
So, what's so special about these games? Why are they worth writing about? Simple: This entire franchise is pure, utter gold. Even the 21-year old granddaddy that started it all. I'd argue that the main reason for this is...
The Gem engine
So, the engine these games use is rather special. See, Gem engine games don't really play like normal RTS games.
For one, that's because it's a very micro-friendly engine, complete with individual unit inventories, a cover and concealment system, and some other details that make it more apt for tactical scenarios, rather than bigger scale strategic ones.
Especially with HOWW2, it compares fairly well to something like Commandos, rather than say, Company of Heroes.
Some missions give you tanks and the like (and there's ways to capture enemy ones, too!), but generally, the most you'll command is like 4 soldiers (Or indeed, 1 fully crewed tank).
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| A Sherman and a Panther playing peekaboo during the US-campaign |
A second thing that makes games with this engine feel rather different to your average RTS is the direct control mode.
See, the later development of the series and engine, the Call to Arms games, have an actual first-person mode where you directly play as one of your units. But even here, in the OG version, there's direct control. It just happens from the same isometric view as the rest of your gameplay.
So, what does it entail? Well, rather than giving move orders to the unit, you directly control it's movement with the numpad keys (we rebound it to the arrow keys), and you use your mouse to aim. LMB to fire, RMB to switch between primary and secondary weapon, like say, from cannon to machine gun on tanks, for example.
It doesn't exactly turn the game into a fast-paced twin-stick shooter or anything. Your units are still fragile and can die very easily if you try to go full Rambo, but it makes things like outmaneuvering enemy tanks much more fun, because you can give it a "personal touch".
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| The Sherman's nice and all, but when you get an opportunity to capture and fix up a Tiger abandoned by it's crew, you take it! |
Now, it's entirely fair to say that yes, having an unrestricted direct control ability is rather powerful. The AI in the game is relatively alright (odd pathfinding at times, but otherwise ok), but they don't mow down enemies like you can when you take direct control.
But then, it's quite fun to do, and it's not like the devs didn't balance the game with that in mind. There's plenty of situations where direct control is more or less needed to beat the odds.
Plus, in all fairness, it does come with the downside that while you're using direct control, you're fully locked in on that unit, meaning you can't give orders to your other units.
At most you can set them up in overwatch positions beforehand, then lure enemies into them with the unit you're controlling.
But there's one more big thing that makes the Gem engine games special. You see, unlike many RTS games, this engine is heavily physics-driven.
Let me give you an example:
While we were playing one of the missions in the U.S. campaign, we fired an HE tank shell at a Flakpanzer I.
Now, in most RTS games, it would either count as a hit or miss, and on hit, it would do a set amount of damage and likely destroy the Flakpanzer, but not here.
What happened was this: We hit slightly to the side of the machine, and the shot didn't quite -destroy- the vehicle, but instead the force of the HE explosion rolled it over. This didn't just eliminate the vehicle from combat, but also, as it rolled, it actually crushed two infantrymen who were advancing alongside it.
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| It's a bit small, but if you look closely, you can see the flipped Flakpanzer, and one of the infantrymen it flattened as it rolled over. |
And there's that Gem-engine magic. It's almost as much of a simulator as it is an RTS. Stuff like that can happen dynamically. Since the vehicle wasn't technically destroyed, we could also have pushed it back over with our tank, fixed it up and used it for ourselves.
And this sort of detail extends to all kinds of things in this game. Say a tank detonates and it's turret lands somewhere in the road. The game's cover system will actually recognize the turret as a physical object and allow infantry to use it as cover. Unscripted, physics-based, emergent gameplay. In a 2004 RTS game. Cool stuff!
Vehicle damage in general is a pretty strong suit of these games. It doesn't quite give you the War Thunder-style X-ray vision of how the shot affected the target, but it does do similar damage calculations. Shots may not penetrate, or penetrate armour but fail to hit anything vital. Vehicles can be set on fire, which can result in some spectacular cook-off explosions.
If a vehicle becomes immobilized, it can still be a threat as long as the turret/guns work. And if it becomes combat ineffective but isn't fully destroyed, it's crew will likely abandon it, which potentially gives you an opportunity to repair and capture it for yourself. Or you can take it's ammo and fuel for your own vehicles. (Yoinking enemy vehicles is one of our favourite things to do in this game, as it happens!)
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| Okay, that's one we won't be able to capture. But alas, some situations call for a more direct and permanent solution. |
But yeah, so beyond the awesome moment-to-moment gameplay, what does the game actually offer?
Well, there's 4 story campaigns, one for the Soviets, the Wehrmacht, U.S. Army and British commandos.
There's no dynamic campaigns, conquest mode or anything like that, but at least those 4 story campaigns play our pleasantly differently.
The soviet campaign follows a handful of survivors from different units that were decimated, and they chase a train to capture a Katyusha truck back from the Germans. In the process, you get to drive a steam locomotive around!
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| Niet, Hans! Is not your Katyusha! Is OUR Katyusha! |
The British campaign is, unsurprisingly, the most Commandos-like, in that you have a small unit of special forces, and there's a more of a focus on infantry, stealth and subterfuge (though you can still get creative and capture stuff). It also has a neat story about capturing sensitive German weapon guidance technology.
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| No trains in the British campaign, but you do get to drive a couple of boats! |
The American campaign is a nice mix of elements, containing both infantry and tank-heavy missions. The story revolves around operation Market Garden, and capturing some strategically important bridges.
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| One of the American missions is very heavy on tanks.... |
And the German campaign is all about Tanks. Tanks, tanks, tanks. The story revolves around a German tank ace and his daring capers through soon-to-be-liberated france.
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| ..... but not as tank-heavy as the German campaign. |
All in all, these campaigns are relatively short, each containing around 4-6 missions, which can each last between ~30 minutes to a couple of hours, depending on the mission and how you go about things.
We finished all the campaigns and ended up at 26 hours. Mind you, there's also a bunch of single missions available to play, so we might yet get a bit more out of the game.
(Well, maybe. We kinda really wanna move on to CtA, now that we know it's a modernized version of HOWW2 :p)
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| Enemy snipers in the windows? Remove the building! That's right, pretty much everything is destructible! |
There's a multiplayer mode available of course, but we can't tell you about it. We're just not interested in multiplayer, for the most part.
Oh, also, technically what we played was the "enhanced edition".
It's the Steam version, and "enhanced" in this case means it actually works with modern systems, has widescreen support, things like that.
Oh, and also workshop support, if you're interested in digging into the modding scene of a 20+ year old game!
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| Stowing away on a truck to infiltrate an enemy base. Very Commandos-esque. |
Speaking of widescreen support, we should possibly mention graphics. They look...... fine. It's obviously an older game, and it has to be said, for 2004, we think it actually looks quite nice, but yeah, unsurprisingly, all the newer games in the franchise look much better.
The sound is similarly fine. Most weapons have a reasonably punchy sound to them, the general soundstage is pretty decent and the music is alright. Nostalgic for Michael, but ultimately nothing too special.
One little niggle about the sound is that you'll hear repeated voice-lines from both friendly -and- hostile units A LOT. But then, that's kind of standard for RTS games of all eras, innit?
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| A couple of the missions take place at night, where the game gets to feeling rather cozy. Despite all the explosions and gunfire. |
So yeah, that's our look at HOWW2. Got a bit of a history lesson left in us, though. And also the funny little thing that made us go back to this game in the first place.
See, a few weeks back, we were browsing the Steam store, and happened upon the first Call to Arms game. Now, we'd seen this game around here and there, but for the first time, we looked a bit closer.
And as we saw the mechanics of the game, Michael went: Oh hey, that looks a lot like Men of War in a modern day setting!
So we had a bit of a closer look, found out that it is, in fact, exactly that, and decided that we'd actually very much like to play Call to Arms, as well as the Gates of Hell "sequel" to it.
But first, i suggested that we do our thing again, and dig out the OG of these games, which Michael played back in the day, but never finished. And of course, now we have!
But yeah, that's how we actually learned about the fact that the engine these games use is called Gem.
By looking into the engine, we also found another couple of games, made by different studios!
One is called "Battle of Empires: 1914-1918", and is, as the name suggests, set in WW1. It's got mixed reviews, and the voice acting seems shoddy, but the premise might be enough to lure us anyway.
The other is called "Majesty 2", and it's..... a fantasy RTS where you control your units through indirect incentives? Okay, that's rather out of left field. Might still play it at some point, but yeah.
Oh, and while we're slingin' links around: You can find the other games we've mentioned here:
Yeah, you only get one link to Men of War. Assault Squad 2 is the one everyone always talks about anyway, and i don't wanna link like 20 different standalone expansions for it.
Oh, there's also now an actual Men of War 2, made by the OG developer that made the first few games. Though that one seems a bit divisive at the moment.
There's also this currently in development. Not an RTS and probably doesn't use the Gem engine, but i feel it's related.
Alright! I think i've now run out of things to say. I shall leave you with a picture of a steam locomotive being hit by a Katyusha salvo.
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| Quite an explody game this, all things considered. |
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