Soldiers: Heroes Of World War II

Rating:
Summary: Super Cool Game
Review: Soldiers: Heroes of World War II is a pretty incredible game. The game play is intense as you watch the enemy soldiers with grenades in their hands rush your vehicles or men . Often times it ends up in a race to see whether you can train your weapons on the bad guys before they make hamburger meat out of your men.

The "Direct control" feature is the real winner. Soldiers is an RTS game which allows you to take over individual units via direct control. This allows you to move, aim, choose weapons, and reload using the mouse and keyboard. When you have a unit under direct control, the accuracy of that unit is better than when the computer is controlling the same unit.

Using direct control to move your T-34 or Tiger tanks around is a real blast, especially as you run over an enemy soldier ( or your own if you aren't careful) or blast a building to smithereens.

The variety of weapons available is pretty impressive. Everything from knives and pistols to anti-tank grenades, land mines and bazookas are available for use. There is a large pool of vehicles in the game, including motorcycles, jeeps, halftracks, trucks, artillery pieces (Guns and rocket launchers), and tanks.

The first time I played, I got the distinct impression I was watching a movie. I was in control of a T-34 which was supposed to remove the Germans from a russian village. The camera allows almost total control so you are never stuck in a blind spot at a crucial time. As you push your tank or squad of soldiers into the fortified village, the gameplay gets to be pretty intense. German Antitank guns are firing at you, German tanks scurry around trying to take you down, and German soldiers have one thing on their minds. KILL THE T34! Thank goodness for the machine gun and the cannon on the T34. It got pretty hairy when I had to reload the MG, and there are angry German soldiers charging me with AT grenades.

The graphics and effects are very good. Bodies do not disappear (unless you roll a vehicle over them), explosions are good, if you happen to kill a soldier who has primed his grenade, he will explode in a mist of blood and flying body parts.... Awesome! The sound is great, from the creak of the tank treads to the sounds of the rifles. The campaigns and missions are challenging, and offer a wide variety of scenarios. You can play as the German, Russian, English, or American side.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by how outstanding this game is.