Customer Reviews

Theatre Of War

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

From wiki: "Strategy is distinct from tactics. In military terms, tactics is concerned with the conduct of an engagement while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked. In other words, how a battle is fought is a matter of tactics: the terms that it is fought on and whether it should be fought at all is a matter of strategy. Military strategy is the overarching, long-term plan of operations that will achieve the political objectives of the nation. It is part of the four levels of warfare: political goals, strategy, operations, and tactics."

There are plenty of war strategy/tactics games out there. Let's not rank which one is better: World in Conflict, Company of Heroes or Men of War. I have played them all and enjoyed some of them more then the others.

Theatre of War is unforgiving RTTS - real time tactical simulator. Here you need to be concerned by caliber of your AT artillery, AP vs HE rounds, angle of attack, slope of the armor. Yes, you will curse this game in frustration when playing first Polish campaign as you find your forces severely outnumbered and outclassed by well oiled Wehrmacht war machine. You will start smoking and biting your nails. You will be reloading your game very frequently... And yet somehow I've enjoyed the challenge. If you are seasoned strategy/tactics veteran you will want to give it a shot. Be forewarned, this is not World in Conflict where you're led by hand and asked "place your tanks here", "defend this spot here".

This is one of the few if not the only games out there that actually has realistic scale modeled fire range and line of sight. AT guns are your only chance to knock out those panzers. You will treasure them above all or otherwise you're doomed from the get go. Pre-battle deployment is equally important as your quick reaction during the battle. Wrong placement of your forces will pose outflanking threat and total annihilation. Your infantry is a serious threat to enemy tanks if they are in trenches and have AT grenades. Your ammunition is severely limited. Make your shots count. Knock out those guns on tanks first. Or if they come into range - you're toast. Your units can capture and man guns and tanks. Unfortunately equipment is not transferred between missions. Your soldiers gain experience and it is transferable between missions.

I've completed only Polish and French campaigns (the toughest) so far. Game is using IL-2 Sturmovik engine, which works well for very long viewing ranges.

The game is not without problems.
1. Battles take place only on flat or hilly terrains. There is no variety.
2. Performance is not optimized. Running on Win 7 64 bit on SSD RAID-0, Core Duo E8400, 4Gb of RAM and HD5850 - frame rate often gets choppy.
3. Textures and models (graphics in general) are outdated.
4. Clouds are strobe flashing time to time. Shadows are messed up sometimes on ATI hardware if you have v-sync or AA enabled. I will report back if it's still the case with the newer drivers. (EDIT: shadows and AA are fine on the latest Catalyst with HD5850)
5. Under Vista and Win 7 I suggest to Run as Admin, otherwise I can't save or make config changes.

That's why I'm giving it 4 for fun and 3 stars overall. Highly suggest to try out Men of War.

The game is broken, and the issues are well documented. The game is clearly meant to be downloaded - you are punished if you buy it here in DVD format.

I find the game to be something of a yawner. Why? Because there is no battle continuity. You are fighting as the French and if by some miracle you actually beat the Germans during one battle... well, that doesn't matter. The next battle is the same historical battle that happened when the French actually lost. Thus, why bother trying to change history if your efforts make no difference at all? Much worse than the old Close Combat franchise.

But if I can get into the mission editor, etc., maybe I can build something I'd like. This is where the well documented "it's broken" comes in. The mission editor won't open. It's a bug, and a well documented one.

And there is a great fix for it, if you have the downloaded version. There's a patch.

But this is the DVD version... have fun finding that one. But you CAN find it if you look hard enough.

Only one problem - it breaks the game. As in "renders it inoperable if you apply the patch."

Now I'm guessing - and this is only a guess - it's because I didn't install the game on a C: drive. I have an SSD for boot, and don't install software there. Thus my non-C: drive causes some software, written by coders who don't understand universal naming conventions, to fail.

For whatever reason I have a simple choice in this game: yawn myself to death or break it.

Support? Yeah, I really want to give answer 50 questions that have nothing to do with this game - but have EVERYTHING to do with marketing me more stuff - to get an "account," and then I can ask a question. Thanks for that. Instead of just allowing me to ask a question, I have to join the team? Awesome.

Save your money.

A 'new' game always has compatibility issues, this one is no different. What is different is, support. My emails where answered and the situation resolved within 1 hour! All of my 'problems' where driver related, they had all the info I needed to update my system. Would I recommend this game? Absolutely! I have not rated this 5 star, because I've just started using it, but I think it will live up to that level, as far as I'm concerned.