I am utterly astonished that this game was made, much less released for public consumption. Before I even started playing, I had a queasy feeling in my gut when the graphics options defaulted to a 640x480 resolution. What is this, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans? Once I started playing, I honestly wished it was.
Will of Steel lacks even basic real-time strategy functionality. The minimap has no terrain on it, just a grid with some green and red dots. The engine is so amazingly inefficient that WoS actually caused GI's beastly gaming rig to slow down despite being uglier than sin. Half of my mouse clicks didn't have any effect on what was happening onscreen, as if some nefarious entity was inhabiting my USB controller. The list goes on and on, but what makes this title truly unplayable is the AI.
Units occasionally wandering off to their doom and infrequent pathing issues are merely minor annoyances in better RTS games. Will of Steel had me laughing out loud at the obscene things my troops were doing: walking blindly past enemies who were shooting them, taking off in random directions with no input from me, and so on. I don't care how good of a tactical mind you have – the sadistic demons that reside in Will of Steel's code will lay your best plans low and laugh as you swear futilely at your useless troops. Me, I got my revenge by airstriking my own forces, which was far and away the most fun I had in my time with this fetid crap-storm.
I honestly can't think of one positive thing to say about Will of Steel. Even the setting is offensive, with its callous treatment of present-day American conflicts where real people are fighting and dying. I'd avoid picking up the box for fear of contracting something infectious, to say nothing of actually paying for this abomination.
Concept:Utterly ignore basic tenets of the RTS genre, and use the most inefficient engine in the history of gaming
Graphics:I thought the game had crashed the first time the lightning effect happened, it looks so terrible
Sound:There are a few laughs to be had at the hilariously bad opening music, but that's the best thing that can be said
Playability: I like it when my mouse clicks don't register, really
Entertainment:There are games that come free with Windows that are more fun
Replay:Low
Rated:
2.5 out of 10Editor:
Adam BiessenerIssue:
March 20052nd Opinion: This unmitigated disaster is not only entirely unplayable on most levels, but also has the poor taste to be about real life military conflicts that are still occurring around the world. I was literally struck speechless by the total lack of basic functionality in this execrable piece of software. I always try to find the positives to point out in a game, but in this case I'm simply at a loss. It's totally broken. What were they thinking?
Rated:
1.5 out of 10Editor:
Matt Miller
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