The actual game
But lets set aside moral concerns and pretend that we’re playing a game set in ‘A.N. Other middle eastern country’ as most other developers would have more tactfully put it. What have we actually got?
Well, you play the part of Will Steel, son of a highly decorated US Marine General, and are thrown into combat in Afghanistan. Initially you command just a platoon before working your way up the ranks to command a battalion as you progress through the missions.
This being a realistic RTS, there’s no resource collecting of any sort, which will come as a relief to those who’d rather be making tactical decisions, with the majority of missions being either to seek and destroy a target or to get to a certain point. Of course, with realism being the emphasis, units lost in a mission cannot be replaced during that mission, so it’s up to you to make the right decision to get as many of your troops through the mission as possible.
The problem is, that right from the start, you’re battling everything in the game that you shouldn’t be. The manual, what there is of it, is in PDF on the disc. Helpfully printed in full colour, it’ll drain your expensive ink cartridge quicker than a camel at an oasis after a 40 day trek. Once you’ve got it printed, you’ll be wondering why you bothered as it gives precious little useful information which you couldn’t find out yourself just by mucking around in the game screens.
In fact, most of the manual is taken up with the voice commands for use within the game. Voice commands? What’s all that about? Well, I’m so very glad you asked… One of WoS’s big selling points is its use of voice commands within the game to select and control your units. According to the manual you can select units by type, class or team and then tell them to do everything from deploy and move to plant explosives or fire at will.
Now GMX claim that WoS is the first to incorporate voice control within a game. It may be the first to have it built into the game’s code but voice control isn’t as new as GMX would have us believe…. After all, Microsoft have been bundling voice control software with their Gamevoice Headsets ever since they were launched. Anyway, to make sure you give the voice control a go, GMX have included a free headset with the game, just to really push the voice control idea home.