Theatre of War Video Game Review

Ratings: Graphics & Audio: 23/25, Gameplay: 19/25, Creativity 20/25, Fun 18/25
Total: 80/100

Theatre of War has been in the making for some time with Battlefront.com and veteran World War II airplane sim company 1C. The game has released with some fantastic realism and great gameplay on both digital download and DVD purchase.

1C are the creators behind Il-2 Sturmovik and all it's expansions and they surely know a thing or two about World War II. Theatre of War is a ground fighting simulation with a bit of a twist to the strategy and tactical genres.

Using the common and easy to handle real time strategy format and a broad view of your battle field you will be in charge of a good assortment of ground based units with an occasional air strike or artillery barrage thrown in. Theatre of War starts you off in one of five great campaigns from either the German, Allies, Polish, Russian or French perspective.

You play out each campaign following realistic and historical battles from that particular standpoint and accomplish the major goals for each. Many of the goals are the realistic ones of the unit from history that you get to try your strategic hand at. At the start of any particular battle you will have your choice of changing some or all of the units available but you may not get to choose some. They will lock some that the designers decided you would have to fight with but others are often a matter of strategy or personal preference.

For each battle you will be given a total number of points with each unit costing so many points depending on the units specialties. Tanks and heavier weapons will cost more and ground troops less so you have to decide on the mix you think is correct for any given battle situation. You can restart the battle and change the units as well as save the battle at any point to allow a return point to try out different tactics once the battle has started.

Theatre of War has a very good mix of historically accurate units from small transports truck and half tracks up to the largest tanks of any particular side. In most of the missions and campaigns you will need a mix of vehicles, troops and weapons so having the correct units at the start is pretty important. During gameplay you can also pick up your enemies weapons and vehicles to use them against their previous owners as long as they are useable just like in real life.

You also have a very good veteran status with any surviving troops from previous missions being available in following missions so you have units that will be better able to handle themselves. During missions you will also be able to receive reinforcements from the units you did not select at the beginning of the battle so all is not lost in many of the hardest fought battles.

Gameplay is very good in Theatre of War with a very realistic AI and battles do play out very differently even restarting the same one. I have seen the AI take different tactics depending on what I was doing and reacting quite well to my actions. Using very realistic damage models and seeing just how long it takes moving troops or armor from one area to another you get a really good idea how battles were so difficult to plan and carry out.

The gaming format as far as scenery was a bit of a let down with pretty much the same open fields and very small towns or individual buildings dotting the playing field. There could have been a better variety to the playing field with the additional large town or meandering rivers cutting through some parts of the battle field. There was a very good variety to the elevations using a good mix of hills and valleys but some other features like a good river or mountain sides were just missing.

Line of sight is very important especially with armor and artillery and you can use this feature to the best of your advantage. You cannot shoot at what you can't see so you can use hills and other features to either hide behind or in. Grass is great concealment for an ambush but does not protect your troops against machine gun fire. Theatre of War uses all these great features to the fullest and you need to take into account all these things as you plan your battles.

Theatre of War has some very familiar controls and interfaces with a mini map and additional information on selected units available at a mouse click. The selection of individual units and being able to assign them to groups is simple and very much like most every other strategy game.

Many of the games features are very familiar but where Theater of War really excels is the games graphics and how realistic battles are. As mentioned planning a battle and having things occur as you planned does not always happen and things like some troops being slower to move to ordered coordinates happens in real life as well as this game.

Theatre of War uses several movement types such as attack, move and assault for a variety of different movement combinations. You can select a unit and order them to move which will mean that unit will proceed to the selected spot while ignoring most other units except when being actively attacked. An assault order will have that unit rush the enemy position and fire on the move to reach the specified spot at all costs.

The attack commands can very greatly by the type of unit your attacking and how you wish to attack them. For attacks against vehicles you choose a general area of the tank or armor such as turret, hull or chassis to shoot at. You can also order a unit to generally fire at an area as a pinning move or a general order to fire on a group of enemies.

Theatre of War has several unique and helpful ways to attack, defend and complete your objectives with plenty of realistic gameplay. The graphics are another area that the game excels at and it really does look realistic. The game uses scenery and effects that look great such as dirt tossing up behind the treads of tracked vehicles or smoke trails from flaming airplanes as they crash from anti aircraft fire.

Graphics and sound effects are done very well with a lot of attention paid to the entire area. The sound effects are realistic and grasses, trees and other scenery are not the standard four directional models. There is some very good theme music added but not in parts of the game that would give away upcoming attacks or parts that are going to get busy. I just hate when designers or video game creators add in music or build the theme songs in volume just before something exciting is going to happen which gives away the surprise to come.

Theatre of War comes as a very complete game with a good multiplayer portion in the form of online or LAN play against other people with up to eight players at once. You can create your own game or join others but you do need to get in touch with others as there is no common lobby to go to and join a game. This can easily be done through the Battlefront.com website to find others to play against.

Theatre of War also comes with a very easy to use editor so you can alter or create your own missions and campaigns. I found several quickly on one website and downloaded one to play. It really gets interesting to have the unique skills and diversity of all those players creating their own battles for you to be able to try your hand at.

Theatre of War is a very good real time strategy game with plenty of campaign and several single battles to play. You can also download new ones created by fans and I am sure they will continue to crank out new ones for months to come. I highly recommend Theatre of War as a very good and different real time strategy game.