Men of War: Assault Squad

OKAY! I CONFESS!… I never played Men of War. I’m a massive Real Time Strategy fan but the first game slipped under my radar (more than likely while I was busy fooling around with Company of Heroes) and it never made it onto my PC. However, after a brief bit of research via YouTube & Google it struck me as a beautifully realistic, action based RTS set in the World War II era.

Various outside sources then continued to tell me that this expansion pack consisted of 15 new missions, increased some unit balancing for online multiplayer and focused primarily on the infantry section of the game. Oh! As well as some improved graphics (for which I have no comparison) and each faction within the game now has a selection of ‘special’ units which, depending on the different time and price during the mission, become available to the player (again, I’ve never played it without these, but after playing for several hours I find it hard to imagine the game without them). That, for me, was all the information I needed to know (at least for the time being) and so I parachuted into this second stand-alone expansion pack.

Straight away, my immediate thought that this was one hard game. I’m ashamed to say it, but I played through the very first mission (on the easiest difficulty) a grand total of seven times before I was able to limp my remaining three men to the end of the mission. I was battered and bloodied and mortared to Hell and back again trying to advance with my sad little band of eight men. Of course, I was thinking too much like a Starcraft/Command & Conquer player, I was ready to run at the enemy with my freedom flag flying from between my flies and a gun gripped tightly between my teeth – but I was not playing the way Assault Squad is meant to be played.

Frankly, I’m pretty certain that the ideal way to battle your way through this game is with a co-op partner as I can definitely imagine having a fellow commander to watch your back as you flank positions and micromanage the enemy movements would be extremely handy. However, I am friendless when it comes to PC gaming (Steam name – DunKology… just saying), and even more so when playing a game that hasn’t been officially released yet and with only a preview copy at my disposal that has the entire multiplayer section of the game carved out of it. Eventually though, I realised; I discovered I needed a much more thorough, methodical approach to hopping my way to each mission’s final objective.

You can’t just rush your way in. There are no bases in Assault Squad, there is no way of repurchasing units in the campaign and unless you utilise every individual units’ abilities to their fullest you are going to fail – and fail hard. You have to be meticulous that you gather as much of the important supplies and ammunition from every crate and air-drop which you can find on the map. You need to make sure that if you are advancing on the enemy position when they have the higher ground that you always send your sniper in first to pick off as many as possible. You really have to make sure that your armoured units don’t go too far into open terrain because an extra foot too far into the open and there’ll be a shredded piece of tank door embedded in your medic’s face before you can say “INCOMING!”

Not to sound patronising to other RTS games, but Men of War: Assault Squad really is one of those games in the genre where the strategy part of the game really is the most important aspect of gameplay. Sometimes such a minor detail as ordering your squad to hide behind a rock can make a wealth of difference, because an accidental touch of your mouse half a centimetre to the left to change the formation in which your squad are hiding behind the rock can cause your commander’s left toe to stick ever so slightly out in sight and before you know it you’re two bandages down and you’re having to give him a piggyback all the way to the objective.

All that being said, however, I really enjoyed my time with Assault Squad. Perhaps I am tainted by the fact this was my first time experiencing the franchise, but I found Assault Squad to be satisfyingly challenging. There are many great World War II RTS games, Company of Heroes being among them, but whenever I did feel as if I was being pushed to the limit with them it lead me to rage quitting or chomping down on my keyboard until the ‘B’ key pinged off and shot into my eye. This isn’t the case with Assault Squad. There was a strange tingling in the back of my head that kept prodding my brain with the thought that the map was simple, my units remained unaltered so the only remaining roadblock on the rock to the mission’s success has to be me. I can’t take that lying down, because I can’t blame it on lag or a lack of resources, because I know that when RTS games are involved I am not one to accept that it’s nobodies fault but my own. I fought my way through Universe at War, for God’s sake – I’m not going to let Assault Squad walk over me with its brilliant frame-rate and intuitive control system (both of which were lacking in Universe at War, by the way).

Men of War, as a franchise, still has a lot to do in terms of catching up to some of the bigger names in the RTS business. Hell, even I, who prides himself of quite an extensive knowledge of the genre, hadn’t heard of it until I saw Assault Squad being advertised as a hot pre-order on Steam. With this second expansion pack though I believe that the developers have made a very wise decision in simply adding more of the communities’ favourite aspects to the original game formula. If you are a Company of Heroes fan, and haven’t tried Men of War yet, I’d highly recommend that you consider checking the franchise out because it really could surprise you – it certainly surprised me. Perhaps more shockingly, though, if you haven’t played Company of Heroes but are into your RTS games, I’d say that this should be pretty high on your “WANT!” list. Not higher than Starcraft II in your RTS charts, but about 12,924 positions ahead of Command & Conquer 4 – that kind of area.