Men of War

Men of War

Developer: Best Way/ Digitalmindsoft

Publisher: 1C Company

Genre: Real Time Strategy

Release: March 10, 2009

Available: Steam, GamersGate, Desura, and GOG

Price: $5

Platforms: Windows

Mode: Single-Player, Multi-player

Disclaimer

• I suck at RTS games
• I played on Easy which is still hard.
• I barely have any experience with the RTS genre.
• I'm harsh and picky.
• I'm not a professional journalist.
• Most of my reviews are usually the PC version. I am the PC master race.
• I try to 100% games unless it's pointless or tediously stupid.
• No bribes were taken.
• No bribes were offered.
• I got this as part of 1C complete collection back in 2011 for $25 on gamersgate.
• This is the third Game of the Men of War series.

Hardware

• Windows 7 Home premium 64-bit
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600@ 2.40GHz. Kentsfield 65mn technology
• Ram: 4gb Dual channel DDR2@400MHz (6-6-6-18)
• GPU: 1023MB MSI GeForce GTS 450
• Monitor: 1440x900@60Hz
• Audio: Creative X-fi Audio Processor

Graphics:

• Visually nice to look at on all kinds of settings.  Processor intensive on the highest settings.
• Vehicles have nice details to them even when zoomed up close.
• Nice details like muzzle flashes, visually impressive explosions, good smoke and dust effects. Dirt flies up when exploded, scorched -marks of flames and explosions.
• Vehicles when damage will visually show what part was damaged. Has various states of damage.
• Buildings can be damaged and fully destroyed. Will show damage to wear it was hit.

Cons:

• No modern visual effects like parallax rendering, HDR, etc.
• It doesn't look like a “modern game”
• Water reflections and AA murder your frame rate.
• Not many variations of weather or sky-boxes.

Camera:

• Flexible to see at most directions and angles.

Cons:

• Horrible at seeing into buildings. Roof and other floors will get in the way.
• Needs a Third person view mode when in direct control for maneuvering in buildings.

Controls

• Plenty of keyboard shortcuts to use., can rebind keys.
• Mouse is used to select units, tell them where to go, interacting with the UI

Cons:

• Sometimes the mouse doesn't want to highlight anything, especially at low frame rates.
• When using slow motion, commands are not always responsive.

Game-play:

• 3 campaigns: Russia 1941-1945, Germany 1940-1942 in Greece and West Africa, America 1942 in west Africa.

• Russia's campaign focuses on the regular army, the penal prisoners, and the spetznaz.
• Germany's Campaign focuses on the Paratroopers and the Africa Korps.
• America's campaign Focus on the regular army.

• Take command of a group of units or many units on a battlefield.
• Each unit has their own inventories, weapons they specialize in, give individual commands
• Can group any units together and they will work together and follow the same commands. Can also un-group them.
• Can allow units to shoot and advance on their own.
• Can directly control an individual unit almost like a third person shooter.

• Different types of game-play: defense missions, Offensive missions, stealth missions, squad missions.
• Some missions change game-play styles in the middle of the mission. Helps keep things from becoming stale.
• Defense missions involve laying mines, place guns and units to defend.

• Can change the game speed to be slower or faster on the fly.
• Requires a lot of strategy to complete missions. You can't just send units straight into the enemy fire.
• High level of difficulty even on easy. Difficulty just lowers the amount of health you have and sometimes the units you get or the enemies you face, slightly.
• Nice to play battle or as groups that are not typically featured in WW2 games.
• Comes with a level editor to make your own levels.

Cons:

• Half of the game is defensive missions which are often overwhelming due to all the micromanaging. Slowing down the game helps.
• Stealth Missions suck. Very long and tedious to do perfectly, but help greatly. Enemy AI sometimes becomes psychic randomly or when reloading. Stealth Weapons are practically just as loud as regular weapons so you are stuck with an unreliable throwing knife.
• Some missions require you to know what will happen in advanced if you want to do well.
• Friendly AI is dumb where they get themselves killed so you have to do the job yourself.
• Friendly AI struggle to fight when it comes to buildings. Get stuck or don't react or obey commands.
• German and American campaigns give late tutorials on things you already know about through trial and error.
• No in-depth tutorials

Mechanics:

• Can chose to specify where your unit shoots. Can do head shots, tell tanks to destroy treads or turret only.
• Can capture enemy tanks and artillery to use against them, depending on seriousness of the damage.
• Vehicles and stationary weapons can be repaired.
• Can give ammo and guns to different teammates individually or by double clicking the take icon all twice.

• Direct control allows you to aim and move how you want. You will need to use it and it can make things easier for you by using it.
• Direct control gives player an extra 10 m of range for their weapons. This helps with picking off enemies safely from a distance.

• Vehicles and stationary guns have multiple hit boxes that you can damage and cripple. Example: Damage the treads of a tank and it can't move.

• Uses a somewhat realistic damage system. Less likely to damage a tank from angles. Different caliber rounds can damage certain vehicles. Example: A ligh tank round won't penetrate a Heavy tanks front , but possibly it's back.

• Slopes affect ability of aiming and tank rounds bouncing.

• Tell units to take cover at a highlighted place and they will take cover and gain protection for it.
• Different cover can protect from different levels of damage. Example: Fence may block bullets but won't block a tank round.

• Utilize different ammo types for different purposes. Example: Anti-tank Grenades are used for vehicles, but can be used on foot soldiers too and have less range.. While anti-personnel grenades are only effective on people but have more range.

Audio:

• Good sound fx of guns explosions, and vehicles running.
• Good music that puts you in the mood.
• Russian mission narrator has the best voice acting.

Cons:

• Not enough variety of music.
• Decent amount of times were you don't have any music at all.
• Cars and tanks use the same sound fx for their class of vehicles.
• Voice acting is terrible to the point of being a parody.

Thoughts:

• I surprisingly enjoyed the game as I'm not into real time strategy Games.
• I have become addicted to the series.
• While the game is tough it is still accessible to a newbie of the genre.
• I would recommend this game to anyone.

Notes:

• Multi-player listings doesn't work as GameSpy is down. Will need to use a service such as GameRanger, Qtracker, Gametracker, etc.