Order of War (PC)
Genre: Real-Time Strategy Publisher: Square Enix Developer: Wargaming.net Players: 1-4
To be honest, after countless World War II games of every genre, I need to do another D-Day level like I need a hole in the head. I feel like I could run a path through Rommel’s asparagus in my sleep. Aside from a much larger map, the opening levels of the American campaign really add nothing new to the experience. The rest of the American campaign picks up a little, however, with the Liberation of Paris and the surprise German counterattacks that threatened to cut off Patton’s Third Army.
As an Eastern Front enthusiast, the Operation Bagration levels hold a little bit more interest to me. At the same time Operation Overlord was creating a bridgehead for the Allies, this massive Soviet offensive was smashing the German Army Group Centre in the East. While D-Day has been immortalised in countless media, Bagration has been largely ignored, even though it was a much larger operation that ended with the annihilation of some of Germany’s strongest remaining forces.
Interestingly, instead of the Soviets, the second campaign puts you in control of the German forces as they face almost certain death at the hands of the rampaging Red Army. There are probably some issues of taste here, but Square Enix skirts the problem by depicting your forces as professionals fighting for survival, rather than cold-blooded killers or – even more problematically – heroes.
The scale of the title is impressive – the maps are huge, and you’re given dozens of units to accomplish each objective. The game does a good job of making you feel like you’re part of a larger conflict, with planes flying over the map, friendly units calling for assistance and objectives scattered far and wide. New objectives are introduced by brief cut scenes, which also serve to disguise some of the loading times during each level.
Pressing the spacebar allows you to pause the action while still issuing orders. You’ll find yourself using this function a lot, particularly when trying to coordinate simultaneous assaults in different corners of the map. In some ways, this makes the game feel more like one of those turn-based titles than one that unfolds in real-time. It also gives you time to react to things going wrong, rather than having to load up a save game or restart a particularly difficult mission.
The camera controls seem like they’ve been taken from an FPS, and will be familiar to anybody who has played one of the Total War games, or World in Conflict. Indeed, those who played World in Conflict or any of the Ground Control series will be in familiar territory with a lot of the game’s ideas. Reinforcements can be deployed to roll onto the map with a click of a button, and some levels offer support options like off-map artillery and bombing runs. The interface is simple and intuitive, although you’ll want to make sure you play with the unit markers displayed as it can be easy to lose track of them in the large maps.
Units are grouped in squads, which works fine for infantry, but not quite as well for tanks and artillery. More precise control of armoured units would have been a welcome addition, to take advantage of factors like armour facing and tactical positioning. There’s a rock-paper-scissors approach to which units are best at facing others, and you’ll figure out appropriate targets for your forces in pretty short order.
Each level gives you a few different primary and secondary objectives to achieve, normally along the lines of seizing a point, destroying an enemy formation, or holding and protecting a certain location or unit. Completing these objectives while minimising your own losses earns you victory points, which you can spend between missions on a dizzying array of upgrades. These take the form of extra accuracy, durability, and cheaper reinforcements to name a few.
It all feels a bit like an arcade game. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – not everybody wants to become a World War II historian just to have a fighting chance. There’s no real resource gathering, units don’t gain any experience, and there’s no way of reinforcing your cannon fodder once they’ve been decimated in combat. I guess you could call it “streamlined,” but it sometimes feels a little bare.
The different models of tanks and artillery have been balance well against each other – a Soviet medium tank is about the same as a German medium tank, which is about the same as a Sherman. Not really all that accurate historically speaking, but given that all the factions play in pretty much the same way, this is probably an important concession to multiplayer balance. There are several different multiplayer modes, which you’ll be well-prepared for after playing the first few campaign missions.
At any time you can activate the cinematic view, which moves around the map to show you different views of the action as it occurs. This was a nice little gimmick, but I found myself using it less and less as the missions became more difficult and demanded more of my attention. There were also a few moments when the camera moved to cover units that weren’t doing much of anything, just as something exciting was happening.
Order of War has some big selling points, but it all feels a little impersonal. There’s none of the immediacy of Company of Heroes, or the storyline and pyrotechnics of World in Conflict. This isn’t a bad strategy game by any measure – it delivers some solid missions, along with cinematic action and decent graphical performance. But after so many games using World War II as a setting, more of a personal connection to the narrative of the time would have been nice.
By Lachlan (23rd Sep 2009)
Order of War offers some solid and enjoyable enough game play, but fails to inject anything radical into a stale "last days of World War II" setting.
Finding something new to say about World War II is a real challenge, but that isn’t to say people shouldn’t try. Recently, the fine movie Days of Glory showed the war from the perspective of French colonial troops, fighting for the freedom of a country that considered them second-class citizens. The Call of Duty series has strip-mined the Battle of the Bulge and Stalingrad as far as settings go, but other important battlefields often go ignored.
Order of War is the first real-time strategy game to be published by Japanese company Square Enix, and represents part of their new focus on the US market. Set in 1944, the game offers two campaigns set during the final days of World War II. This was the year the Allies invaded the European mainland, and the Russians finally removed all Axis forces from the Soviet Union. Hitler’s Wehrmacht still had some serious sting in its tail, but the need for supplies and replacement personnel was fast becoming desperate.
To be honest, after countless World War II games of every genre, I need to do another D-Day level like I need a hole in the head. I feel like I could run a path through Rommel’s asparagus in my sleep. Aside from a much larger map, the opening levels of the American campaign really add nothing new to the experience. The rest of the American campaign picks up a little, however, with the Liberation of Paris and the surprise German counterattacks that threatened to cut off Patton’s Third Army.
As an Eastern Front enthusiast, the Operation Bagration levels hold a little bit more interest to me. At the same time Operation Overlord was creating a bridgehead for the Allies, this massive Soviet offensive was smashing the German Army Group Centre in the East. While D-Day has been immortalised in countless media, Bagration has been largely ignored, even though it was a much larger operation that ended with the annihilation of some of Germany’s strongest remaining forces.
Interestingly, instead of the Soviets, the second campaign puts you in control of the German forces as they face almost certain death at the hands of the rampaging Red Army. There are probably some issues of taste here, but Square Enix skirts the problem by depicting your forces as professionals fighting for survival, rather than cold-blooded killers or – even more problematically – heroes.
The scale of the title is impressive – the maps are huge, and you’re given dozens of units to accomplish each objective. The game does a good job of making you feel like you’re part of a larger conflict, with planes flying over the map, friendly units calling for assistance and objectives scattered far and wide. New objectives are introduced by brief cut scenes, which also serve to disguise some of the loading times during each level.
Pressing the spacebar allows you to pause the action while still issuing orders. You’ll find yourself using this function a lot, particularly when trying to coordinate simultaneous assaults in different corners of the map. In some ways, this makes the game feel more like one of those turn-based titles than one that unfolds in real-time. It also gives you time to react to things going wrong, rather than having to load up a save game or restart a particularly difficult mission.
The camera controls seem like they’ve been taken from an FPS, and will be familiar to anybody who has played one of the Total War games, or World in Conflict. Indeed, those who played World in Conflict or any of the Ground Control series will be in familiar territory with a lot of the game’s ideas. Reinforcements can be deployed to roll onto the map with a click of a button, and some levels offer support options like off-map artillery and bombing runs. The interface is simple and intuitive, although you’ll want to make sure you play with the unit markers displayed as it can be easy to lose track of them in the large maps.
Units are grouped in squads, which works fine for infantry, but not quite as well for tanks and artillery. More precise control of armoured units would have been a welcome addition, to take advantage of factors like armour facing and tactical positioning. There’s a rock-paper-scissors approach to which units are best at facing others, and you’ll figure out appropriate targets for your forces in pretty short order.
Each level gives you a few different primary and secondary objectives to achieve, normally along the lines of seizing a point, destroying an enemy formation, or holding and protecting a certain location or unit. Completing these objectives while minimising your own losses earns you victory points, which you can spend between missions on a dizzying array of upgrades. These take the form of extra accuracy, durability, and cheaper reinforcements to name a few.
It all feels a bit like an arcade game. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – not everybody wants to become a World War II historian just to have a fighting chance. There’s no real resource gathering, units don’t gain any experience, and there’s no way of reinforcing your cannon fodder once they’ve been decimated in combat. I guess you could call it “streamlined,” but it sometimes feels a little bare.
The different models of tanks and artillery have been balance well against each other – a Soviet medium tank is about the same as a German medium tank, which is about the same as a Sherman. Not really all that accurate historically speaking, but given that all the factions play in pretty much the same way, this is probably an important concession to multiplayer balance. There are several different multiplayer modes, which you’ll be well-prepared for after playing the first few campaign missions.
At any time you can activate the cinematic view, which moves around the map to show you different views of the action as it occurs. This was a nice little gimmick, but I found myself using it less and less as the missions became more difficult and demanded more of my attention. There were also a few moments when the camera moved to cover units that weren’t doing much of anything, just as something exciting was happening.
Order of War has some big selling points, but it all feels a little impersonal. There’s none of the immediacy of Company of Heroes, or the storyline and pyrotechnics of World in Conflict. This isn’t a bad strategy game by any measure – it delivers some solid missions, along with cinematic action and decent graphical performance. But after so many games using World War II as a setting, more of a personal connection to the narrative of the time would have been nice.
7.9
Single Play
7.8
Friend Play
8.0
Multi Play
8.0
Graphics
8.2
Sound
7.9
Challenge
8.1
Entertainment
8.0
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Order of War
Vital stats
Order of War (PC)
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we say:
7.9 - you say: 9
- scores: 1 your score: 0/10
I was a bit lost in the multiplayer without the pause function. As I stated in the review, the game reminded me a lot of World in Conflict, which probably has some of the best multiplayer you'll find in an RTS.
A decent Rts, worth checking out. I've played a couple missions in every campaign and then tried the multiplayer. Internet battles are really cool - you got lots of troops and huge maps so that you can actually apply whatever tactics you want ( rush won't do though :)) Giving it 9 for well-crafted campaigns and mindblowing multi.