War On Terror is a strategy game by Digital Reality that blends squad based combat and RTS style play in an interesting new mix.
Set in the near future, and based around real world locations, War On Terror presents a world close to our own. At the dawn of the new century, peace is a forgotten relic of the past. Secret terrorist groups, united into a single deadly force, have launched lethal assaults in major metropolitan areas around the globe. Their agenda is unknown; their attacks are precise and deadly. In December 2006, a multinational strike force called The World Forces is created to stop this threat. Its first mission, Operation Kimberly, is a failure, and China decides to follow its own policy against terrorism. War On Teror pits you against the worlds most deadly terrorists in a bid for world peace.
When you first launch War on Terror, you are presented with a long, and rather poor looking, cutscene. Don’t let that worry you, however - once inside the game things are a lot better. I’m not sure what they were trying to do with the cutscene - perhaps make it look like news footage, either way, it didn’t work.
In-game, the tutorial takes a slow pace, but introduces you to the units and their abilities in bite-size chunks. It gives you a feel for the types of forces you will need, and how to use their abilities.
Graphically, the game is well done - most of the time I found myself playing in a top-down view to be able to take in the terrain and have a good overview of the map. If you zoom in, however, you can watch the action in a very up-close viewpoint that has good enough graphics for an FPS, let alone a shooter.
The units have their own voices, and their own personalities. You are able to call in reinforcements, but units in this game are not throw-away as they are in most standard RTS-es, they can earn experience to gain abilities, and you can build up quite a formidable force.
The sound is also good, with solid voice-overs and in-game speech.
There are lots of missions to complete, with a variety of secondary objectives and some very challenging maps. I found many of the missions were very long - this is a game you need to be willing to devote a lot of time to.
The controls in this should be familiar to anyone who has played any RTS, or games such as Jagged Alliance (although for that, remove the turn based stuff). The game is real time, but there is still enough time to think and plan your next move.
The controls seemed a little overly sensitive to me, and I was unable to find anything in the options to rectify this. I found myself changing the mouse sensitivity in Windows so that I did not end up accidentally ordering my guys to go all the way to the other end of the map.
Thankfully, the AI is fairly intelligent, and your soldiers will not just blindly run in and suicide - if you order an entire squad to go somewhere, and they meet enemies along the way, they will fire back unless you have ordered them not to do so.
There is a multi player mode with 20 maps to choose from, and up to 8 players. I was unable to test this at the time of reviewing, however War on Terror will support Gamespy making it easy for you to find a game. There are 6 different modes to choose from including the usual Capture the Flag and Conquer modes. There is also the option to design your own single and multi player maps.
War on Terror is a great evolution of the RTS genre, with a close to life storyline, an interesting selection of units, and a top class graphics engine. The War has come to you - are you ready for it?
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 7/10
Game Play: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
