

The latter is Men of War at its best, since you wage joint warfare that emphasizes the combined-arms teamwork design of the entire game.Īnd the game doesn't pull any punches with its combined-arms focus. There are three versus battle modes pitting as many as 16 players against one another on massive maps, along with a new cooperative mode where you work together with up to three friends on missions against the AI. Settings range from wartorn France in the wake of the Normandy invasion, to the bleached-out deserts of North Africa, to the jungles of Southeast Asia. Skirmish features 15 huge one-off scenarios where you lead the troops of the USA, Commonwealth, Soviet Union, Germany, or Japan against their respective enemies.

There are no bases to build or resources to manage other than the points needed for reinforcements.


If you capture flag-bedecked strategic points on the battlefields, you're rewarded with unit points that you can use to order up new troops, tanks, mortars, and naval bombardments.Īnd that's pretty much it. Scenarios are tackled by starting at the south end of the map and blitzkrieging your way to the north, blowing apart progressively tougher enemy troop emplacements and fortifications as you go. The structure of the game is simple, and the interface is so intuitive that you don't need to refer to the manual or go through a tutorial (which you don't get anyway). The basics of Assault Squad fit in with the likes of its WWII real-time strategy predecessors. If you're up for a grueling yet satisfying slog through Tom Brokaw's war, this is a great way to kill some more Nazis on your nights off.Įven though battles play out a little like battlefield games of chess, you still get to blow things up on a regular basis. In other words, you really have to know what you're doing to avoid the fate of having your name carved on a cenotaph back home in 1945. Like the original Men of War that became a cult hit in 2009, this take-no-prisoners sequel boasts a rigorous attention to realism geared toward confounding tank rushers with no understanding of combined-arms tactics. This tactical real-time game from Digitalmindsoft is something of a crueler version of similar games such as Company of Heroes and Codename: Panzers. Serious challenge is what Men of War: Assault Squad is all about.
