PC Reviews

Theatre of War 2: Africa 1942 – PC Review

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi on March 3, 2010

Theatre of War 2 Africa 1943 - Screenshot 01

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Africa has never played a prominent role in the historical videogame, least of all those set during the second world war. Despite it being a continent that played host to a series of bloody and important large scale battles, Normandy and the surrounding European countries have always been the more favoured choice for those developers seeking to plunder this period of history for their latest foray into the dark days of world war 2. And yet you can hardly blame them, as their reasonings to opt out of Africa are valid. The harshness of the African landscape hardly make for an exciting or varied environment, the endless deserts and bleak emptiness don’t provide an appealing gaming world, and there’s absolutely nothing that Theatre of War 2 does to change that. With a lack of any set-pieces and level design that barely excites, it’s up to 1C’s skills to craft a thoughtful, compelling strategy game to sustain interest, and for the most part the very nearly succeed.

The familiarity of the game’s setting will no doubt clue you in as to what to expect. It’s World War 2, so the game relinquishes three separate campaigns for you to fight through as the Americans, British and Germans each battling one another in a series of historical based skirmishes. Objectives are given at the beginning of each mission yet there’s a steady stream of secondary goals to complete that appear as things heat up and the challenges mount. And those challenges do come thick and fast. This isn’t a game about resource gathering or base building, effective troop management during the games numerous battles are what will ultimately lead to victory, and yet with their numbers being so limited and the promise of reinforcements only ever hinted at, there’s a real drive to protect those troops you command unless you face the prospect of a costly defeat.

It’s a more tactile game than the average RTS then, and with the added effect of increased realism, it can also be quite a difficult one too. 1C seemed to have taken great pride in making TOW2 as accurate as they could, and so tanks and guns never fire in a straight line, their shells and bullets often nearly but never quite hitting their target until the second, third or even forth shot. Even then the destruction of the unit they fire on is far from guaranteed, with even infantry able to sustain injuries before they fall permanently. It’s something that will catch the unwitting casual strategy gamer off guard, but it does make the battles a more tense and exciting experience. They’re also on a huge scale, featuring a cast of dozens of soldiers and armour spread throughout massive maps. Once they begin firing on one another those quiet, desolate African landscapes can erupt into a cascade of emerging smoke plumes and burning metal.

Theatre of War 2 Africa 1943 - Screenshot 09 Sadly, while the battles themselves may be up to scratch the actual missions, 15 in total, are unutterably dull. They lack a design flair that makes them memorable or interesting, quickly settling for a series of attack/defend clones that are further hampered by the fact that units can take an absolute age getting anywhere, even when the game is sped up. The saving grace to soldiering on is through an extensive pre-troop selection screen before the beginning of each mission. Here you can organise your squads in anyway you see fit choosing expendable troops on high risk missions or instead getting the more experienced survivors of past battles to lend their aid.

These are no mere pixels either, every soldier is an individual with their own name. It makes it a more personal game, it’s far more difficult to needlessly sacrifice a unit when you know they’re represented as human being and not just a lump of digital numbers, and although TOW stops short of providing any kind of story or background to any of the men you command, it does make you approach challenges and obstacles with a greater deal of care. And yet even this feature is very nearly ruined by an intrusive and completely unnecessary feature. The games miss-titled ‘Smart Pause’ likes to interrupt the action every time one of your men falls in battle, showing you his corpse up close as presumably you are meant to morn his loss. In a game about war casualties are frequent, so it doesn’t take long before the continuous stream of irritable pause screens begin to grate.

You can switch this feature off, yet for some reason not through the games option screen, instead you have to open up a separate configuration window from the start menu. Bizarre interface issues are all frequent in TOW 2. Whether it’s trying, and unsuccessfully, to select a single individual soldier in an attempt to man an unoccupied artillery piece or getting someone to pick up a weapon, which they do automatically and without telling you when they’ve done so, there are times when what should be a simple pain free task becomes far more trouble than it should be.

Theatre of War 2 Africa 1943 - Screenshot 02 The overall presentation fares far better. Any kind of soundtrack has been omitted so that the game can instead focus on the rattling of guns and thundering of explosions and as you’d expect from a large scale war game this can lead to battles sounding fierce and relentless. And it all looks rather pretty too, a bit barren from afar, up close there’s an impressive amount of detail on each unit even if TOW 2 sacrifices a great many fancy effects that have become standard in most other games. There is a sting in the tail however, and while the game never quite pushes the limits of modern graphics technology, for some unknown reason it chugs along at an almost flick-book pace when lots of things happen on the screen at once. These dips in frame-rate can be game killing, and even with TOW 2 coming with the latest patch already installed these problems persist.

So although there are some things wrong with the game, sometimes quite critical, there are also a few things right. When it all comes together and just works the challenges Theatre of War 2 provides can be exhilarating to overcome, the battles can often awe you with their scale and sense of achievement as you guide your motley crew of familiar soldiers through each mission is a reward in itself. But when it gets it wrong TOW 2 is little more than an average RTS with nice yet far too demanding graphics and a forgettable campaign game. A lack of any skirmish support and a mission editor that’s buried and not put on display on it’s menu also cast doubts as to the longevity of the game once the single player and multiplayer aspect have all been exhausted. It’s not enough to damn the game to the shallow pit of budget bin hell, but it’s only enough to recommend it to those who crave a challenge and welcome the added difficulties of increased realism.

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