PC Reviews

Men of War: Red Tide – PC Review

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi on December 11, 2009

Men of War: Red Tide - PC Review | read this item

This game is a tough one. Tough in a sense that victory is something Red Tide makes sure you work your backside off for, it’s akin to being handed a slingshot and small rock and then asked to stop a tank barreling towards you that has the intent of turning you into a human pancake. It’s refreshing, and annoying in equal measure, because there’s a part of me that would like nothing more than to score Men of War: Red Tide down for the numerous occasions where it has forced me into impossible situations and seen me die, restart and swear at my computer monitor more than any other game has this year, and yet there’s another part of me who loves the challenges it provides, a part of me who thrives on the thrill of trying a new tactic, and part of me who screams like a little girl when the whole thing eventually works.

This sequel to Men of War, a game overlooked by many, which itself was a spiritual successor to the criminally overlooked Soldiers: Heroes of World War II is yet another foray into the theatre of the second world war. Yet there’s a freshness here lacking in many WWII games, largely thanks to the efforts by a developer who clearly loves their history and where keen to represent battles too few videogames have even considered covering. The game centres around the exploits of a Soviet commando unit called “The Black Coats” a team of soldiers who where experts in storming enemy positions despite being impossibly outnumbered, here the action focuses on the Black Coats exploits during the Black Sea campaigns against the Germans and their Romanian allies.

And right from the offset the game likes to show you just how hard a time the Black Coats had against their superior numbered and armed opponents. This is not a game that likes to gently ease you in, missions tend to begin with little more than a lightly armed squad of soldiers who you are then meant to send forth to complete objectives that often require either traversing past, or if you’re feeling particularly lucky or brave shoot through, waves of enemy soldiers.

Given that enemies often hold just about every advantage imaginable, lying in wait with accurately positioned artillery or with a fleet of tanks on standby, simple acts of trying to get men from one area to the next are often slow and time consuming. Given the game also likes to cater to realism, soldiers are easily felled by a well placed shot meaning charging something such as a machine gun nest can leave you with the shattered remnants of a once fully equipped, and healthy squad. So once that initial difficulty curve slaps you across the face for being over eager, you learn to adapt and to approach each situation with far more trepidation.

Men of War Red Tide - Screensho 05 Even then simply staying alive is a challenge in itself. Each soldier has an inventory and it’s one that often needs to be micromanaged on a continuous basis, guns can run out of ammunition fairly quickly and things such as anti-tank grenades often need replenishing by scouring the corpses of fallen soldiers. Prolonged gun battles are also fairly dangerous with health getting shaved off pretty quickly by sustained enemy fire.

The result is one that ends up making Red Tide feel less like a traditional strategy game and more like a tactical top down shooter. Given the sparseness of actual troops you are given to command, progression relies on your ability to navigate the dense terrain and use it’s cover effectively. Wading in guns blazing just doesn’t work, while the enemy AI might not be the sharpest around their numbers are such that when trouble does inevitably arise if you’ve not taken the time to adequately arm your soldiers and position them behind appropriate cover, then they’re pretty much done for.

This does throw up one frequent problem, and that’s specifically with the the AI. A mild bit of stupidity you could almost expect from the enemy troops, who charge and blatantly run through anything, even their own allies, just to get at you. Given how numerous they are, it’s perhaps better they are prone to these mild outbursts of idiocy. Your own troops however posses an over eagre ability to get themselves stuck into combat when they really need to be anywhere but fighting.

When controlling more than one squad this becomes a nightmare particularly when moving them all at once and their sudden realisation of nearby enemies sees them launch themselves for an attack when you are still moving other troops up. In a game where every soldier is a precious resource you need to survive, this kind of sporadic bravery (or stupidity) can really screw up your chances of surviving. That isn’t to say the AI is without some shred of merit. Enemy and ally soldiers alike do make excellent use of the terrain, often darting for cover when under suppressing fire, and it’s even possible to trick a large enemy forces by drawing their fire to one area then moving swiftly out of the way whilst they deforest the shrubbery you where hiding behind, flanking them whilst their attention is averted.

Men of War Red Tide - Screensho 03 Alternatively there still remains the option to manually control units via the game direct action mode. Much as with all previous 1C Company RTS games, this allows you to switch from traditional mouse controls and adopt a mouse keyboard control method similar to a first person shooter, and one that not only allows you manually navigate the terrain with your troops, but also target and fire at your own discretion.

It’s useful for those occasions where troop accuracy is waning, but more often than not it’s a chance to enjoy the games multitude of controllable vehicles and bask in Red Tides impressive destructible terrain. And boy is it fun. There’s a constant sense of giddy excitement when upon exploring levels, you discover an empty tank or an artillery position who’s perfectly positioned cannons watch out over an enemy controlled town, and it’s here the game awards your ability to get creative in completing it’s objectives by allowing you to get knee deep in the action. Perhaps stealing that tank and taking it on a joyride around a town blasting buildings housing soldiers or capturing that artillery position you then use to fire on an oblivious entrenched force. Moments like these erase much of the negative feelings you feel towards the game for it’s vertical learning curve.

But even in these instances, the game is still incredibly difficult. Tanks and artillery alike are just as vulnerable to a well armed enemy soldier as your individual soldiers are to a minefield, even barreling around in a heavily armoured tank carriers the constant worry of a well placed anti-tank grenade that can be thrown from anywhere and stop your rampant killing spree dead. Even in these moments of pure adrenaline fueled carnage, you still have to work hard in ensuring your survival through to the end.

Red Tide is as much an endurance than anything else, just getting to the end of a mission with even half of the men you began with is an achievement and often one you’ll be proud of considering it may take several restarts and allot of trial and error before you eventually reach it. It’s not a game for anyone not clued up on either Men of War or it’s forgotten ancestor Soldiers either, there aren’t any tooltips in game and there’s absolutely no tutorial to speak of, the game quite unforgiving just dumps you in the deep end and watches from a distance as you try desperately to stay afloat.

Men of War Red Tide - Screensho 08 It’s something that may end up remaining one the games greatest flaws, yet conversely also remains one of it’s greatest strengths, because this is a strategy game the way strategy games used to be, hard, frustrating but offering you the kind of challenges that makes you feel like you’ve achieved something once you do finally wrestle with it’s complicated mechanics and complete those difficult objectives.

Presentation wise however, Red Tide lags behinds. This isn’t an overly pretty game, in actuality it doesn’t seemed to have moved visually that far from Soldier: Heroes of World War II, which is five years old. Detail and animations are never that impressive, but the physics system and destructible scenery do make up for the lack of visual flair. The same cannot be said of the audio however, with so-so sound effects and a cringe inducing soundtrack cobbled together with a voice over cast seemingly incapable of registering any kind of emotion. There’s also a lack of any kind of multiplayer mode, true the single player missions you do get are huge in size and number, but when previous games in the series have included competitive and co-op online modes, dispensing with these features does lessen the longevity of the game.

It may also lessen the appeal of Red Tide to those still unfamiliar with any of 1C Companies previous efforts, although you do get the impression from playing Red Tide that it was always the developers intent to appeal to fans of Men of War rather than increase it’s popularity to those who are not. And certainly those people will be hard pressed to find many bad things to say about the game. Although it still posses many of the same problems, and it’s difficulty spikes range from mildly difficult to insanely impossible, with a strict attention to historical detail and missions designed to test you strategic skills to their maximum, Red Tide can be an immensely rewarding game, but one that does require a great deal of patients and discipline.

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