Axis and Allies (Misc PC) » Gaming previews

Since the days of Wolfenstein the World Wars have been a hot topic in all forms of media not least of all Gaming. Atari have brought us yet another way to relive the epic battles of the Second World War in the form of Axis and Allies - a real time strategy not unlike Warhammer 40k's 'Dawn of War' but set, obviously, in the Second World War Era and letting you play as one of the five major powers of the time; USA, UK, Russia, Germany and Japan.

Not being one to miss a promising new Real Time Strategy (Well, anything is better than Command and Conquer: Generals) I downloaded the demo and gave it a Gaming Headlines once over.

Not being a World War 2 fanatic I could not tell you how accurate the scenery, buildings and units are to the Era, but they have a distinctive rural feel. Villages, towns and cities dot the landscape and offer stragetic points for capture which can then be fortified and held as objectives or key points in a battle. Units come in all shapes and sizes from Troops to Half-Tracks and finally Tanks, they are deployed in groups and each producing structure allows you to create a certain number of groups. This is a novel idea for a Strategy game not unlike that in Dawn of War, however once a single unit is build the rest of the group will form automatically around it, and whilst in your territory the group will heal and replenish missing units as nescessary keeping the nescessity to build and micro manage groups of units to a minimum and allowing you to concentrate on battle strategies and building up your army.

With the aid of aircraft and ships you can also bombard the enemy, paradrop troops and land units on a coast line to establish a beach head. All of your buildings are constructed using small vehicles which are produced by your HQ and then "unpacked" where you wish to deploy the building. Looking closely at the bahaviour of these units reveals a distinct realism factor - they actually have turning circles, unlike the many units in many other RPG games which can simply and miraculously turn on a dime. This is a nice touch but achieves nothing in the long run.

Commanding your units is done with the traditional right click and combinations of menu items which let you retreat your units from battle when things get messy and change their formation. The control interface felt a little clumsy to me when trying to pull my units out of a losing battle quickly, but otherwise it functions very much like any other RTS, except that you control your units as a group.

Like any other RTS the ability to assign units a group hotkey (1 through 0) is present and makes quickly organising your units and battle strategies that little bit easier.

The graphics are reasonably good and the units and buildings suberbly detailed, I noticed a lot of slowdown when many units were on the move - bringing to mind the ancient days of Red Alert on the Playstation - however I was expecting slowdown of some sort given the less than bleeding edge specifications of my computer. The terrain is, quite simply, gorgeous - with everything from hedged in rural fields and small farms to mountains, cities, deserts, snow and pretty much anything else you can shake a stick at. Trees can be knocked over by pretty much any vehicle, however they rapidly grow back in a rather comical fashion... I have no idea why, perhaps all those years ago trees were subjected to plant growth hormones. With the scale of the terrain keeping fairly close to that of the units and buildings, expect to see vast levels in which you can hold your battles on land, in the sea and in the air.

Axis and Allies looks set to be a very promising RTS game, as well as a reasonably accurate World War simulation letting you play out real world strategies, capture real world locations and fight real world enemies - a sure break from most other RTS games out there. With the outcome of World War 2 in your hands you are offered the chance to play through an alternate history in a geniune setting. Axis and Allies feels almost like a turn based strategy wargame turned real-time so it should appeal to action lovers and strategists alike.

To get a feel for Axis and Allies yourself you can download the demo, if you do not have the bandwidth then take a look at the screenshots to the left. If you want to see Axis and Allies in action then download the trailer, sit back and enjoy the show. PH

Trailers
Quicktime (.mov)
Windows Media (.wmv)
AVI
MPEG

Competitions

Advertisements

Sponsored Links

Sponsored Links

Latest

Releases