A few weeks ago I received a postcard, a delightful rendered war scene in crimson with “wish you weren't here” inscribed on the back. Meanwhile, I received an identification card, a fantastic idea if ever I saw one... under occupation were the words “Not a terrorist.” Unsurprisingly, both came from Atari so I had reached the conclusion that they were trying to tell me something. Not too long after a copy of Act of War: Direct Action had arrived, so despite the clear warning on the postcard I filled out my ID card, strapped on my combat boots, and got ready to play.
Since the days of cheesy NES games based on Terminator, movies and games have been in bed together. The games industry has been lovingly crafted with patently awful movie license games in a bid to make a buck or two from hype surrounding the film. On the other hand our film industry has been beavering away, making terrible movies very loosely based on the plot in games in a bid to make a buck or two from die hard fans and people who simply have nothing better to do on a Sunday – Resident Evil, anyone?
More recently, however, games consoles and personal computers alike have been blessed with astounding multimedia capabilities, and the art of computer generated film is getting better and better each day, with the graphics in games following closely. All of the eye candy may not add much to the gameplay factor itself, but it does contibute to what is known as "Suspension of Disbelief." Basically, this means that games today create more believable, involving stories that draw us in, captivate our imaginations and often inspire emotional responses to the characters in much the same way as movies. Characters, objects and scenery both in-game and during cut-scenes look realistic enough for us to identify them and, more importantly, identify with them. But, excellent though CGI is, it can still not compare to real people, on a real set, conveying real (acted) emotions and truly interacting and improvising.
This is where Command & Conquer comes in. The earliest memories I have of CGI in a game belong with my earliest memories of electrocuting Allies with giant coils of death. The Command & Conquer series made use of real film footage and real people to provide you with believable, involving mission briefings. The letdown, of course, is that nothing in the actual game looked very much like anything we see today; the landscapes were alien, whilst the armies were futuristic. Bang goes the illusion that we are dealing with a modern day global crisis. Command & Conquer is, of course, an RTS – which is quite fortunate as it gives me a perfect genre matched reference point to, finally, move on to Act of War.
“Things just "happen" in game as spontaneously as they would in the real world. In short, playing Act of War is like playing a movie, only you are kept a little more in the dark about your foes.”
So, Command & Conquer was the first RTS I ever played where real human beings stood inside the screen and empowered me with real orders, speaking directly to me. Act of War, on the other hand, is the first RTS I have ever played which gives me a real movie to watch to set the scene, and kept the mission briefing... brief... opting for a more dynamic gameplay experience where things just "happen" in game as spontaneously as they would in the real world. In short, playing Act of War is like playing a movie, only you are kept a little more in the dark about your foes. With games like Final Fantasy on the table, you may think that this is hardly a revelation, but when you look around at the RTS games on offer nowadays you will be extremely hard pushed to find one with a more up to date, relevant, involving and unnerving story line.
Never before in an RTS have I sat there and thought... "Holy hell, I'm in London!"
“The detailed graphics and real-world locations are an integral part of the "suspension of disbelief" factor of the game, and contribute to the feel that you are playing a part in quelling a modern day global crises.”
Act of War does not fob you off with a bland, near featureless, generic square map of empty terrain, it lets you fight real battles in real places. Deliciously detailed real places which, quite surprisingly, run extremely well on a 2.8GHz/512MB/GeForce Go5600 computer which is more than I can say for a lot of games. The level of detail in Act of War is not surprising when games like Dawn of War have been around for a good while, but the fact it runs smoothly (on a laptop no less) when showing me a sizeable chunk of London is quite an achievement in itself. The detailed graphics and real-world locations are an integral part of the "suspension of disbelief" factor of the game, and contribute to the feel that you are playing a part in quelling a modern day global crises. In fact the story is so stunningly relevant to what is happening in the world today that it is as I said above, unnerving locations are as varied as they are detailed, in the first few missions of the game you will find yourself going quite rapidly from dessert, to London, to San Francisco and beyond. To be realistic the levels are, of course, hand crafted to a high degree and you will get to visit Buckingham Palace without even standing up.
“If, for example, you are tasked to command a Special Forces team you are treated to a squad of near-FPS quality men who can shoot, snipe, sneak and storm their way to victory”
The game has clearly been designed with realism in mind, although not too much of it as some artistic license is taken when portraying futuristic-ish experimental technologies. Everything from a single unit to a tank, to a Medevac Helicopter is highly detailed and to scale. If, for example, you are tasked to command a Special Forces team you are treated to a squad of near-FPS quality men who can shoot, snipe, sneak and storm their way to victory, routing out enemy units from occupied buildings, or simply taking cover themselves. The game takes on an almost Rainbow Six like quality when commanding troops and brought back stark memories of Black Hawk Down as my men stormed through London. Of course, they are still just RTS units, making them both quite specialised and limited in their actions so rest assured that AoW is not attempting any half-arsed genre crossovers here.
All of the vehicles in the game are as detailed as the individual units, although not quite on par with those of Axis and Allies which gave wheeled vehicles a realistic turning circle – AoW has standard issue official looking black Jeeps turning on a dime on London pavements, something which stood out as rather a let down considering the lengths the game goes toward a high level of realism. Tanks, as always, can mow down trees and enemy troops, although you might want to keep those trees as cover for your units, who can use a fair amount of scenery to stop enemy bullets alongside the standard issue bunkers, armoured vehicles and occupied buildings. Helicopters and Ambulances provide medical support for your units, and can even evacuate the critically injured. On the topic of injured, you can either blow away your footsoldier-foes or capture them after besting them in battle, enemy prisoners are a valuable commodity so there is a high incentive to be strategic and engage ground troops with ground troops instead of mashing them with tanks. The other incentive is, of course, that most ground troops will make brief work of your slow and cumbersome tanks so you can not simply churn out thousands of them and mow down the enemy ala classic Command & Conquer.
Like most, if not all, RTS games AoW gives you a highly diverse variety of missions to play although the movie nature of the game means they are presented linearly. Linear gameplay is not too uncommon in RTS games anyway, Command & Conquers feeble attempts at offering choice added nothing to the game that made any impression on me. You will find yourself doing anything and everything from commanding a basic special forces unit to hunkering down and fortifying your position with a sizable base. Base building is pretty standard and sees you placing buildings for specialised construction units to erect, which is probably somewhat more realistic than building them in some magic domain and plonking them onto the scenery like lego bricks. The construction animations are fairly good but if you are into eye candy the game, again, falls short of Axis and Allies in this area – A&A had quite excellent animations with crates sliding into place, roof tiles flying into place and the building slowly growing out of it all. Of course, AoW is supposed to be realistic so buildings flying together and assembling themselves is probably not the best choice. Consequently AoW opts for the good old fashioned “building grows out of the ground” method, whilst construction units make some vague gestures in its general direction... nobody cares about these minor details anyway, right?
Again, like most RTS games AoW gives you a shallow learning curve, letting you play with a handful of units first and then slowly introducing you to other units and the whole concept of base building. Before long you will have played deep into the game and be commanding a whole plethora of different units in battle whilst building up a huge base and, quite literally, fighting a war.
“The video between – and sometimes during – missions stitches the game into one tight package and gives you characters to identify with that translate into the RTS game itself.”
As the name suggests, Act of War is about war. The first few levels and the quite excellent but somewhat boring movie-short, which plays during installation, illustrate the build-up towards the namesake of the game – the act of war. Eventually, all hell breaks lose, and you will truly feel like you are fighting a war rather than a disjointed set of battles. The video between, and sometimes during, missions stitches the game into one tight package and gives you characters to identify with that translate into the RTS game itself (Tanya, anyone?). The live-action film flows smoothly into somewhat poorly done CGI (we can forgive them for the CGI!) and then into gameplay. It seems that parts of the film which would otherwise have been expensive, required lots of special effects, and the rental of several military vehicles have been CGIerised which is a little distracting and a slight let-down... in short the CGI is not as good as it could have been but we all know that Eugen Systems are no Square, Pixar or ILM. The video itself is well cast and voice acted, for a game, and utterly fails to achieve any comedic level of cheesiness – which is a good thing, if you actually want to play the game rather than laugh at it.
Act of War: Direct Action is a fantastic and absorbing RTS, Eugen Systems have obviously taken the initiative and done something not different, but properly. The movie and gaming formats have never been blended so elegantly in an RTS. My only real complaint is that they never sent us the collectors' edition. I could have used another shirt.
Philip Howard
