The theme of World War 2 has reared its head once again, only this time not as an FPS, which is all too common these days, but as a real-time strategy game letting you battle it out on a massive scale with all the major players of the time. You will find yourself battling in the days when America was torn between Japan and Europe, and Russia was simultaneously trying to hold its own whilst and push out across the land. From sprawling German-Russian tank wars to beach landings on small Japanese islands Axis & Allies offers a diverse set of story-driven missions letting you experience some of the major and minor victories of World War 2.
Axis and Allies offers several gameplay modes including the typical multi-player and “skirmish” modes found in many Real Time Strategy games and the ability to play though a series of miscellaneous missions as different powers or play a series of related campaigns. As is typical with RTS games each “race” has different strengths, weaknesses and units that you must exploit and utilise to achieve victory. From typical ground forces like Soldiers, Half-Tracks and Tanks to bombing and reconnaissance air forces and ships equipped with long-range artillery and landing craft the units at your disposal are diverse and each with their individual uses, strengths and weaknesses which determine their roles in combat.
Axis and Allies adopts a new unit management style not unlike that in Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War, a style which I would more readily associate with turn based strategy games. Your units are commanded as a “division”, a small group that moves and attacks as a whole. This makes moving large numbers of units somewhat simpler, and healing these units as easy as it gets. When your “division” is damaged you simply command what units remain back into your bases “supply area” and they are quickly replenished. In a sense this allows the game to incorporate more facets of real military tactics as it is imperative to establish a strong supply chain and front line when on the attack. The supply chain can subsequently be attacked and destroyed, thus cutting off essential supplies to an attacking force and adding a strategic depth unseen in most other RTS games. For example, if a strong tank force is attacking your base by alternating several divisions between attacking and restocking you can prevent the units restocking and “healing” by simply attacking the supply depots and interrupting the supply line. This means that, with superior tactics, it is highly possible for a smaller defensive force to triumph against a larger attacking force simply by having the restocking edge.
Units can attack, retreat, defend, fall back and adopt one of three different formations which afford different speed and attack efficiency bonuses for both attack and defensive manoeuvres. You can choose the formation with a greater speed bonus to move your units quickly across terrain at the risk of being caught in battle with lower attack efficiency, or you can choose a speed penalty with an attack bonus to march your units into battle and strike the enemy hard. The emphasis of Axis and Allies is on superior strategy as well as outright superior forces. Attacking a strong enemy base without sufficient forward bases and decisive strategies will inevitably lead to bitter defeat, even with a seemingly superior force the enemy have the benefit of fighting from within their supply zone, and as soon as things start looking bad your units act like real soldiers and flee, leaving themselves wide open to counter-attack unless you have backup prepared to cover them. Suffice to say, simply charging a base with as many forces as you can muster (the key tactic in games like Command & Conquer) will often yield disappointing results as your troops are routed and flee across the battlefield with the enemy hot on their tail.
Following on with innovative and slightly out of the ordinary unit management Axis and Allies features a similarly innovative construction system. Whilst defensive structures are constructed the typical way – by sending engineers to a location with a build order – the main base structures are constructed by producing a vehicle which contains the structure packed in a trailer. You then simply order the vehicle to the location you wish to build and “unpack” it. The construction animations are extremely well done, in some animations roofing slats fly through the air and plant themselves onto the roof as the structure of the building springs from the ground and crates slide smoothly into place around the outside, in others it almost looks as though a tent is being erected by several people lifting poles inside it. The buildings can then be repacked and redistributed to other parts of the map, allowing you to completely move your supply chains instead of having to build new ones. Unlike many RTS games the vehicles in Axis and Allies sport a turning circle, instead of simply turning on a dime, this adds another touch of realism to the game and follows with the spectacular level of detail and beautiful graphics that make up the visual side of the game.
The terrain is highly detailed and features everything from desert and tundra to classic European countryside with ambient wildlife, buildings and plenty of foliage which, incidentally, can be destroyed by running it over with a few tanks. The unit detail is near-perfect, expect to see your troops dive to the ground and break out all manner of weapons to engage enemies, from grenades to rifles and machine guns the infantry divisions are quite varied, on top of these there are scouts, anti tank units, flame troops, paratroopers and more..
It has to be said that Axis and Allies is far superior to Command & Conquer: Generals. Sure, any true C&C fan will argue that it was a terrible game but it was popular. Axis and Allies has more strategic depth than I have ever seen in a real-time strategy game, perhaps I have not played enough of them but most seem to just involve creating as many powerful units as possible and moving down your enemy with brute force. The extra strategic depth makes Axis and Allies worth playing, and the terrifically detailed graphics, intuitive unit management system and interesting World War 2 based campaigns makes it highly playable. If you consider yourself a fan of RTS games, or maybe even a fan of our warring history then you will want to give this a look.
Philip Howard
