Score
Gameplay:	9
Graphics:	8
Sound:	9
FunFactor:	9
PlasmaFactor:	9
Overall:	8.8

Theatre of War Review
September 8, 2008 by Ryan Newcomb

Theatre of War is a Real-Time Strategy set in the Northern European front of World War II. Being a student of history and an avid RTS fan, I had some high expectations. Who wouldn’t want to command the blitzkrieg of Poland, defend the Motherland from the fascist aggressors, or orchestrate the Allied liberation of France and Europe? Battlefront did a great job of incorporating the necessary historical elements of the war into a game that truly requires strategic planning and a strong handle on World War II battle tactics.

Gameplay

Players may choose from among the following factions: Poland, France, United Soviet Socialist Republics, and of course National Socialist Germany. For some reason the United States and the United Kingdom are combined into one faction, simply called Allies, while Italy seems to have been forgotten altogether. The game is strictly land-based, so don’t expect to be hunting down German U-Boats or bombarding the shores of Normandy with Allied battleships. Instead, expect to marshal your forces in realistically rendered European towns and countryside.

Each faction has a progressive campaign which takes you through a part it played in the war. As Germany, expect to start off with the invasion of Poland, the incursion into Russia, and the long retreat back to Berlin. In addition, there are two extra campaigns that are centered solely on the Battle for Moscow and the Battle for Normandy.

Theatre of War exemplifies a realistic strategy game. It would take pages upon pages to describe exactly how much time and detail Battlefront put into the game, but in short: everything that Rommell or Patton could do is possible in Theatre of War. One thing particularly worth mentioning is the ability to target specific points on enemy vehicles. For example, you may command an infantryman to stop using his rifle, pickup an anti-tank explosive, and lob it at the tracks of a tank, the main cannon and even the chassis.

Another outstanding feature is the realistic line-of-sight and line-of-fire system that replaces the traditional method of using a fog of war. You won’t have to scout out the map in Theatre of War to discover the terrain. The entire battlefield is made visual to you, but the enemy positions may be hidden or out of your unit’s sight. You can only see what your forces see, which can make things pretty tricky in that nine times out of ten, you won’t see the enemy until they fire.

Everything is designed to be realistic, historically accurate, and nostalgic of a bygone era. I cannot emphasis enough the amount of time and detail that went into this game. Every vehicle is designed to real life specifications, both internally and externally. For example, depending on where a tank is hit, the game takes into account where the crew inside that tank would be realistically located. So, if an APCR (Armor Piercing Composite Rigid) or APDS (Armor Piercing Discarding Shot) or a HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank)…or any one of the various types of shells the game features…smashes into the right side of a tank, and that happens to be where the driver is located, your tank is immobile until you order the gunner to start driving…but then you don’t have a cannon. You could order the loader to start driving, but then your tank takes twice as long to fire its cannon because the gunner has to load as well.

Every mission allows you to customize the forces that you start with. The fewer casualties you take in each mission, the more experience your units gain for the next. Every single unit in the same has different ratings and experience, and you can completely customize the forces you deploy based on your preference. For example, you may choose to reassign a tank crew member who has a higher rating in the Loading category than the current unit assigned to load shells into the tank. In that you may only deploy a certain number of units at the beginning of each mission, the rest of your forces are treated as reinforcements.

Reinforcements will sporadically arrive throughout some of the missions. It would be nice to strategically call for them to arrive, but that isn’t the case in Theatre of War. For the most part, they show up seconds after your starting forces have been mostly annihilated. I was often faced with the choice of sacrificing my last two tanks from my starting units to trigger three or four tanks and a few squads of infantry to arrive.

Like many strategy games, Theatre of War features special cards that may (or may not) help turn the tide of a battle. Artillery, mortar, and aircraft cards are provided for some missions, though players will need to keep in mind that such weapons weren’t “digital” in the 1940s. Players have no choice as to whether or not they will have access to these cards, can only use them a handful of times in each mission, and they can’t be used on specific targets. As could be expected, the artillery and mortar attacks are relatively pointless, though they do occasionally manage to take out something. Aircraft cards are relatively useless: the pilots will fly around the map and choose their own targets.

At times the mission objectives completed when nothing had been accomplished, and at other times I felt that I had completed a mission only to spend about forty minutes additional tracking down one or two infantry units hiding somewhere on the map. The game also has relatively a poor path finding system, which can be frustrating when the units are already moving at turtle speed to begin with.

Graphics

The graphics were great, but if you just meet the minimum requirements to play, don’t expect to be impressed. That being said, Battlefront paid almost as much attention to graphical detail as they did to gameplay and historical accuracy. The game looks spectacular in almost every conceivable way. However viewing these great graphics requires the camera to be almost fully zoomed in, which never happens in a strategy game. Instead of enjoying those lovely 3D models of tanks, you will be stuck staring at little 2D green models or icons that float above the units.

Sound

For your listening pleasure, Theatre of War has a classical score that emphasizes the epic importance of World War II. In addition to the soundtrack, expect to hear realistic effects based off of real weapons, vehicles, and explosions. There isn’t much voice acting, which is always a positive, and Theatre of War is good enough to remind me that I still don’t speak German.

Plasma Factor

Sometimes you need to walk in the soldier’s boots to get an idea for what is going on, and Theatre of War provides one of the most useful cameras I have ever used. In addition to being able to rotate, move, and zoom the camera to any point on the map, you can actually pick a specific unit, and with the stroke of a key, view the map in first person from that unit’s perspective. This is especially useful when determining when positioning your artillery guns and tanks to have clear lines of sight.

Conclusion

Despite some of the faults, Theatre of War is a strategic masterpiece that boasts many features that I hope to see in more games. If you are into tank rushing, base building, resource gathering, or other typical features of most RTS games, Theatre of War probably isn’t for you. For realistic strategy fans, Theatre of War is a must have.