Rome Total War: Alexander will probably be one of the shortest reviews I’ve written on this fine repository for inane gaming takes. Solely because there really isn’t much here to discuss. If you’ve played Rome Total War, then this is basically the same game but considerably slimmed down. The first and most obvious reason for this is because we don’t have Rome, or indeed most of Europe in this version. Instead we have the Macedonians who mainly use Greek units. The Persians who use Eastern units and then a handful of weak barbarian civilizations. They use Barbarian units (as expected), but mostly only last for a few turns until they get destroyed. That’s about it, as far as the faction roster goes. You can play as the Indians, but they’re not in the campaign so… they’re only available for the multiplayer mode. As for the units themselves, while the faction roster is limited this expansion does feature around 25 new units. Mostly for the Macedonians. While some of them are fairly commonly used, a lot of them are still quite similar to existing units. Which meant that in my experience I was mainly Phalanx-maxing. To be fair to the game, the new units are nice. Even if most of them are very similar to existing units, you can already use as Greece. There are a few new cavalry units for example, but they function just like cavalry normally does. As for the rest of the rest of the new content, well… There is a new campaign, six new historical missions and that’s it. If you wanted to play as anyone other than the Greeks, then that’s not an option. At least outside of skirmishes and the multiplayer mode.

Which begs the obvious question “how’s the campaign then?”. Well it’s honestly pretty good if a little short. This is partly due the 100 turn limit, although I found I only needed two-thirds of that time to finish it. Basically you need to conquer a set list of provinces, while being at war with literally everyone else. The enemies are all allied with each other, but it will generally descend into you grinding down the Persians until they collapse. This is due to the rest of the factions being weaker barbarians. Who only have a province or two while the Persians control most of the map. As for the rest of the game, the battle AI is a bit better than in the base game so that’s nice. Although I do think it would’ve been interesting to get to play as… well anyone else. As it stands you’ll play through the campaign once, and that’s kind of it as far as the expansion goes. I mean sure there are those 6 historical battles. Plus the skirmish/multiplayer modes, but for me Rome Total War: Alexander feels a bit short. It took me around 10 hours to finish the Greek campaign, and then only a few more to get through the historical battles so it’s a short but sweet experience. The campaign itself doesn’t really have any particular twists, instead playing as a standard game albeit in a new map.

And honestly that’s about it! I’m really struggling to think of anything else that’s really worth mentioning. As I’ve said, there are some extra historical battles which is always nice and there is a new campaign that’s admittedly fairly short. There are some new units but they don’t feel that new. The sieges are the same. The AI has been improved slightly. Uhhh the game is still great like the base game and uhhh…. that’s about it. I guess I could gripe about the game being unstable on Windows 11. Or how the Steam Screenshot function barely works any more, but honestly who cares. This is a game that’s close to twenty years old at the time of writing, and it holds up well.

In conclusion then, Rome Total War: Alexander is an enjoyable if short piece of extra content. If you loved playing as the Greeks, you’ll love this expansion. Ultimately I’d recommend it to anyone who has played the base game. Although it won’t convince anyone who doesn’t already like Rome: Total War.

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Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is not an RTS for the faint of heart. Not because it’s overly complicated or difficult to play, but more due to the fact that this is an extensive package. You see, not only are you getting all of the content from the original game and it’s expansion pack, but you’re also getting additional content. As a result, getting through all the campaign scenarios took me around 50 hours. Which is quite a task, especially for more casual RTS players. On the other hand, those willing to embrace this game and deal with it’s drawbacks (such as a piddingly small max population) will have a good time. You’ve got a decent range of skirmish maps, plenty of campaign scenarios and of course a solid pool of civilizations to play as. Unlike it’s sequel, I’d argue that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition does a better job of making each civilization feel unique to play. This is because once you start hitting the higher tiers of units, buildings and upgrades you’ll notice there are a lot of distinguishing factors between these civilizations. If you want to play as the Romans for example, enjoy having weak archers, no fire ships, lame towers and so-so cavalry. Want to play as the Carthaginians? Well your standard sword units are hopeless and so are your siege units. You don’t get to have everything as any civilization, and I think this is a good thing.

Why do I think this? Well not only does it make each faction feel different and thus encourage strategy, but it also helps with the campaign scenarios. For me this is the meat of the game, and while a lot of missions can be a bit of a grind they are generally pretty fun and varied. As mentioned above, one nice aspect of Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is the fact that you get access to the missions from the demos. These were hitherto semi-lost, as you’d need to seek out and get those demos running on more modern machines. Not only that, but these missions were also a bit of a mess sometimes and now they have been brought up to snuff. Ultimately there are over 60 campaign missions to play through, and they offer a decent level of challenge and do a good job of teaching you how to play the game properly. That’s not to say they’re all great, but the overall experience is pretty fun and has a nice difficulty curve to it.

As you’ll have noticed from the pictures, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is a pretty great visual upgrade over the base game. It’s not only the visuals that have been upgraded though, as there are myriad tweaks and changes under the hood to make everything more intuitive. You’ve got more hotkeys, the ability to automatically reseed farms, notifications when you can move to the next Age (essentially moving up to the next tier of the tech-tree), improvements to pathfinding, balancing tweaks, the ability to see technology trees while playing and a lot more. As a consequence, the Definitive Edition not only looks better – but more importantly it plays better too. Of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one or two things that frustrated me to no end during my time with what I otherwise consider to be a stellar game.

The first issue I have, and one that everyone will encounter, is that the enemy AI is an odd beast. Hopeless at macro-level decisions such as what to build or where to attack, but utterly insufferable at the micro-level. Enemy archers and siege units do a fantastic job of dodging shots and otherwise making a pain of themselves, with endless little hit-and-run actions. If you try to snipe an AI villager or fishing ship, they will drag it out and do their best to avoid every shot or hit. In a game where villagers can quickly become some of the fastest units, this does make things a bit tedious when you are trying to focus on something. As the AI is a literal machine, they can send a dumb little diversionary attack, while using a priest to convert a unit, while queuing up more units, sending villagers to repair damaged buildings and more all at the same time. You on the other hand are a feeble assortment of flesh and bone, and will find the AI an irritating opponent at times. Fortunately it’s never too much of a struggle to outlast the AI, but my goodness can the near endless “you are under attack” notification sound become a source of frustration. The second big issue, which I think all players will also encounter is that improved path-finding is still deeply flawed. It’s no doubt better, but it’s still annoying to see your units clump up and get in each others way near constantly.

On the subject of annoyances, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition has a few that to it’s credit are authentic. You can’t build gates in walls, for example. Similarly fishing boats will gobble up all the fish at one point and then need to be explicitly told to go slightly further afield (or asea?) to get more. Generally speaking this a pretty faithful reproduction of the base game, with it’s strengths and some of it’s flaws being carried over. Want to build a big army in your campaign battle? Too bad, here’s 50 population which gets you 50 units split between economy, naval and ground forces (further split between infantry, archers, cavalry and siege units). I’m not mad about these decisions because after all, it’s a remaster and they were part of the base game. I just mention them because I imagine most people reading this (if anyone ever does) will be more familiar with Age of Empires 2/3/4. Which all let you build gates, have smarter villagers and have bigger armies.

And at this point I’ve kind of run out of things to say. I suppose I should quickly mention that the soundtrack is great and that the game is very fairly priced. Not only that, but it frequently goes on sale for around £3.74 or $4.99 yankee bucks and for that price it’s an easy recommendation from me. Not only does this game generally play great, but it has tons of content and a nice presentation. For existing fans of the series, this is either a faithful reproduction or the best introduction to where this series started. For RTS noobs, this is an easy to pickup and play game, although it doesn’t quite have the same appeal as some of it’s successors. Ultimately I would recommend this game to anyone, although I would recommend Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition first. If you enjoyed that game, then give this one a shot too. You might just be surprised how well it holds up. Just don’t let the AI’s micro GOD skills get you down.

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Quick note: This game runs like ass on Windows 11, not only will you need to manually tweak the launch options to enable wide-screen resolutions, but it also crashes a lot if you Alt-tab. Multi-monitor setups are going to have a rough time of it, so I’d suggest saving often and disabling any extra screens if you want to play online.

Command & Conquer: Generals is the off-shoot of the venerable C&C series after Westwood was left for dead by EA and consequentially a scattered band of survivors were merged with another studio to make a new entry in the series. As such the gameplay is both familiar and yet new, with the same base-building mechanics but a larger focus on abilities. Of course Red Alert 2 had unit abilities, at least for some units but generally these weren’t a big deal. In Generals by contrast, almost every unit gets a couple of abilities or bespoke upgrades that can have a big impact on how they’re used. Whether it be GLA rebels gaining the ability to turn invisible by standing still, or US rangers having the ability to clear out occupied buildings with ease via the flash-bang ability. Then there are the purchasable drones for US armoured units, the ability for GLA units to acquire supplies from defeated enemies (or upgrades for certain units) and a whole bunch of other stuff. Alongside these unit abilities are a bunch of new call-in abilities, unlocked via the introduction of quasi-skill trees. The way it works is simple, each faction has a range of specific unlocks such as gaining access to certain units or commander powers. These can include calling in an artillery strike, spawning friendly units, defensive AoE healing powers or having new units of a certain type spawn in at veterancy rank 1. You won’t be unlock all of them, and they don’t carry over between games. The system is fairly intuitive, you get XP for defeating enemy units and after enough carnage has been caused you’ll level up. Once you’ve levelled, up you can choose from a variety of powers that are structured in a tier-list. This encourages you to purchase these unlocks as soon as they’re available, but you can just save them up for the “stronger” abilities. From my own personal experience, trying to get all of the free damage call-ins like bombing runs and so on is generally the best way to do it. Because you get infinitely respawning free damage, and while there is a cool-down it generally pays off. Especially for the later abilities like the fuel bomb and the EMP blast, which can either wreck an enemy base or army respectively. Outside of these changes, the game is pretty much classic C&C. You’ve got a handful of unit types, they all basically hard counter various other unit types and the tone is pretty silly. Arguably the tone in C&C Generals is a bit more po-faced, but honestly everyone is at best a stereotype in this game. One last thing to mention, is that resources are clustered in specific spots, and don’t respawn over time.

As mentioned, while there are tweaks and changes Command & Conquer: Generals is still fundamentally a classic C&C style RTS at it’s core. Sure the call-ins are a tad overpowered and resources run out scarily quickly, but everything else is par for the course. You’ve got 3 asymmetrical factions, some basic base building that never gets too intensive, a campaign for each faction that’s both fun and yet slightly short alongside a ton of skirmish maps. I guess you could argue that having base building units that can build anywhere, instead of MCVs that can deploy anywhere is a big change. Personally I don’t consider it particularly different, as all it does is make it easier to setup resource gathering stations around the map. As for the combat, while there are a lot more unit abilities going around each unit type is pretty familiar. You’ve got standard infantry that can get run over, anti-tank infantry that shred tanks, tanks which are a bit hopeless against infantry, air units that are great against everything that can’t shoot back and then some artillery units. There are a couple of unique cases like the fully upgraded Chinese overlord tank (OP against basically everything) and the GLA terrorists and bomb trucks which can disguise themselves but really there isn’t anything radically new here. Instead the charm of Command and Conquer: Generals is that everything is just done pretty well. The three factions: The United States of America, China and the Global Liberation Army (GLA) are all fun to play and do feel quite different. The USA has strong tanks and the best air-force but can be a resource-sink and requires decent micro, while a lot of Chinese units get bonuses by being mobbed together and thrown into the fray. Then you’ve got the GLA who are fairly unique and get a bunch of mechanics like stealth infantry and bombs, tunnel networks, claiming supplies from fallen foes and the like but who don’t get any air units and have relatively weak tanks.

Fortunately each faction is fairly simple to understand and use effectively, with the campaigns basically serving as a series of tutorials. There are one or two missions in each which give you the full arsenal and the chance to use it, but most missions are focused on a handful of available units and you’re just trying to make the best use of them. Each of these campaigns follows the same broad structure and while you do occasionally get to see missions from different perspectives, they’re too short to have much of an impact. For context clearing through all 3 campaigns took me around 7 hours, factoring in half a dozen crashes to the desktop (in a game with no autosaving). The campaigns are fun, but more experienced players are encouraged to try them on Hard or even Brutal as otherwise they are very short and not particularly challenging. Then once those campaigns have been cleared up, there isn’t much left to do but play through the skirmish mode. The map variety is decent and there are just over 20 maps to play, but as mentioned earlier the amount of resources on each map depletes surprisingly quickly and the AI can often be relied upon to squander the funding available to it. Each faction can construct building which let it gain more income over time, or in the case of the Chinese a unit that can gain income over time. Trust me when I say that you’ll either want to do this, or rush the enemy ASAP. You don’t have much time at the apex of the tech tree before resources become a distant memory.

Speaking of the AI, it’s not great in many situations and will reliably trickle through forces in multiple attack waves instead of trying to aim for a killing blow. It’s not the end of the world, but this is a game where the real challenge is in the multiplayer mode. Fortunately there has been an active modding community which has produced swathes of maps and conversions, although at that point you may as well just grab the expansion pack. The good news is that all stores still selling a digital copy of the game now bundle in Zero Hour, although you do also get basically every other C&C game included as well (even C&C4). As for other criticisms of the game, I do have a few. Again the campaigns are really short which is a shame as they only really let you get a feel for each faction towards of the tail-end of their missions. Furthermore I’ll also re-iterate that this game loves to crash to modern operating systems, a problem that the unofficial community version didn’t have. Thanks EA! In terms of problems I haven’t mentioned yet, there are a couple of smaller ones. Unit pathfinding straight up sucks and controlling large blobs of units can be a pain, which is a problem because playing as China explicitly encourages this. The early 3D graphics can be off-putting to some, but I’ve personally never had a big issue with them because that was the style at the time. Finally there are some weird aspects of the UI, that were fixed up in Zero Hour and later games in the series but weren’t quite resolved in the base game. Super weapons need to be activated from their building and don’t appear on the side bar and neither do other building call-ins. Of course the AI doesn’t have an issue with this, but for human players it can be a bit counter-intuitive to actually use the full breadth of abilities that are available to them.

Yet in spite of these niggles, I have no problem recommending Command & Conquer: Generals to pretty much anyone. It has a great soundtrack, good voice-acting, multiple factions that feel different, fun campaigns (even if they’re short), solid combat and plenty of skirmish maps. The expansion pack definitely brings everything to the next level, but the base game is still enjoyable. Even if the new hero units do feel a bit useless compared to the sheer base destroying insanity of Tanya (for example). As such I’ll end my short review by saying Command & Conquer: Generals is a fun game and if you haven’t played it, then you should consider grabbing it on Steam or Origin.

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Quick Note: Yes this is a remaster of a remaster, Microsoft really did pull that stunt. For what it’s worth, you can’t buy Age of Empires 2: HD any more and all of the DLC for that version of the game has been included in Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition for free.

Oh Microsoft you cheeky swine, I’ve already bought 4 copies of Age of Empires 2 and yet here you are asking for me to buy it again. Were my purchases of the base game, the gold edition (with the expansions), the DS version and the initial HD remaster not enough for you? Evidently not, because here we are again and in spite of my better judgement I’ve gone and bought my 5th copy of this infernal game. Why did I do it? Well honestly because I waited years and then made a £4 impulse buy during the twitch event for the latest “hidden cup”. Which was fun to watch (except for the final) and so I felt like buying another version of the game for cheap wouldn’t be a terrible idea. I mean it has some new co-op maps, three new campaigns and uhhhh…. shiny graphics! Plus some Quality of Life (QoL) changes and some new civilizations. Oh and just under 300 CHEEVOS to gather, if you are so inclined. As it’s hard to review a remaster as opposed to the initial game, I’m just going to go through those points mentioned above one-by-one. If you haven’t played Age of Empires 2 for some reason, then just go grab when it’s on sale. Otherwise, read on!

To make things easy, let’s start off with the new campaigns which have been introduced for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. There are a grand total of three of them, with each campaign having 5 or 6 missions each. These missions are relatively varied and quite fun, although depending on your play-style they really can take a decent amount of time. Generally each campaign has sections where you have no villagers, and as such must make the most out of your modestly sized force. Alongside more traditional missions that let you play as per normal, albeit often with some restrictions. The most notable one is that in all of the campaigns, you aren’t allowed to just jump straight to the Imperial Age from mission one. Instead new tech and a larger population cap are gradually introduced over the length of each campaign. This is fine in principle, although in practice it means that you’ll often wrap up a campaign, start a new one and… oh we’re back to the Feudal Age with no villagers and a maximum population of 75. To be fair to these missions, you generally start with some units/structures already setup and often even some techs will have been researched (never had to research Loom for example). Regardless of the somewhat arbitrary limitations, the campaigns are all decently enjoyable and manage to feel varied enough that you’ll want to get through them all. Plus Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition has also reworked a bunch of the earlier campaigns from previous releases, including some balancing tweaks and an increased population cap for most of those campaign missions. Although it must be said, that the inclusion of the base game campaigns, expansion pack campaigns and then the DLC campaigns from AoE2:HD really does make the campaign menu a bit overwhelming at first.

Fortunately even if the campaign selection screen can be a bit overwhelming, the actual game isn’t. As mentioned before we now have SHINY NEW GRAPHICS (wow!!!), but honestly they are pretty shiny. Not only do we have new 4K resolution options, but there’s been a bunch of work done to make everything look more visually impressive even at 1080p. New building destruction animations, better zoom control functionality, new objects and effects for some buildings/units and the like are all included. As for the UI, it’s also been improved with the ability to see all faction traits alongside a real-time tracker which shows global production/research and also how many villagers are on each resource. There are also some relatively small gameplay tweaks like automatically re-seeding farms, the ability to rotate gates manually alongside a substantial improvement to the AI. Finally the soundtrack has been remastered, and some of the campaigns from Age of Empires 2: HD now have voice acting. Sure you don’t need much voice-acting, but it’s a nice little bonus and brings everything up to the same standard. Finally there are some more granular options in the menus, that let experienced players further control how the game operates. It’s basically a pretty extensive under-the-hood upgrade to the game, and it all adds up to make Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition the best way to play the game.

As for the multiplayer mode, aside from a new server hosting infrastructure and cross-play between Steam/Microsoft Store versions of the game, there’s some new content here too. First of all, there are now a batch of co-op scenario maps based on historic battles – just like those in Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition. While these don’t add a huge amount of content, it’s a nice addition and hopefully more are added in the future. There are also 4 new civilizations in the base game (Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Cumans and the Tartars) which can be played in Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. These new civilizations are a nice bonus and all have decent cavalry units, as would be expected for their history. The multiplayer mode also received a new game mode in the form of Empire Wars. This mode is quite similar to a normal game, but players now start in the Feudal Age and have a selection of pre-built units and buildings including around 27 villagers. It’s therefore a nice way to skip the initial Dark Ages slog and go straight to combat, although obviously this can be a headache for newer players or civilizations who benefit from a stronger economy in the very early game.

And that’s about “all” that’s been changed for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. I guess it goes without saying that as it’s the new version of Age of Empires 2, there are also a bunch of new DLC updates that have added a bunch of extra civilizations/campaigns. But I don’t own them, so I can only judge the remaster on it’s own merits. Which honestly is enough for me to give it a recommendation. The gameplay changes to the campaigns are modest but appreciated. The new soundtrack is genuinely great and makes the game feel much more enjoyable to play. The new graphics likewise look great, and the myriad small tweaks do a solid job of making the game feel more modern. The new campaigns are fun, and generally this is just a great little remaster. If you have an older version of the game, there’s plenty of new content here to enjoy. If you’ve never played it, then be sure to give it a go!

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Halo Wars 2 is quite a follow up act, as it has to compete with a game by the veritable but alas now defunct Ensemble Studios who made the first game. Fortunately Creative Assembly (CA) was up to the challenge, as they’ve managed to expand upon Halo Wars 1 while maintaining a high level of polish and some fun campaign mission design. For those who didn’t play the first game, Halo Wars was an attempt to bring RTS to consoles (specially the Xbox 360) which did away with most of the faff by streamlining base building, resources and unit types. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of units, but every one is either an infantry unit, a vehicle, an air unit or a hero. There are very units in the game that are good against all of these unit types. As such most of the strategy is about building a balanced force and ordering units to fire against the enemy units they’re good against. So far, so standard. The twists that Halo Wars introduced were unit abilities, and commander abilities. The former are activated by hitting Y on the controller and range from grenades, to jet pack jumps through to cloaks and smoke screens. The latter are more substantial, basically functioning like the commander abilities in the later Command & Conquer games. By which I mean, you can spend money to call in a very powerful ability that can turn the tide of an engagement. These include calling in massive Area of Effect strikes that deal a lot of damage, healing all units in a radius for some time and deploying extra units or a temporary turret. The trick that CA have been able to pull off, admittedly by copying the work that Ensemble did, is to make all of these actions control well despite being performed on a controller.

To put this in more detail, just think for a second about how you hold your controller. You’ve got two thumb-sticks, two triggers, some face buttons and some bonus buttons above each trigger alongside a D-Pad. The A button selects units, you can double tap to select all units of the same type, hold it to select all units in a modest radius and hit the right button above the analogue to select all units on the screen. You move and attack with X, use abilities with Y, call in abilities by holding the left trigger and selecting an ability with the analogue stick and that’s about it. So if you want to attack the enemy you select all your units, advance them forwards the enemy, then begin selecting specific unit types and having them perform abilities and focus on certain targets. As a bonus all units can shoot while moving, but most struggle to hit enemies behind them. As for the humble D-Pad, it lets you instantly switch between a few camera targets – namely between your bases, your unit groups and any units under attack. If that’s not good enough then you can hold down the button above the left trigger to swoosh around the camera at speed. I don’t normally time discussing the control scheme of a game, but I think it’s worth doing with Halo Wars 2 because it really does feel quite seamless and it works well even in frantic moments. This is the main issue with RTS games on console, namely that they control badly. With this rubicon crossed, Halo Wars 2 then successfully manages to keep things fairly simple with regards to it’s economy and base building. Essentially there are some spots where you can build a full base, which grants you multiple connected building slots tied to that base. So you can’t build anywhere, and instead are funnelled towards fighting over these potential base locations. The game also does a good job in handling the relative scarcity of these building slots, because each building can only produce one thing at a time. So you can’t just spam units, because you don’t have enough buildings to do so – instead you basically are pushed towards having a balanced collection of forces. This is then compounded by the relativity tight unit cap (units cost between 2 to 9 population and you have an initial max of 80 which can be expanded up to 140). Why this matters is simple, basically you always need to juggle units and never feel like you can’t manage this task – leading to a game that lets you focus on the strategy. If you only have the ability to produce 8 buildings, and you need at least 1 of each resource structure (for the two resource types) then you have to weigh up the pros and cons of your base. You will probably want an infantry building, a vehicle building and an air production building. Maybe you don’t want one of these, but what it does is make base building intuitive and a series of snap judgements – thereby removing the urge to turtle and reducing the complexity for new comers. Of course you can just spam barracks and infantry rush your way to victory, but this is a risky strategy that won’t serve noobs well.

Speaking of turtling, you can only get 4 turrets per base and each turret has to be optimised. By default they’re good-ish against infantry and OK against air units. Each turret can then be upgraded to be optimised against air units, infantry units, vehicles or be turned into an artillery platform. That’s it. Oh and if the HQ is destroyed, then all of it’s connecting structures are instantly destroyed. So defending your base is a risky plan at the best of times, thereby further encouraging an offensive play style. Now some might be put off by this, but honestly it serves the game well to focus so heavily on offensive engagements because it thrusts the player away from the typical noob trap which is to overly focus on defensive play. It also gives the game more of a fast paced feel, which makes for an enjoyable campaign experience. Speaking of which, the campaign has a good tempo (outside of a slow first mission) that does a solid job of expanding on each unit in the UNSC arsenal. Initially it does feel a bit like a glorified tutorial, but it quickly casts this off with skill and introduces a series of enjoyable and largely different missions. There are a couple of defence focused missions, some based around skilful control of a small number of units, some that restrict the units you can build but not the quantity and others that just let you play a big battle against the enemy. Ultimately these missions are pretty well balanced and there are fleetingly rare instances where it feels unfair, while still offering some challenge. Especially for those who are willing and able to complete the optional side objectives, some of which can be quite challenging indeed. These campaign missions also feature some further optional bonuses in the former of “campaign logs” which are your typical lore nuggets masquerading as side content, alongside the return of skulls from the mainline Halo games. These skulls can be activated on playthroughs of campaign missions (after they’ve beaten normally for the first time) and activate some bonuses, drawbacks or double-edged swords for the player. Some examples include +50% HP for player units, basic infantry explode on death to damage nearby enemy units and all player units take gradual damage over time. To unlock these skulls, you need to complete some of the side objectives in each mission.

And even if you don’t care about the unlocks, you’ll have to concede that Halo Wars 2 is a high quality game. Not only does the gameplay function well, with simple concepts and great controls allowing a range of depth almost equivalent to a great PC RTS game but everything surrounding the game is handled well. First and foremost the graphics are great, I played on my humble Xbone and even paired with a cheap older TV in my office everything looked good. There’s a nice range of colours, explosions pop, everything is readily readable at a glance and in game everything is handled well. Then there are multiple cinematic cutscenes, which also look great and manage to convey the plot well. Unlike some other games (cough Destiny cough) the plot is pretty straight forward and you don’t need to be an expert on the lore to keep track of what’s going on, sure the writing doesn’t have the campy charm of say Red Alert 2 but everything is good enough. The soundtrack is decent, nothing amazing but dynamically adjusts with the amount of action on screen and fits the soundscape of the Halo series. Finally the two factions themselves are similar but different enough that they’re both fun to play, without one necessarily being more overpowered than the other. It’s therefore a game where I can’t think of any significant flaws, sure some of the finisher moves that occur in combat with hero units can feel a touch cheesy but that’s not a real issue. The commander call-ins can be annoying when they’re used on you, but again you also get to call them in on the other player so it’s not a huge deal – especially as they’re quite expensive (especially in the early game) and have relatively long cooldowns. Halo Wars 2 is just one of those games that had a clear vision and delivers it without any issue, enabling casual players to have a bit of fun while loading enough content into the game for players who want a more meaty challenge.

Speaking of content, aside from the campaign which has a modest 12 missions that can be played in co-op (expandable with two DLC purchases that give you more) you’ve also got two other game modes. The first and most obvious is the skirmish mode, which can be played against bots or people or a mix of both. This mode has 3 rule-sets available within it. There’s the standard “destroy the enemy’s base” (deathmatch) mode, a control points mode (domination) where you and your opponent are both competing to hold 3 control points on the map and finally a “strongholds” mode. This one is basically a twist on deathmatch, as both players are competing to control as many bases as possible and have unlimited resources. Each skirmish match can be played with up to 6 players in total, split between a maximum of two teams. Alongside the skirmish and campaign modes is a “Blitz” mode, which is essentially a tweaked version of the domination mode above. There are a couple of gimmicks, with the central one being that each player has a deck of virtual cards that allow them to call in units and commander abilities. This is necessary as there are no bases, nor any way to purchase units or buildings normally. Instead you have a total of 4 cards in your “hand” at a time and can use one of these to deploy the corresponding unit or ability to anywhere that you have vision. Additionally this mode only has one resource called energy, which pays for all cards. You have a modest income stream throughout each match, but the main way to gather more resources is to attack “energy cores” which drop in randomly across the map. To make things more complicated, cards can have attributes – for example a unit might explode on death to deal damage or steal life from enemies while attacking them. This is then compounded by the fact that some cards are specific to certain commanders, so you can’t use the “Mac blast” (basically a big ass cannon blast) with any UNSC commander other than Isabel. Not only does this help make things slightly less convoluted for newcomers (as it means you can roughly expect what sort of BS will be deployed by each commander) but it serves to help the game’s monetisation. Which is obviously the main concern of the players. Basically you want good cards, because they’re more powerful and if you get duplicates of a card, then that card levels up and becomes more powerful. Now you do get a decent amount of cards just by playing the game, in my case I got around 24 card packs by beating all of the campaign missions, getting a few level ups (from the campaign mission XP) and playing the game across a few days (one pack per day). With that being said, I can imagine someone who really wanted to win might be tempted to buy a batch of say… 23 card packs for just under 15 pounds (apparently the most bundle at the time I checked). Again for context, both of the DLC packs combined cost as much as this “most popular” card bundle.

In spite of this somewhat questionable microneutralisation strategy, I do have to admit that the Blitz mode is cool and manages to be fast paced and even more streamlined than the base game. The control points are captured instantly, you can summon units from your hand anywhere (although they have -50% HP and damage for 8 seconds if deployed outside your base) and it’s just a quicker way to play the game. Which is a good thing, because a match that can last 12 minutes max is more appealing than say a MOBA match that can last anywhere from 30 to 180 minutes depending on how bogged down everything gets. One last mode I haven’t mentioned is the Firefight mode, because you need to own the DLCs, and I don’t. This makes it exceedingly hard to review, as I’m sure you can imagine.

In conclusion then, Halo Wars 2 is a pretty fun console RTS game with high production value and one case of questionable micro-transactions. The campaign is fun and does a good job of introducing the UNSC arsenal while having decent mission variety, even if it’s fairly short. As for the other modes, skirmish is solid even there aren’t that many rulesets on offer, while the Blitz mode is an even more streamlined version of the game. It’s just an all-round well made game and one that I can easily recommend to RTS fans and even those who are bad at RTS games but are looking for a good entry point.

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Call to Arms is one of those games I was pretty excited about, until I made the fateful decision to actually play the damn thing. Which isn’t to say it’s a bad game, because it’s not, but it languished in my Steam library for years before I decided to finally give it another go and try to figure out what made me drop it in the first place. Honestly I’m not sure what caused me to get butthurt the last time, although I think I played it during early access and as such there were only 5 campaign missions which may have been entirely different from the ones in the base game. After playing through the campaign I can say that it’s alright, the mission structure will be incredibly familiar to anyone who’s played a Men of War game (any of them, even Faces of War the unofficial member!) because they all fit into a handful of standard roles. You’ve got two stealth missions, where you have barely any guys and have to crawl around the map dodging patrols until you can start shredding fools. Then you’ve got the defence missions where you hold a position against waves of baddies, and a couple of standard attack the enemy piece-by-piece missions where they keep adding new objectives while you have not quite enough men or material left. Finally there’s a proper assault mission which is saved for last, in which you not only attack various objectives but also get to call in reinforcements. The main twist in this campaign is a mission where you can only use Direct Control over a tank, and you drive around with some buddies shredding the defenders of an airfield before shooting down some jets and taking piece in a steadfast defence against waves of enemy armour. Most of these missions are pretty fun, although some of them (such as the 3rd mission) are much, much, much easier if you utilise direct control to a level I’ve never seen before.

Those not familiar with the Men of War series will no doubt be asking WTF is Direct Control? Well it’s when you assume direct control of a unit in the game, with the option of controlling them in 1st or 3rd person. You can control any unit at any time and the only catch is that while you’re laughing it up as a tank, you can’t be directing the rest of your forces. This feature has also been in previous games in the series, but the first person view and controls are entirely new to my knowledge. It’s a fun little gimmick and directly controlling an Abrams tank is pretty fun, I’m not going to lie while the soldier controls do let relieve your Rambo 3 fantasies on those nasty Global Revolutionary Movement baddies. One other caveat with this feature is that you have to bind both all of your 1st person controls, and all of your RTS controls on the same keyboard and mouse which means that the direct control erm controls are frankly a bit weird. Crouch is ALT, grenade is Mouse button 4 and so on. To make things even trickier, you still have to worry about your limited inventory because in Call to Arms like in Men of War every unit has their own inventory and consequentially their own amount of ammo. Unfortunately the other thing making direct control slightly tricky is the fact that it seems kind of… bugged? I don’t know why, but quite often when using an automatic weapon it would just keep shooting continuously for a while of it’s own volition. Then sometimes it wouldn’t fire for ages, again for some reason that I can’t quite figure out. Ultimately it’s a cool feature, that gets a lot of emphasis in the campaign but does lack a bit of polish. It’s also kinda over powered, because you can absolutely start shredding the enemy while in first person to the point that you’ll often find yourself racking up huge body counts with each soldier.

In terms of other changes to the game, Call to Arms sadly falls short. You do get two new factions in a contemporary setting, but the “bad guys” the Global Revolutionary Movement are pretty boring and so-so as they’re just a generic middle eastern “rebel” movement. You’re not getting something like the Global Liberation Army from C&C Generals which was oozing flavour and fun, but instead you’re getting the generic baddies from a war on terror game. So they’ve got some soviet-era tanks, a bunch of generic middle eastern dudes and nothing in the way of excitement. Then you’ve got the US Army, who are fine but have a pretty limited roster as they only really get the Abrams, Bradley, Striker and Humvee vehicles alongside a couple of types of infantry grunts. Compared to Men of War Assault Squad which let you play as (WW2) Germany, Russia, America, the British Commonwealth and Imperial Japan each of which had as many, if not more units each it’s a bit disappointing. You’d be forgiven for thinking “oh well this is the new baseline just like Men of War only had Russia and Germany”, but you can jog on because they’ve used Call to Arms as a gateway to introduce a new WW2 subgame (Gates to Hell) which has reintroduced all the WW2 factions (except Japan I think). So it’s kind of a small game, considering that you get only one campaign unless you upgrade to the Deluxe edition for an extra 750 Great British pennies or roughly $10 with only 10 campaign missions in the base game. Then it’s just skirmish and multiplayer maps against other players, so there isn’t too much to run with here.

As for the rest of the game, it’s really just a shinier version of Men of War as mentioned already. This means that you get an OK/10 soundtrack that you won’t listen to outside of the game but is fine enough and fits the mood. That means that the voice acting is bad, although it’s slightly better and no longer has laughably direct translations from Russian (so no more Americans shouting “FOR THE MOTHERLAND” and “HOORAY” when they get into combat). That means that you’ve got the armour penetration system with different shots and angles having a huge impact, which is still great although I must confess that it feels like battle tanks are well… tankier than they used to be. Finally it means that individual squads are alright at looking after themselves and will use grenades and medkits without too much prompting, although there is one big change that kind of got on my tits. You see in the other Men of War games, infantry had Anti-Tank grenades which meant that they could deal with unexpected enemy armour reinforcements without much trouble. Of course they’d quickly run out, but hey a decent amount of enemies had them too so you could just scavenge for them when there was a quiet moment. In Call to Arms these have been removed entirely, which doesn’t impact the enemy much because they get lots of Anti Tank rifles such as RPG’s mixed in with their squads. You don’t though, and the few AT missiles you do get tend to be wasted nearly instantly by your squad members as soon as they spot an enemy technical. You know, those jeeps with machine guns on them which the game LOVES to throw your way CONSTANTLY and which are even annoying to deal with in Direct Control mode because the driver will magically teleport to the gunners seat and back to the drivers seat endlessly making sniping them a total pain in the arse. The lack of AT grenades also means that your infantry, especially in the earlier missions will be totally bloody useless against any enemy tank and your own tank will be outnumbered 10-to-1 while dealing with swarms of enemy infantry with RPGs. It’s a weird downgrade and kind of annoying to be honest. Aside from this weird decision, combat is pretty much identical although there is a noticeable shortage of anti-tank cannons this time around.

And that’s about it really. There’s some new in-game monetisation stuff going on but honestly I can’t even pretend to care about it so make of it what you will. There was also some sort of controversy about the Season Pass not including the WW2 stuff, but again I don’t care because what sort of chump buys content that’s not out yet? Well me because I bought it during Early Access for a fiver but that’s totally different (honest). Aside from those two changes that I am frankly oblivious to, there’s not anything else to discuss. Call to Arms is Men of War but prettier and featuring ‘Murica against the generic middle eastern bad guys. Direct Control is a lot better, everything else is slightly better but there’s also a lot less content to go around. Make of it what you will. For existing Men of War fans it’s a fun little quasi-sequel, for casual RTS fans who haven’t played a Men of War game I can give it a modest recommendation whilst on sale and for everyone else I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’s a perfectly fine and modest RTT experience with some fun missions, not a huge amount of content but you can always play it in Skirmish or MP or buy the DLC that doesn’t that much these days. Therefore I’m giving Call to Arms a singular thumbs up. Huzzah!

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Quick Note(s) – Unfortunately the game can have some issues running on Windows 11, so be sure to run the “vcredist_x86” installer located in the Steamapps/common/Dawn of War Soulstorm/VCRedist folder. If you aren’t running the Steam version, you’ll need to download and install the Microsoft C++ visual redistributable 2005. As for those of you who are looking for mods, I’d highly recommend the Unification Mod which adds a disgustingly large amount of units, factions and maps to the game. Other mods are also available on moddb.com (just follow the previous link and click on “Dawn of War” underneath the name of the mod).

Back in those simpler, halcyon days of 2004 the developers at Relic took the (Warhammer) world by storm by releasing the original Dawn of War game. Now this wasn’t the first Warhammer 40,000 (W40K) game by any means, and in fact it was the 8th game to be released that took advantage of the setting. What it did do however, was enable players to play as multiple factions within an immersive setting (sorry Rites of War fans, but that game was slowwww and not particularly immersive) that was fully 3D. The combination of three popular factions – and the Eldar too – resulted in a hugely popular RTS game, especially as both the gameplay and audio design were excellent. Unlike the other goliaths of the space, such as Starcraft, C&C Generals and Age of Empires 2, the game was fast paced and highly rewarded an aggressive play-style, as resource nodes were spread across the map and holding them was the key to victory. In many other RTS games, resources were spread around but generally you’d need to build up your forces and faff around with villagers to build up the structures required to properly begin harvesting the tiberium/cash/gold/whatever. In Dawn of War however, you just needed to capture them with infantry and while it was encouraged, you rarely had to fortify them with a listening point structure (which would need to be destroyed before the enemy could capture it). This subtle little twist meant that it was your army not your villagers that were responsible for growing your economy. Compounding this design decision was the fact that you needed to control as much of the map as possible to receive these resources, as tech upgrades played a minimal role in the economy side whilst your builders could barely do anything (although the secondary power resource was entirely generated by the buildings they constructed). Of course this led to the game giving more aggressive players a significant advantage, which meant that the games were often quick and fast paced with the loss of your army often ensuring you’d lose your resource points which then meant that you were at a resource disadvantage which would then result in you getting ground down under waves of enemy forces. There was a mechanic to compensate for this (slightly) wherein resource points and power generating structures would decay over time, enabling turtles to cling on and eventually negate much of the disadvantage they were facing, but this mechanic in most cases took too long to have a significant effect on the battle.

Without going into excessive detail, I’ll briefly explain the mechanics of Dawn of War for those who haven’t played any of the games in the series. Like most RTS games you start with a mere HQ and a builder unit, who can then produce all of the production buildings in your faction alongside power generators and listening points. You’ve got multiple unit classifications (such as heavy infantry, demons, vehicles and so on) but generally there are 3 main types of unit on the battlefield. Infantry (who are the only ones who can capture requisition points), heroes/characters that are powerful but can get bogged down in combat, and then vehicles which are powerful and often heavily armoured but are require lots of power and aren’t available in the early stages of the game. These units are then either focused on melee or ranged attacks. Most weapons are good against certain types of units, with anti-tank weapons often (but not always) being hopeless against infantry and vice-versa. Furthermore each unit can have multiple abilities, and most units can purchase upgrades that are applicable to that one unit. There are also a range of technologies which can be unlocked that provide a bonus to all units of a certain type, both those you currently have and those you might build in the future. All infantry units can be reinforced to add squad members, which costs resources and requires a modest wait as they’re produced. Units in combat suffer a big penalty to reinforcement times but they can still be reinforced. As for the resources, you’ve only got two to worry about. Requisition (the main resource) and power (the secondary resource), which are obtained through captured points on the map & listening posts and power generating structures respectively. Finally there are two types of points on the map(s) worth noting – Relics which let you build your superheavy unit (max 1 at a time) and critical locations which you can’t build anything on or next to. As such the game revolves around building infantry squads to capture points to gain requisition, so you can afford to build power generators which will let you build your more powerful units and begin unlocking research items.

With that hasty summary out of the way let’s return to the review. Back in 2004 Relic decided that they should continue to build up momentum after the launch of the original Dawn of War by engaging in a classic strategy which has largely (but not entirely) been neglected in recent years. They did this by releasing two expansion packs, Winter Assault (WA) in 2005 and Dark Crusade (DC) in 2006. The former added the Imperial Guard race to the game and added some new maps, a handful of new units for the existing races and two short but challenging campaigns. The latter was considerably more ambitious and included two races in the form of the Necrons and the Tau Empire, while also adding new maps, units and more importantly totally overhauling the campaign structure. Both the base game and WA had fairly standard RTS campaigns, taking the form of around a dozen maps (in WA’s case spread between the two campaigns) that weren’t particularly connected with each other and were basically skirmish maps with some extra challenges and timed NPC spawns/attack waves. Oh and of course they had little cutscenes, which elaborated on the plot and served to motivate you. DC on the other hand replaces the standard campaign structure with a new hybrid campaign that features a turn-based map comprised of multiple regions, each of which needs to be taken in skirmish battles. Each faction can move their single army (represented by their command) across one region per turn, and if this region isn’t owned by them then a skirmish battle will break out. Each region has a strength ranking associated with it from 1 to 15, which determines the AI difficulty and number of AIs to be faced on that map. The difficulty of these maps ranges from one easy AI through to three Hard AIs, with the maps themselves being the same that you encounter in the Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. Every faction is present at the start of the campaign within their stronghold region, a bespoke custom map that is particularly challenging and if these strongholds are conquered then that faction is defeated. As these armies fight across the map they’ll gain new regions which enable them to recruit “Honor Guard” units that are stronger versions of regular units and which spawn with the commander in every battle (unless they’re wiped out in which case they need to be bought again). Some of these regions even offer a faction wide bonus instead of a new honor guard unit, such as enabling you to attack any region except strongholds in one turn or to enable you to spend resources on building structures before an attack begins. Finally there are also feats that commanders can achieve such as winning 3 battles or killing a certain amount of enemies, which give them war-gear points that can then be spent on… war-gear which grants them more health, attack and some other benefits or even abilities. Victory is achieved by eliminating every other faction from the map, which means you’ll need to win every stronghold battle.

Dawn of War: Soulstorm (DoW:SS) continues this trend and by and large as the campaign is the same, with one big difference. Namely that you now need to defeat eight other factions instead of a measly six. As a consequence the campaign is lengthier, even if the gameplay itself hasn’t changed very much. There are also a few more bonus regions, so that there’s roughly one per faction alongside more stringent routing between areas (i.e. the map now has more choke-points) which gives the campaign a modicum of extra strategy. These two new factions in the form of the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar are of course one of the major selling points of the game, as at the time of release every faction with models was represented with the exception of the Tyranids. Much like the rest of the factions these two have their own unique units and voice acting although I must confess that I’ve always found the Sisters of Battle to be a bit boring. You see both the Sisters and the Dark Eldar have ways of gathering up a special resource (faith and souls respectively) that enable them to activate abilities, but generally these abilities don’t do that much. For the Dark Eldar these abilities are on your toolbar and can be popped at any time and anywhere that you have vision, and while the ability to enable a squad to detect infiltrated enemies is useful, the rest are kinda meh. As for the Sisters of Battle these abilities are used by certain squads and often require that you research a piece of technology to permit them to be used, with these abilities also being kinda… meh. To gather these resources you either build upgrades on your listening posts (Sisters of Battle) or have to send your builders to gather souls (Dark Eldar), with the former being super boring and the latter being a potentially interesting mechanic that gets squandered. This is because the Dark Eldar buildings can build themselves, the builder only has to start the construction process and is then free to go do something else. So far, so good as this fits with the asynchronous nature of the factions within the game. One of these buildings can be upgraded to produce souls though, so what ends up happening is that you build up your base, build a couple of these buildings (which are required for increasing the amount of squads and vehicles you can field in battle) and then have your builder sit in your base gathering souls. There’s no risk/reward ratio to consider from having your slaves wander around the battlefield, but then again as previously stated the abilities kinda suck anyway so it’s not a big deal really. Either way even with these lame abilities I still think the Dark Eldar are the more interesting faction, especially as their most basic infantry unit can infiltrate (letting them turn invisible and still attack enemies).

As for the other big selling point of this game in the run up to release, it’s also a bit underwhelming. Across Dawn of War and the first two expansions all units had been ground units (well except a handful of hovering ground units), which meant that the inclusion of Flying Units in Dawn of War: Soulstorm was HYPE. Unfortunately the engine just can’t handle flying units and as such these aircraft basically just acted as hovering ground units, which were still cool but were also just vehicles that could ignore some terrain. Ironically enough the developers of Dawn of War: Soulstorm (at this point the original developers at Relic were working on Dawn of War 2 and as such this expansion was outsourced to Iron Lore studios) didn’t want to add “flying” units initially and instead had planned to add some units that were commonly requested by the community. Sadly Relic insisted that Iron Lore get to work adding flying units, which while still useful and having some minor battlefield uses were relatively half-baked and a disappointment for many players. The Imperial Guard for example were bequeathed an aerial bomber, but it couldn’t really conduct bombing runs and as such just hovered around occasionally using a souped-up grenade ability. In spite of these flying units being half baked however Dawn of War: Soulstorm remains the definitive edition of Dawn of War, as it has everything that the other games had alongside a lengthier campaign, even more maps, more factions and of course more units. As a consequence of being the most feature complete Dawn of War game, it’s also the one that still retains an active community both in terms of being able to find multiplayer matches and with regards to the modding community which is still adding new races, maps and units to the game to this day.

Which of course begs the question, why is Dawn of War: Soulstorm still so popular? Well aside from the gameplay as mentioned earlier, and the sheer variety of units and races that you can play as, the game also has a handful of features which have kept players coming back. Part of the game’s enduring popularity is the way in which the game has managed to faithfully and accurately capture the W40K setting, with it’s bombastic units and fantastic voice acting. While strong voice acting is not unique to Dawn of War: Soulstorm, the game is absolutely brimming with memorable quotes delivered well by actors who clearly relish their roles. Every single unit is quotable and while they don’t have a huge pool of quotes, there are enough to avoid repetition whilst not too many that they fail to remain lodged in your mind. The depth and range of the performances are strong, while the writing clearly reflects an understanding of the lore of the W40K universe. There are some weird quirks in the game’s narrative, such as the Imperial Guard stronghold having legions of ostensibly rare Baneblade tanks and that weird screed against Metal Boxes by the Chaos commander, but generally the tone is faithfully conveyed and each unit and character acts as they should. Bolstering this performance is a handful of canny gameplay decisions, such as engaging (almost) every unit to engage in either melee or ranged combat, which ensures that even weaker units can successfully bog down stronger foes in ranged combat or try to force them to run around in circles. The game also has a “sync kill” system wherein units have special, pre-baked animations which play when they defeat enemies in melee combat. While these help to give the game some cinematic flair, they also have a strategic purpose as units are immune to damage while these animations are playing which can be abused to tank certain enemy weapons for the benefit of your less durable units. The combination of asymmetric factions, a high variety of units, fast paced gameplay and a host of little ways to tip the scales of a battle produce an engaging and enjoyable game, while the beginner AI settings are generous enough that newbies don’t need to fear getting completely and utterly stomped.

To summarise then Dawn of War: Soulstorm is an enduringly popular game because it is the successor to a great base game and two expansions which were of an equally high quality. By taking everything that had gone before it with regards to a strong, fast paced gameplay system that offered plenty of tactical depth across all nine factions the game ended up being a complex RTS experience that was still eminently approachable. Unlike many of it’s contemporaries the game was able to bypass a slow starting phase and encourage players to dive straight into the action, which had a strong blend of melee and ranged units to keep matters broadly balanced. This was then reinforced by an AI system that starts off weak enough to not overwhelm noobs, while being difficult enough at the higher levels that the game provides a significant challenge. Add to this a lengthy and replayable campaign mode, alongside fantastic voice acting that helps to immerse the player and you have a vast and engaging RTS game. The fact that the game has a huge quantity of maps, units and mods only cemented it as a long-lasting game that is suitable and indeed recommended for all RTS fans. If you’re a fan of the setting Dawn of War: Soulstorm is still one of the most commonly recommended games nearly 15 years on, whilst RTS players would be remiss to skip it. Even those without much experience with the setting or the genre should give this game a shot, as it’s approachable, memorable and riddled with content – plus it’s exceedingly cheap due to it’s age.

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Now first thing’s first, I haven’t played the original game (released back in 1989) so I can’t do a comparison for you guys between this latest remaster – as there was one back in 2013 – and the original game. Second thing’s second, The Bluecoats: North & South is a game that I picked up in a bundle a while back, and as such I didn’t pay much attention to it when I first bought it. It turns out this was a mistake on my part, as The Bluecoats: North & South is actually a really enjoyable game even if it’s hard to pin down exactly what kind of game it is. It’s got a Turn Based Strategy layer, which is arguable the meat of the game and is fairly simple. Basically there’s a map of the (Dis)United states as of the time period, with each state functioning as a region and each region being able to hold one army at a time. Some of these regions contain forts, which are connected by railway lines and if a player owns both of the terminus points of a railway line then on the start of their turn a train will run along the line and generate gold for them. Generally you get two or three gold for each train that moves between your forts without a hitch and as such maintaining control of the railways is crucial to success. There are also some other minor factors to consider, such as a wandering storm cloud that affects one region per turn and paralyses any army contained within it (unless you pay some gold), the potential for Western states to be attacked by Mexicans and American-Indians and North Carolina having a port that provides free armies every few turns. Generally there isn’t too much to handle on this overall strategy layer, but as armies can only move to one neighbouring region per turn and as you can only have one army in a region (although you can merge two armies together up to 3 times) you do still have to carefully consider your moves. One other twist is that if you have 3 Gold, you can buy a new army but only on regions without an army already on it – but that army can then move as per usual, so it’s possible to lose an entire army in an attack and then buy a new one to send in against the harmed enemy army. If you have the money of course!

Which brings us to my favourite part of this game, namely the RTS-esque battles that take place between two armies. These are frantic but enjoyable and involve juggling between three unit types on the fly (as you can only control one unit at a time). You’ve got Artillery which are seriously powerful and can 1-hit KO entire enemy units if you get the perfect shot in, but need to charge each shot and they can only move left-or-right whereas the other unit types can move forwards. Then you’ve got Cavalry which are fast and lethal against all unit types (including other Cavalry) but melee only, so they need to dodge incoming fire while rushing towards the enemy. Finally you’ve got infantry that can advance like the cavalry, but have a ranged attack albeit one with a slight delay before firing. As mentioned earlier in this paragraph, part of what makes these battles so engaging is the fact that you need to keep switching between units to make the most effective use out of them. So you’ll need to be moving your artillery and firing shots, while manoeuvring your infantry and advancing your cavalry so that no unit is a sitting duck or about to be outflanked. Of course having a larger army does provide some advantages, as you can field more individual soldiers per unit type, but newly created tier-1 armies already have the maximum number of soldiers in the infantry unit. In these cases you have reserves which are instantly spawned when the units you initially deployed with are wiped out (e.g. you have 9 infantry soldiers in your army, 6 deploy at the start then if they all die a unit of 3 soldiers spawns). As such effective use of a smaller army can easily lead to victory against a larger force.

Most games would be content at this stage to be a RTS/TBS hybrid, but The Bluecoats: North & South is not most games and adds an additional layer in the form of two FPS mini-games that largely play the same. When you attack an enemy fort on the TBS layer, you will initially have a normal battle if they had an army defending and if you succeed (or they didn’t have a garrison army hanging around) then you start playing a FPS mode. Don’t get me wrong, this mode isn’t going to compete with Doom or even most bargain bin FPS games, but it does have it’s own charm. When these battles start you’re given a 4-minute time limit to gun down a dozen enemy soldiers, each of whom die in two shots or one headshot. The twist is that you have a limited amount of ammo and unless you hit 12 consecutive headshots, you’re going to need some extra ammo. Fortunately your enemies are kind enough to occasionally drop ammo (and sometimes even health!), which is a clever way of the game discouraging camping as you’ll run out of shots and need to dash out into the fray. This is where you can get overwhelmed, as reloading takes some time and the enemy is accurate even if they’re slow to fire. To prevent these FPS battles from being punishingly difficult, the enemy only has 4 active combatants at a time and you have a rough idea of where they are thanks to a mini-map in the upper right corner. In spite of the relatively modest amount of enemies at any given time, you’ll need to be careful when playing these battles as enemies can bum-rush you with melee attacks and if you need to reload at the wrong time you can quickly burn through your health bar. You do have two NPC buddies with you during these missions, but they don’t deal damage and instead can only stagger enemies with their shots.

The game also has another FPS mini-game that is very similar and which takes place during train robberies. These robberies happen when a player has an army occupying a region with a railway line that is running between two enemy forts. If an army is placed in this way then when the train reaches the occupied region a train robbery mission will start. These missions are essentially the same as the fort missions, but instead of wandering around a fort you’re rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ your way up the train. If you can make it to the locomotive engine within 4-minutes, then you steal the gold and the enemy gets nothing. Alternatively if your train is under attack, then you need to defend it from the enemy lest you suffer the same fate! These missions are short and easier than the fort attacks, but still enjoyable and can be tense as often successfully conducting a train robbery (or train defence) will decide whether you or your enemy will get to buy an additional army.

And that’s about it as far as The Bluecoats: North & South goes, as while the game has a myriad of game modes each is short but sweet. The campaign is essentially four scenarios back-to-back which are loosely based on the historic progress of the war in each year from 1861 to 1864, with some tweaked starting armies and regions pre-allocated. The game also has a free play mode which lets you select either the RTS or the two FPS modes and gives you some choice with regards to settings so that you can play each mode at your leisure without needing to mix and match them as per the campaign gameplay. Finally you can play each mode either against the AI or against a friend, acquittance, lover, relative, or exceptionally-intelligent-pet either online or in split-screen. Ultimately this is a game that’s intended for short bursts as playing through each of the campaign scenarios shouldn’t take you very long (around 2 hours), and if you win a handful of the initial engagements in a campaign it’s entirely possible to win in only one or two turns as the game has a powerful snowball effect in play. Part of this is that the more armies you have, the more regions you can capture. Another part is that you gain a bonus for having more regions/states at the start of each turn, which gives you one extra gold. When you consider that having more regions almost certainly means you have more forts and are thus earning more money anyway, it puts your opponent at a serious financial disadvantage. To win all you need to do is defeat every enemy army and make sure they can’t afford to buy a new one on their next turn, at which point you get a cute little victory screen and not much fanfare.

In conclusion then The Bluecoats: North & South is a short but sweet hybrid game with a charming art-style and a handful of relatively simple gameplay modes. It’s not a deep game by any means, but it’s a blast to play and manages to keep mixing things up so that it never feels stale at any given moment. The developers have done a good job of making every engagement feel important, as you can easily snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (or vice-versa) with a hard well-fought battles. Plus as you’ll be switching between TBS, RTS and FPS frequently you need to become competent at each to have any chance of victory, lest your brilliantly capable army fail to storm a fort repeatedly. While the AI is a little easy on normal, it’s a decent challenge on hard and of course the multiplayer mode provides plenty of opportunity for glory or upset. As such I’d have no problem recommending The Bluecoats: North & South to anyone regardless of skill level or even fondness for videogames, especially as it’s priced as a budget title and has full multiplayer support.

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8-Bit Invaders by Petroglyph is the 3rd game in their 8-bit RTS collection and much like the previous two games (8-Bit Armies and 8-Bit Hordes) it features a charming Voxel art-style, maps that are cluttered with destroyable assets, a fast-paced implementation of the classic RTS formula and a decent amount of content. Veterans of the series will therefore find a lot that’s familiar with 8-Bit Invaders, including the structure of the campaigns (12 missions per faction with each mission containing three objectives, one of which is mandatory and two of which are optional), the challenging skirmish AI that cheats in exactly the same way (perpetual map awareness? You bet!) and the lamentable fact that the co-op lobbies are as dead as a dodo. To stand out from the two previous games, 8-Bit Invaders adds three new things: New Factions (two of them), New Campaigns (three including the co-op one) and a new “Multiverse” mode that functions as a hybrid RTS/TBS strategy mode.

Starting from the top, the two new factions in 8-Bit Invaders are the “Galactic Marine Corp” (hereafter referred to as the Marines) and the “Invaders”. Of the two the Marines are by far the most familiar for series veterans or indeed anyone who has ever played a Westwood game such as C&C Tiberium Sun or Red Alert 2. You’ve got your traditional HQ, Power Plant, Barracks, Drone Foundry, Airfield and Tech Lab alongside two turrets – one for ground units and one for air units – and two newish buildings in the form of the Resource Enhancer which increases resources per harvester and a Titan Unit factory which replaces the Super Weapons that were in the previous games (more on that later). Like other games in the 8-Bit series, adding additional factories does not add new production queues like in most RTS games, but instead increases the production rate of your existing factory/factories (you can switch which factory the unit comes out of though). The units are a bit less familiar and have a Sci-Fi flavour, but are still easy enough to wrap your head around as there aren’t too many.

For infantry you’ve got Marines with guns who are decent against enemy infantry and air units, Harpies who are melee infantry with jetpacks that let them jump over small elevations in the terrain and F.I.D.Os which are deployable & stealthy mini-turrets that can shoot air and ground units.

For armoured units you’ve got two types of walkers – O.G.R.Es and Manticores with the former being able to shoot while moving & crush infantry while the latter need to be stationary to fire but can shoot both ground and air units, joining them are the GORGON tanks that deal splash damage and are great against ground units.

Finally you’ve got a handful of air units, the Shrike anti-air flier that can’t shoot ground units, the Medusa that acts as a heavily armoured helicopter gunship that can shoot both air & ground units plus the lightly armoured Gremlin that can’t attack but can heal friendly units. All of these units and buildings have large health bars, with the first 3 bars acting as “shields” that regenerate outside of combat. This means that the Marine units are fairly tanky and their ability to regenerate outside of combat gives them the ability to engage in hit-and-run attacks without too much risk, especially the O.G.R.Es which can shoot while moving. Compared to the Invaders however, Marine units tend to be much more expensive and the fact that they have to worry about their power supply means that building up a base can be slower (plus their turrets are disabled if the power supply goes down). As for their call-in abilities, you’ve got Overdrive which makes all Marine Units move faster albeit at the cost of them losing their shields (I didn’t use it that much aside from the occasional campaign mission which had a time limit objective) and… erm… another one that I have never used.

The Invaders on the other hand are a bit more unusual, as they don’t have to worry about their base having enough power but they do have a population cap to worry about which requires the construction of buildings to increase. This means that you can’t easily knock out their (very powerful) turrets, but if you’re playing them you’ll need to be constantly building new “Motivator” buildings which increase the pop cap. Most of the buildings they have are otherwise identical to those that the Marines have albeit with different names, although they do have the Parasite Hive building which gives you the ability to gain vision within an area via seeing what enemy units there can see. This is one of the powers they have, alongside the ability to designate a small zone on the map as an area where each newly trained unit will appear. Neither of these powers are particularly powerful, as the first one has a very limited duration and the latter only lets you move a relatively small amount of new units to an area.

As for their units, they are generally weaker and more specialised but are often cheaper with a few exceptions. For the Infantry you’ve got Xenodogs which are melee only infantry that create a hazardous acid pool which only damages the enemy when they die, standard Invaders that can shoot both air and ground units but are weak against infantry and Brain Bugs that make units around them invisible but are fairly weak themselves.

In terms of armoured units you’ve got Stink Bugs that are short-ranged anti-infantry specialists, Tripods that are walkers that can move while shooting and shoot both air & ground units plus Blast Bugs which are artillery units that can also shoot both air & ground units.

Finally for the air units you’ve got Saucers that are fast and intended for anti-air and anti-infantry use, Flyers which are a slightly slower anti-armour and anti-air equivalent and finally Motherships that heal units around them and which deal decent damage against anti-air and anti-ground targets. As many of these units are relatively cheap (except Tripods and Motherships) it’s tempting to spam them, however doing so will require a balanced mix as many unit types are useless against enemies that they’re not intended to “counter”. Blast Bugs get slaughtered at close range, Saucers are useless against armoured targets, Invaders are hopeless against infantry and so on. I personally found myself using Invaders as a cheap swarm that could deal with vehicles while using Stink Bugs to deal with enemy infantry, or just using vast hordes of Tripods as they are pretty much the only unit in the Invaders arsenal that is good against all enemy types. Either way bring Motherships for the healing, as unlike the Marines there is no shielding available.

Regardless of which faction is your favourite, you’ve got two campaigns with 12 missions each in them so you’ll have plenty of time to get to grips with each faction. I might be biased, but as a relatively experienced RTS player I found them fairly easy and my main piece of advice would be to read the mission “briefings” as they occasionally give tips as to what unit to use (generally the most recent one you’ve unlocked to be fair). I’d also highly recommend aiming for a 3-star rank in each mission, even if that means occasionally resetting the mission you’re currently playing as the bonuses you get for completing the optional objectives make the campaign much, much easier. These bonuses come in the form of pre-completed units and buildings which will let you start completing side objectives early, deny enemies the ability to use their harvesters to gather resources and to leapfrog the early stages of the tech-tree (such as it is). Something that newer players might miss in 8-Bit Invaders is that the maps each have crates lying around which can be “collected” by infantry units and that will then grant you free units or extra cash. Collecting these crates often lets your starting force snowball in strength which then lets you clear through the pre-deployed enemies on the map with relative ease while you build up an army at your base. Other than these general tips, I don’t have too much to say about these campaigns aside from the fact that they’re pretty fun and most of the missions aren’t particularly lengthy. They’re almost all relatively normal skirmish maps, with a bunch of enemies scattered around alongside those crates mentioned just above. There are a handful that don’t let you build additional units, plus one “defence” mission but these are the exceptions to the overall norm.

Speaking of the norm, 8-Bit Invaders follows the pattern set by it’s predecessors by highly encouraging and rewarding an aggressive focus on your economy in the early game followed by using massive groups of units to smash apart enemy bases. You’ll want to have multiple harvesters, I’d generally say no less than four active at any given time as in 8-Bit Invaders these units just stick onto a resource point and they don’t need to constantly head back to their base or a refinery building. Once you’ve got these harvesters, be sure to build multiple factories/barracks so that you can increase the build speed of your units – again I generally had 4 or 5 of each factory type so I could spam Marines/Invaders as a front wave, with Manticores/Tripods behind them to deal tougher enemies. If you’ve got enough harvesters then you’ll be able to pump out wave after wave of units and flood the enemy, while still having enough new units come out that you can defend your base against an inopportunely timed enemy attack. Of the two factions I had a preference for the Marines as I appreciated the fact that their units had regenerating shields and required less micromanagement, but to be fair their is a primordial joy to spamming so many Invaders that the game started to lag. Be careful when spamming units however, as the Titan Units which replace super weapons in this game can be lethal against hordes of cheaper units. Unlike every other unit in the game, these Titan Units are restricted to 1 per player at a time, and are the units themselves are free once their construction building has been completed. Instead of building them manually, they automatically begin building once the building has been completed or upon their death. This process takes 3 minutes, but much like every other unit you can reduce this time by building more than 1 of the Titan Unit buildings. The Marines get a HUGE mech and the Invaders get a HUGE dinosaur. While these units aren’t quite good enough to solo vast swarms of enemy units, they are a big fat force multiplier for your army and take a concentrated effort to put down.

As of the current time I’ve haven’t had the chance to play the co-op campaign ;_; but I did have the opportunity to try out the new “Multiverse” RTS/TBS hybrid mode. As someone who has enjoyed these modes in other RTS games, including Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 and C&C 3: Kane’s Wrath I was pretty optimistic that this would be another quasi-RISK board game layer on top of a solid RTS game. Initial impressions were good as you can play as any faction from the 8-Bit Series including those from Armies and Hordes so long as you own those games. Unfortunately the Multiverse mode is heavily flawed and while it’s not terrible I don’t think I could honestly recommend it unless you were truly, utterly desperate for more 8-Bit Invaders goodness. The issue is pretty straightforward and alas seemingly impossible to resolve, but let me explain how the mode works first.

Essentially there are two players on a Hex board, split into various territories each of which contains a native garrison force and potentially a bonus for the meta-game in the form of additional resources or better vision over adjacent Hexes. So far in this review I’ve described it as a TBS layer, but really it’s still an RTS albeit a very slow one that has you building and moving troops in real time. The build queue is the same as it is for each faction, although you do now need to “research” buildings with gems that you gain by annexing various hexes. In each hex that you own, you can build buildings up to a maximum of 3 and also units so long as you’ve got the right buildings (e.g. Barracks for Marines, War Factory + Tech Lab for Manticores etc). These buildings always stay put and serve as your garrison, alongside any units you’ve built and these buildings & units will appear on that hex’s map should that hex be attacked. You can also take garrisoned units out of the garrison and use them as an Attack Force, which can be dragged onto adjacent hexes and this is how you attack new territories. When attacking you can either auto-resolve the battle, or play it manually which starts up a RTS map where you have a HQ and whatever units were in your Attack Force. As each territory initially has indigenous defenders, you need to have a decent attack force lest you get overwhelmed – and of course if the enemy player has taken that territory then you fight their garrison. When attacking a 10 second countdown begins, which just gives you enough time to shuttle around nearby troops and garrisons to help you defend.

With those basics out of the way, I’d like to now dismantle what is theoretically a very cool game mode in 8-Bit Invaders. The first issue is the fact that as it’s in real time and battles have a countdown, one of the main issues you face is the clunky interface for transferring units from Garrisons through to Attack Forces and then sending them where they need to be. You have to drag and drop each unit between Garrisons and Attack Forces, which takes time and you need to drag and drop each Attack Force to each hex you want them to travel to. If you want to build up a garrison, you need to either deal with the perennial drag that is the dragging-and-dropping or have built the correct buildings in each hex where you want to produce them (which is very expensive). To make matters worse, moving a group of units from Hex A to Hex C involves dragging them into an Attack Force one-at-a-time, dragging this Attack Force to Hex B, then dragging it to Hex C. Now that’s if you can wait for a stack to build up, but if the enemy attacks your territory you’ll find yourself frantically dragging and dropping each unit one-by-one into an Attack Force and hoping they make it there in time (which they probably won’t). So to prevent this from happening, you now need to drag units into Attack Forces one-by-one as they get built and then drag these Attack Forces across the hexes they need so that they can be in the right place to defend your borders.

Obviously the AI doesn’t have this issue, which gives them a slight edge on the metaverse layer. The flipside is that the AI can only auto-resolve battles, which is a handicap as the auto-resolve tool is kind of bullshit meaning that they need to build up larger forces to be able to take territories. HOWEVER this auto-resolve nonsense ends up being the biggest issue, as if you have the audacity to have a lightly defended territory near the AI, guess what they’re going to do? Attack it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Did that sentence seem repetitive? Well then imagine how I felt playing the same map more than a dozen times in a row, because as soon as I won the skirmish the AI sent yet another wave of 6 units at my territory as I waited for my garrison to slowly build up. I’d try to send in neighbouring units, but I only had 10 seconds between each battle and those units were also incredibly slow to build. Oh and as a fun bonus if the AI was able to kill one of my garrison units, that meant my future auto-resolve chance would be lower meaning I’d get to appreciate that same skirmish map yet again! As a consequence my multiverse campaign took around 4 hours, featuring around 15 hexes and around 40ish battles – of which 90% were on the same two maps. If you do want to play this mode, I cannot stress enough that you should have two stacks, one to attack and one to sit in the newly liberate territories. You should have as small a border space with the AI as possible, and in spite of these preparations prepare for repetition.

Now don’t get me wrong, this mode is definitely a good idea and if you can find someone to play it with then I imagine it’s good fun. Unfortunately, the AI is a total pain in the arse to deal with and while the skirmishes themselves are easy enough the meta-layer is a bit a grind. One thing that was neat about it was the fact that larger maps had pre-existing bases populated by enemies and buildings from the other (non 8-bit invaders) factions and that occasionally these forces would spawn next to the enemy AI and nuke them before they got to do anything. Of course sometimes this would happen to you too, and of course if you lose the territory you lose all of your garrison forces (the same rule applies to attacking forces to be fair). Oh and unfortunately you need to take them out too to win, so even if you destroy the invading force quickly you still need to hunt down the random “occupied” AI force. At least they don’t build any new units, so once you’ve dealt with their quasi-garrison they’re harmless. What isn’t harmless is the fact that the enemy AI cheats (even on normal) by having total map awareness, as such if you use your Attack Force to try and destroy the enemy early, then you had best guess which spawn point they’re in accurately or they’re just going to rush your base while your force is trying to find them. Then they’ll win, and you’ll lose all those units which were so slow to build. FUN!

Of course there’s also a skirmish mode to enjoy, alongside the ability to play against other players. Unfortunately the 8-Bit series didn’t have much staying power, so most players didn’t hang around for long and I say that as someone who played 8-Bit Armies shortly after release. As such I’d recommend treating this game as a fun little pair of campaigns, with a side of skirmish should you feel that you haven’t played enough. The Multiverse mode is worth a look, but for the love of god bear in mind my advance from earlier lest you be frustrated. In summary, 8-Bit Invaders is a cool little RTS game that is a good end point for the series and has plenty of content for fans both new or old. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to RTS fans, and I honestly wouldn’t find it hard to recommend to novices either as it’s pretty intuitive and not excessively difficult. Plus if you can persuade a buddy to buy it, then you can enjoy the co-op campaign together and maybe even get a good Multiverse game out of it!

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Red Alert 3: Uprising offers players four mini campaigns – one for each faction and then a campaign dedicated to the Japanese commando unit Yuriko. These campaigns contain three missions each with exception of the Soviets who have a quasi-tutorial mission that has to be completed before you can unlock the Allied and Japanese campaigns. This unlocking is implemented a bit awkwardly, as once you beat the Soviet “tutorial” mission the game dumps you back onto the Campaign Select screen – meaning you need to go back to the main menu and hit chapters if you want to continue it. That petty niggle aside, these mini-campaigns are of a very similar production value to the campaigns in RA3 and feature multiple returning actors from the prior game (those that canonically died and/or fled to SPACE not withstanding). The main issue with them is that they’re… well… mini-campaigns and at a mere three missions each you don’t really have time to engage with either the cast or new units that much. This unfortunately means that things feel a bit rushed, robbing the new units, commanders and exposition from having much of an impact.

But who gives a wooden nickel about the writing in a Red Alert game, we’re all here for the new campaigns! Of these campaigns the Soviet Campaign arguably has the most polish of the main factions and is very enjoyable to play through. The plot is simple and campy, with you as the COMMANDER trying to figure out what the FutureTech corporation is up to. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a massive military-industrial complex company, it turns out they’re involved in some shady dealings and you end up facing the same enemy commander every time who’s in too deep to get out now. The missions themselves are varied and interesting, with a healthy mix of low-units “stealth” gameplay and normal base-building and battling. The game does a pretty good job of forcing you to build up varied forces via the map design, ensuring that Apocalypse Tank and/or Battleship spamming won’t be sufficient to get the job done. The difficulty is relatively gentle, with most missions providing reinforcements during the stealth sections to prevent you from messing up too bad, while the larger battle sections always provide sufficient resources and clear routes of enemy attack. As for the new units, they’re a bit gimmicky but fun to use and I must confess that the return of the Desolator from RA2 made me quite happy. You’ve got the aforementioned desolator which now does AoE damage to all infantry (yes that includes yours), a “mortar bike” which is great against base defenses, a grinder tank that latches onto enemy vehicles/structures and regens health while doing so and finally an upgraded version of the Sickle walker which has both rockets and grenades in lieu of machine guns.

The Allied campaign is the opposite of the Soviet one, feeling a bit rough around the edges as you face off against more enemy commanders than there are missions. The cinematics also feel pretty basic and are fairly short, while the missions are frankly a bit tedious and each have their own irritating little gimmicks. Without wishing to spoil all the surprises, I’ll just say that in the first you have to deal with a modest income stream (only 1 ore mine) while dealing with 3 small enemy bases that rush you constantly until you can take them out (pro-tip: kill the naval yard ASAP). The second mission has a total of four tiny skirmishes that all need to be executed perfectly lest you fail the mission, alongside a very standard battle section which is fairly easy. Then the final mission commits my RTS campaign pet peeve, wherein it encourages you to rush through a mission so that your forces are facing an uphill struggle when a very, very obvious “but wait there’s MORE” moment happens. If you’ve ever played through the campaign for Supreme Commander you’ll know exactly what I mean, and will also know that this makes the balancing extremely wonky as either it’s a brutal fight for survival or just a total cakewalk with no real in-between. Fortunately the Allied campaign partially redeems itself by having fun new units, in the form of a disgustingly powerful new air unit, a quasi-OP artillery unit and a new Cryo-trooper who makes the Cryo-copter look like a toy. There is also a fourth new unit, but they’re not playable within the campaign which is a shame as it’s a big-ass robot tank with AoE energy weapons. Unfortunately this redemption is only partial as the best strategy in every mission is to spam the new air unit with some fighter escorts, which makes the map design in those missions inconsequential.

Wrapping up the main factions is the Japanese campaign which is also pretty cool and enjoyable to play through. Weirdly enough it feels like it was set before the Allied one within the time line, as you help one or two commanders who you take out while playing as the Allies – even though the allied campaign comes before it in the Campaign selection screen. While the missions aren’t particularly difficult, they can be challenging and still require you to move fast and choose your build order with care. Unfortunately the third mission also falls for the “but wait there’s more” trope, but it’s explained in the mission briefing so it’s not a poor twist but instead a deliberate choice. If you choose to capture the Soviet base you’ll still need to sell the buildings to move onto the next stage, allowing you to cheese it (and build the Vacuum imploder) without too much trouble. The other missions are fairly interesting, with the first requiring you to hijack a Soviet base to bail out your ally while the second mission has a large amount of unoccupied vehicles lying around the map for your engineers to hijack. Each feels quite different and much like with the Soviet campaign, there’s enough freedom and resources to give you breathing room to concoct your own strategy. The new units for the Japanese faction are also handled well, enabling you to field melee-focused mechs, a solid anti-air/anti-infantry infantry unit and a big-ass flying death fortress. I really can’t fault this campaign as it keeps things fairly fresh and does it’s best to prevent you from spamming a certain unit.

Finally there is the Yuriko campaign which is a big focus of Red Alert 3: Uprising in terms of marketing and branding. Unlike every other campaign in the series, the Yuriko campaign plays like a top-down action game where you can only control one unit (Yuriko). It plays somewhat like a Diablo game, with a fixed camera angle centered on Yuriko and a hotbar of four abilities located on the bottom of the screen which can be upgraded. To upgrade an ability you need to find intel items (represented as computer terminals) which are scattered around the three missions and are fairly easy to find. The only caveat is that these upgrades are reset on each mission, so there’s little reason to go around and hunt down each one. The abilities themselves are pretty powerful and include;

• Psychokinetic Burst which kills all hostile infantry and stuns all hostile vehicles within an area around Yuriko.
• Psychic Domination which causes up to 3/5/7 enemy infantry to defect to your team. They will diligently follow you around until they die or you dominate new units if these new units bring you above the existing limit.
• Psionic Shield which lasts for 5/7/9 seconds and reflects ranged damage taken back to the enemy who fired on you.
• Psionic Slam which enables you to lift an object (including enemy infantry and some vehicles) before throwing it towards a designated area within vision range. This causes large damage to hit enemies and will instantly kill whichever unit or object has been thrown. Upgrading this ability enables you to pick-up items in a larger range alongside larger vehicles.

Alongside these abilities there are some generic upgrades which increase your speed/damage/health and which are also shared by any infantry you’ve dominated. Ultimately this campaign is heavily based around maximising the damage output of your abilities and thus juggling the ability cooldowns. While the cooldowns are fairly short, Yuriko can only attack one enemy unit at a time without them and for the majority of the campaign you’ll only have a handful of infantry supporting her. As such Psionic Slam and the Burst ability are your main method of churning through hostile units. Fortunately there are multiple healing stations located throughout each of the maps, so it’s often prudent to engage in hit-and-run tactics if you are outgunned. There are also some Psychic blocking stations in the third mission, within which all of your abilities (except the humble right click attack) are blocked within an AoE radius. These are easy to deal with, but getting within range of one will automatically “liberate” any infantry held by your Psychic Domination ability and cause them to attack you like the impudent dogs they are.

Much like the Soviet campaign, the Yuriko campaign is one of the highlights and has been implemented well with the difficulty remaining consistent but never overwhelming. The ability cooldowns prevent you from being OP and the gradually escalating number and damage of enemies prevents you from being careless, as it can be easy to get overwhelmed. There are also some lore tidbits hidden within the intel stations which give some context to the overall setting and aside from the fact that two of the three missions take place in the same map, I can’t find any reason to fault this one.

To wrap up Red Alert 3: Uprising also has some other new single player content (aside from the new skirmish maps), in the form of the “new” Commander’s Challenge mode. In it you play as a FutureTech commander, but instead of controlling a new fourth faction you’re instead allowed to choose which faction you’d like to play at the start of each mission. The twist is that you initially have a very limited arsenal of units/buildings, with each mission unlocking one new unit for one of the three factions. The missions themselves are split between main missions and side missions, although both give you one unit for completion.

These missions are great fun and each involve some sort of gimmick; whether it be interrupting a duel between two commanders who will ignore your base until you attack, dealing with a skirmish on a map with perpetual satellite drops smashing into it or playing through a map with hundreds and hundreds of explosive barrels scattered around. The main challenge comes from the fact that each mission has a par time that needs to be beat for you to receive 100% completion, which doesn’t give you any additional units or bonuses but does provide a true challenge for anyone aiming for 100% completion. With that being said the missions aren’t necessarily easy, especially the first time you play them as you’ll be hamstrung by your limited access to units and defensive structures. As such you’ll be making a LOT of use out of T1 units and will need to orientate your strategy away from T3 tanks/aircraft and Superweapons. Every mission is unique, punchy and the par time ticking away keeps you on your toes.

Once you’ve cleared through all 13 of the main missions, you get an ending cutscene and are then thrown back to the mode’s mission select menu to carry on. There are an additional 37 side missions alongside the main ones, with more of these unlocking with the completion of a mission of either type (and another bonus ending cutscene for beating all of them as well). As such there is a ton of content here even if you don’t care enough about 100% to go back and try to beat those par times (doing so will unlock the final bonus message). One last thing worth mentioning is that as you beat the missions you build up a reserve of credits, based on your performance in each mission. During any mission you can hit the RED ALERT button when your threat meter (in the bottom left corner) is full, which gives you these credits and makes all of your units hit max veterancy instantly. The catch is that doing so makes your mission time 99 mins and 99 seconds, essentially preventing you from achieving the par time.

In conclusion, Red Alert 3: Uprising is a great expansion pack for a great game that retains the campy tone of the original while vastly expanding the amount of single player content available. While it is a shame that both the campaign co-op mode and multiplayer mode are missing, I consider these small omissions for those who are playing it these days. The mini-campaigns are mostly great (Allies notwithstanding) and the Yuriko one is very unique in how it plays without being any worse for it. The commander’s challenge mode is also a great new idea, that not only makes use of the RED ALERT button (that was originally intended to be a main feature of RA3) but also provides around 50 additional missions for you to playthrough. Considering how cheap Red Alert 3: Uprising is on modern storefronts ($9.99 through Origin, $19.99 through Steam and both have frequent -75% discounts), I’d have no problem recommending it to any RTS fan – even if they are a novice at the genre.

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