Unfortunately, before you even see the artwork, you may already be frustrated. While I entirely concede the necessity for developers to protect their work, the Starforce copy protection scheme is not the best solution. It took me 2 installs and several runs at it before the game would even start, while the cd-detection routine chugged away for nearly 5 minutes. (This is after I realized that it would only check in the cd drive from which it was installed… the ‘detect’ time did diminish over time.) I’ve found that this is a common issue in the Codemasters forums, particularly with NEC drives. Be that as it may, any copy protection system that forces me to CTRL+ALT+DEL and kill a running application before it will launch the game is less than satisfactory. Unconfirmed rumors also persist that Starforce installs a semi-trojan piece of software – I can’t say one way or another for sure.

Unfortunately, my opinion of the game started sinking from that point forward. Gameplay is not really much like a wargame, which seems to be their target market. It played much like a 3d version of Commandos. You have a limited number of units, and while there is a minimally-adequate AI, you are generally issuing individual commands to get them to perform a task. Click on guy, have guy walk to cover. Manually control his fire, eliminate the enemy lurking ahead. Move other two or three guys up to you, move first guy ahead. Same with tanks: creep ahead, kill the bad guy, creep ahead – wash, rinse, repeat. It’s not clear how the helper AI determines pathing, so it’s dangerous to move your people anything but minimal distances per click, lest they decide that running around the building and across the open street is the best way to enter the ruins they are hiding behind.

This minimum-movement clickfest is indicative of the level of micromanagement that permeates Soldiers. The developer’s decisions about what detail was “worth” extra clicks, and what wasn’t are unpredictable and inconsistent. On the one hand, rifling through the gear on a dead enemy is laborious: while he probably has his ammo and grenades, his helmet and weapon have invariably been flung randomly into the grass nearby, forcing you to hunt around until you find them and click specifically. Realistic? Sure. But when you find the ammo and see that any SMG ammo will fit into any SMG (9mm to .45, for example) you quickly get the sense that realism is apparently not paramount. The TAB key will highlight grabbable gear, but again, inconsistently: enemy weapons and ammo are highlighted while (vital!) repair kits are not. While you might accept that repairing a severely damaged tank is even possible in the timeframe of most scenarios as long as Joe Grunt has his toolbox, Soldiers then feels it’s important to< make you repair the specific component that’s damaged. Reloading tanks is an even more tedious task, navigating your soldiers individually back and forth between the ammo storage and the tank as they carry only one shell per lap – that’s like 90+ round trips for a PzIV, by the way. Now that’s fun? In a realtime game like this, the player’s attention bandwidth is vitally important and it just doesn’t seem like anyone put much thought into what was fun and necessary, vs. what was drudgery.

There are 30 very different campaign missions, a series for each of the British, Russian, German, and American sides, which goes a long way toward ensuring that all the neat toys get used. You’ll enjoy the play differences between each sides’ equipment, but don’t expect hardcore accuracy. The Tiger’s 8.8cm KwK 36 L/56 main armament should eviscerate a Sherman (and probably the next one behind it too!) at any angle, at any range represented in the game - 170mm (nearly 7 inches) penetration at 30o/100m vs. 3.75” of frontal (mantlet) armor at best – yet I watched repeatedly as a Tiger plugged two or three rounds into a Sherman from 15m before the crew bails out. Most tank encounters are at such arcade-game ranges; the guns can certainly shoot across the 500m (or so) maps, but the oblique camera view won’t drop below a certain height, so you’re unlikely to see that opportunity shot. For tanks, it’s far better to let them fire at will from their better on-the-ground viewpoint, although they rarely seem to take the long shots when offered. SP guns are relegated to being open-top suicide tanks, as indirect fire is apparently not possible.

The missions, however, are sadistically difficult. Far, far too many missions involve you (with a handful of guys and a tank) attacking an entire town full of enemy forces – probably 50-60 guys and at least a half-dozen comparable tanks, plus a few AT guns. Or (again, shades of Commandos) you’re sneaking around with a guy or two, where one misstep means instant annihilation. Far too many missions expect you to use the ubiquitous toolbox right away, to repair and commandeer a knocked out enemy tank. I’m not a huge fan of the “any soldier can hop in a tank” school anyway, but to repair and fight in an enemy tank within a minute or two? That’s not a wargame. Allegedly, the missions are solveable in many ways but in my experience the parameters of these “multiple solutions” are so narrow that there’s not much difference between this and scripted, linear tasks. You will find yourself constantly save-restore-save-restore treadmill, which simply isn’t fun: it’s the wargame equivalent to the Tomb Raider jump-puzzle.