Sudden Strike for Windows

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MINIMUM SYSYTEM REQUIREMENTS:-

CPU: PENTIUM 233 WITH 32MB OF RAM.
SOUND CARD: 100% DIRECT SOUND COMPATIBLE.
CD ROM: QUAD SPEED OR HIGHER.
O.S.: WINDOWS 95/98/2000 OR NT.
HARD DRIVE: 150MB MINIMUM FREE SPACE.
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Sudden Strike is a Real Time Strategy game, it is set in World War II and contains 3 sides available for invading European land, whether it be by the Allies, NAZI Germany or the U.S.S.R., the levels are tough, time-consuming and realistic. Sudden Strike has been available for a few years now and should cost you no more than #20 for the original; I bought it for #15 with an extra missions disc, Great Value.

Sudden is as I keep on drilling in to you, realistic. Command and Conquer and Age of Empires do have an amount of realism in them but be honest, who is going to build a Farm, a Barracks or an Ore Refinery (if it existed) during the D-Day landings. The concept of being able to mass-produce men and munitions at the click of a button in C & C and A.O.E is somewhat unrealistic unless you have an arsenal of about 4000 pregnant women (and of course men, not pregnant though). In reality you would be given a consignment of troops as in sudden strike and expected to keep them, ALIVE. The range of troops consigned to you is far and wide, from a Soviet Katyusha Rocket Launcher to a German Panzer, from an ambulance to a howitzer. The units given to you are of a rational proportion, you do not get 5,000 troops and 500 tanks on any mission to invade a village, you are given maybe 100-200 infantry on a large mission and about 30 tanks and mechanized infantry and you do not have the facilities to reproduce men and munitions. The campaigns take place in both summer and winter which means that the units camouflage change otherwise a standard jungle uniform would stand out like a sore thumb in the white snow of winter.

You are usually assigned a special type of aircraft to aide you in your mission, spy planes, bombers or paratroopers, all are very effective and useful, as you have a small amount of troops you would not like them to be blown away by a howitzer shell coming from behind some dense forest down the road. In Sudden Strike that is different from both C & C and A.O.E, which is that, if your troops or tanks do get damaged badly beyond a point then you can expect them to die or explode if they are not repaired by an ambulance or a service truck. Like in real life if you have just had your legs blown off by a land mine then you do not really expect to be walking or for that matter living for a long time if you don t get help.

Because the levels are so tough you just wanna play and play until you complete it, it is addictive.
The complexity of the game is just amazing, unlike Command and Conquer where you can just send streams of units in to conquer the enemy, you don t have that luxury in this game, you have to plan carefully the entry of your units into hostile territory by using scouts and spy planes.

The other main factor in this game is that you are limited in munitions, you cannot possibly expect to go on firing your Enfield rifle or machine gun and the rounds last indefinitely until you die like certain other games. The game also is rational in the sense that if you go past an area then you see what is there but when you leave you do not see through some intricate arrangement of mirrors (like in other games I could mention) any new enemy troops arriving, you only see the landscape.

When a tank shell hits your infantry in this game they get blown to pieces and not slightly damaged like the effects of a paper cut, if you are being shot at by a sniper you cannot always see where from as they may be hidden in a building, and as a result you may end up dead. The individual units have a varying fields of view, planes with the largest then officers and probably tanks with the worst, this is reasonable, you cannot see behind buildings or past trees like Superman but you can bomb the building to ground then look behind it or even easier just turn the corner and look.

The main thing I found that annoyed me about the game was the arcs of view of the player, you cannot look behind building to see your troops or turn the camera round so you can see a road from an aerial view or from the north instead of the west.

Great attention to detail is taken with the units, they look like something off a WWII movie, it is a game that allows you to be a commander, whether you be a Comrade of the Russians or and officer of the German Wermacht, during the campaign it is rewarding when you finish the mission. The atmosphere in the game is amazing, the sound of distant shells being fired then exploding in the middle of your infantry battalion, then trying to find where the shells have just come from it is for the last time 'REALISTIC' like something off a movie.

It is a good game although it does have its difficulties. I implore you to buy this game and like me be stuck on one mission for hours because your troops keep on being decimated by something you can't find, only hear.


*NOTE- This review is an exact copy of the op which i have written on Ciao.co.uk and Dooyoo.co.uk, if you need any proof of this then ask me and i will display a message in the guestbook of my ciao.co.uk profile to prove that i have actually written this. It is therefore not plagiarism as it was my work in the first place and i am therefore not breaking any rules.

Jimmy, A Happy Gamer.

? James D 2002-2003