Act of War (2005)

Well, silly game plots usually make for plenty of fun - I mean if his mate only had an inflatable dinghy it'd just be another FPS. Act of War does have some genuinely interesting features for once, and while the demo was suspiciously devoid of a lot of them and its plot and triggers ran on rails, it was still an okay play for an afternoon and offered some interesting tactics. There's no economy as such, although you have a budget, and the demo only had a scattering of techs to research, nothing but a barracks or two and only two types of infantry and two types of aircraft to build. The air strike system seems to work well, and fighting your infantry across the map building by building was a nice touch. Act of War as a game looks like the missing link between the Modern Day Battlefield simulator and all those sci-fi Dystopic Near Future Ruled by Heartless Mega-Corporations you've probably encountered over the years.

If you're feeling adventurous, you might want to try battling Atari's Flash site for the game, but its an obstacle course. The demo weighed in at a mind-bendingly inefficient 700Mb(!) for a single, heavily scripted, single player mission... There's a huge amount of cut scenes using actors and an endless parade of the glowing green screens with animated HUD graphics on everything. But as I mentioned earlier, think of it as a light airport read (as in light, shallow reading that's somehow 1200 pages long) in Real Time Strategy form, and you probably can't go wrong.

There are two expansions: Act of War: High Treason (2005) and Act of War: Direct Action (2006).

A Force More Powerful

Developed by BreakAway Games, developers of Emporer: Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the expansions to Tropico and Civ III, A Force More Powerful is a radical depature from the usual violence prone real time strategy game. It ostensibily covers modern strategy, politics, resistance and liberty, but with nary a terrorist in sight.

Its a game about non-violent resistance to established corruption, tyranny or occupation. And there's not a military adviser, weapon, terrorist cell or award winning experts on military technology and global conflict in sight. Basically, the game models fictional conflicts based on actual events, and offer you, the player, a selection of tried and tested non-violent strategies to overcome what most games would consider impossible.

For example: an "easy" level is one dealing with old fashioned corruption; where an established and cosy status-quo runs the country (into the ground) while the locals are determined to bring the city fathers to justice. A "hard" level is trying to get a military dictatorship propped up by a foreign power with unlimited resources and an interest in your country's internal affairs to simply respect an election. Between these two are a variety of scenarios involving repressive traditions, segregation, womens' rights and dealing with awkward situations where your cause is unpopular, the supreme ruler is extremely popular and good at winning elections, and there are violent splinter groups letting the side down and generating sympathy for the .

Command & Conquer series

Or C&C for short. This is the original Westwood series that pretty much established (or at the very least popularised) the real time strategy genre in its modern form. Alas, Westwood is lost from us now, well and truly absorbed by EA Games. The original Command & Conquer (1995) featured a conflict between the good guys at the Global Defence Initiative and a despicable international terrorist organisation called NOD. (A bit like Action Man and his arch villain, Doctor X.) The series also dabbled in a little Cold War politicking against the Russians in the Red Alert titles. Compared to many modern RTS games, the Westwood games are very simple, quite camp, and immensely popular. Its an immense franchise, with a mixed bag of titles.

All these old titles have been bundled together in a big compendium called Command & Conquer: The First Decade, which includes all expansions and sequels.

Red Alert (1996) considered by the C&C fans I've spoken to as a series highlight,

Red Alert 2 (2000), and its expansion Yuri's Revenge (2001),

C&C Tiberium Sun (1999)

C&C Generals (2003), probably one of the better entries in the series.

There's even a first person shooter set in the same universe: C&C Renegade.

EAGames has released a new title in the series: Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (2007). Like many games series in the last year, Tiberium Wars has returned to its "roots" I suspect they'll do with C&C what they've done with all their lazy sports titles: churn out the same old game formula to the same dimwits who will shell out for it year in and year out, and milk the series long after its death. Pardon my cynicism.

Command & Conquer: Generals (2003)

The last in Westwood's classic RTS series made before Westwood ceased to exist. Of all the Command & Conquer games up to this point, this is probably the best and most strategically deep. Its a power struggle between three very topical sides: an expensive, high tech USA blowin' up shit (in a Shrub Jnr. fantasy world where the UN Security Council, spoilsport Europeans and world public opinion simply don't exist) the Chinese, despite IT upgrades and switch to a streamlined capitalist economy, still come across as a monolithic, nuke-happy Communist power of old; and, of course, there's the convenient lumping together of the Palestinians, Al Qaeda and your old pal Saddam all in the one boat called the GLA - the Global Liberation Army. Odd seeing three disparate groups lumped together, but Generals reproduces a tunnel visioned view of the world especially prevalent in America, so its kind of expected. Now now. Let me put that another way. The GLA would be a bit like an Arabic developer making a game called Crusade & Colonialism: Jihad, and having a side called the USA (United Subversive Army) that lumps the NAACP with the KKK and the Bush Administration, smugly tarring them all with the one brush...

Smarty pant comments aside, Generals plays well and for once there's a C&C game out there that doesn't want me to throw the monitor out the window and scream in frustration. In good RTS style, you can barrack for any three sides and show those pesky enemies of liberty / freedom / fraternity (pick one) a thing or two. Each side has a very unique and different feel to it and simply blowing each other off the map is actually good strategic fun. Nevertheless, for a game that would have been several years in the making, C&C Generals seems to have got amazingly close to the second Iraqi war in a variety of ways. The topical nature of this game will almost certainly make it uncomfortable for some people though - and watching the game's US heavy forces massacre a GLA's Angry Mob was way too close to the bone for this scrivener (writing during the second Iraq War), especially when the very same thing for real was being played out in all its appalling bluntness on cable in the next room.

You can hide guys inside buildings Sudden Strike style, and use the protection of buildings and bunkers to great effect; once you can shield infantry from harm, they suddenly become extremely devastating, taking out even super units with ease. The GLA has no aerial units of its own, but can bounce back from almost complete annihilation on very little. The US forces wield snow white wonder weapons including an Akira style space laser but need a massive economy to go with it; the Chinese make money by hacking the Internet and have an assortment of heavy set weapons like super tanks that can carry buildings and nuclear artillery; the GLA has access to endless infantry, complemented with "special" units like Angry Mobs and Suicide Bombers. Not to mention an veritable ocean of biological and chemical weapons on tap and access to huge underground Scud silos that would be envy of NORAD. The 3D works really well, and I can recommend this as a solid netgame.

There's a sequel: Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour.

Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars (2007)

A pure EA Games release. There seems to be a trend recently for long, overly milked games to "return to their roots" (like Street Fighter IV,

There's a sequel: Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour.

Supreme Ruler 2010 (2005)

Since everything has come apart at the seams, you don't play with countries anymore but portions of countries called Regions. There's over 200 of them: you can, say, pit yourself against small European nations, or perhaps conduct a state sized squabble in the American Mid West. As you annex more territory, you start to create your own newly unified territory. While the military angle is important, you still have to lock horns with your economy, politics, diplomacy, social pressures and formidable AI's playing ambitious rival states. The developers themselves describe it as: Civilization meets Panzer General meets Sim City. It's a pretty apt description. They even claim their kids have had lots of fun play testing it. Perhaps, but Supreme Ruler is a serious contemporary Wargames, and first impressions are of a very complex and detailed simulation that'll spook most casual players. Unless you're a military aficionado, much of it is going to not make much sense because there's a bewildering phonebook of stats, numbers and management options for even your most basic units. Naturally, there's a steep learning curve trying to make learn it all.

It might look static, (and yes - those satellite game maps are full of old fashioned hexes) but this is a proper real time strategy game, complete with fog of war, malleable borders and a lot of small graphical touches. You can adjust play speed or pause it to make your moves - something you'll be doing frequently as you wade through menus and make sense of all your units. There's a passing resemblance to Civilization, but really, Supreme Ruler's ancestors are old turn based strategy war-games like Steel Panthers or the generic Empire Deluxe. Supreme Commander takes old world strategy gaming and drags it into the Twenty First Century with a huge upgrade along the way.

There's a mind-bogglingly huge amount of detail and numbers in this one, and with it a steep learning curve. If you're into something serious about conquering the world, then its definitely worth a look. It'll demand a fair bit of time and involvement (as all these types of strategy games do), but you'll more than likely be rewarded with deep gameplay and considerable depth. Besides, its a strategy game for (gasp!) adults.

War on Terror (in development)

Oh No Not Again. Three guesses as to what this one is about. Once again, it looks like one of those contemporary conflicts in an undisclosed Middle Eastern country although being developed by Hungary's Digital Reality, its bound to have a few extra interesting details to it. But if I see one more game that associated Terrorism with Middle East again I'll scream. Maybe all those World War II clones weren't so bad after all.

World in Conflict (2007)

A modern war sim with all the gaming mod cons and many gigabytes of graphic lushness that we're coming to expect in an age of Bioshocks and Orange Boxes. Developed by Massive Entertainment (makers of the sci-fi Ground Control RTS series) and published by Sierra, the basic premise here is hardly new, a typical what-if scenario that sees the Cold War becoming very hot with the Eastern Bloc rolling through West Germany in 1989 instead of collapsing economically. As premises go, this was grist for the mill in the ol' 8 bit days in the 80's (back when any strategy games always assumed the next conflict would either be a colossal Soviet tank invasion into Europe or a big punch up at some indeterminate, Middle Eastern desert). The demo clocks in at 1.2Gb. Actually, as games go, this is looking pretty good. More to come soon.