WW2 All Over Again

My current fixation is on games themed and set in the Second World War. From Grand Strategy (Hearts of Iron) to Tank Simulation (Achtung Panzer: Kharkov 1943), I've been wallowing and keeping myself busy trying to be at least a successful field commander.

Men of War stands out among the crop of WW2 games that I have. Men of war is a World War 2 Real Time Strategy-or more appropriately, Real Time Tactics game from Best Way. It gives the players control of various WW2 units across different theaters of operations. It provides single-player campaigns for Allied, German and Soviet factions of the War. The game does away with unit production and base-building and, instead, units are pre-assigned at the start of each scenario. Each scenario is played out in a detailed and fully destructible 3d environment. Most of these will be small unit infiltration missions behind enemy lines while some are full-blown combat operations against waves of enemies. The game itself is extremely challenging as the player's units are usually outnumbered and outgunned for most of the missions. This is part of the charm of Men of War as it, much like real war, gives no quarters and obvious advantages to the player. You are left to your own to imporvise and a scenario can be beaten a number of different ways.

Men of War not only presents cinematic, real-time action in stunning, beautifully rendered graphics, but is also extremely mod-able for creating custom scenarios. It comes packaged with it's own SDK called GEM Editor that allows you to tweak the minutae of combat units, create maps and assign scripts for the AI. This tool alone makes the game infinitely replayable. You can think of any World War 2 engagement and try to recreate it in the game. In fact this one knocks Company of Heroes out of the top of my WW2 gaming list. It's that awesome.

The expansion for Dawn of War 2, Chaos Rising is being shipped as I type this but I feel my enthusiasm is a bit diminished by my unwavering attention to Men of War. A good thing though, considering my monthly fund allocated to gaming is running dry.

Anyway, I will post screenshots and modification discussions of Men of War later. For now, I'll go back to planning the map and scripts for a mod involving Otto Skorzeny and his Fallschirmjägers rescue of the fascist dictator Moussollini in '43.