Now you can re-live the World War II you didn't learn in school - the one with mechs, freeze rays, and battle zeppelins.
At first glance, you might figure War Front for another one of those sleepy World War II real time strategy games. They usually have a German word in the title, because many of them were made by Germans. But don't be fooled. First of all, these are Hungarians. Second of all, what you're getting here is a surprisingly spirited entry into the genre of Command & Conquer: Generals clones.
It's got all the necessary ingredients: splashy graphics, hearty sound, lots of showy effects, trees that get knocked over by tanks, explodable buildings, and a lively over-the-top sensibility. It follows the three rules of any good action RTS: destruction, destruction, destruction. Don't get too attached to anything, because it's going to be easily countered by something else, and the odds are it's going to blow up real good.
And just to show that this isn't a sleepy WWII game, War Front is set in an alternate history. The point of this concept isn't just that the de-Hitler-ized Germans and Allies banded together to beat the evil Soviets. The more relevant historical twist is that everyone in World War II invented some wacky weapons. The Allies invented earthquake bombs and shield generators, the Soviets invented underground personnel carriers and freeze rays, and the Germans invented mechs and battle zeppelins. That last part bears repeating: battle zeppelins. Not since Red Alert 2 have you seen such glorious battle zeppelins. These sorts of silly toys give War Front a sense of character, even if it does feel freely borrowed.
Given that it plays so fast and loose, it's a bit disappointing that the three sides aren't more distinct. There is, of course, unique artwork for everyone's soldiers and vehicles, including renditions of iconic hardware like the Me-262 jet, Tiger tanks, Shermans, and Katyusha rocket launchers. And there are a few broad differences among the sides. The Allies don't need power, the Soviets specialize in infantry, and the Germans have the heavy tanks. Plus, in case you've forgotten, the Germans get battle zeppelins.
But aside from the occasional unique units, War Front's three sides have a lot in common. Everyone gets light, medium, and heavy tanks; everyone has some sort of ambush infantry ability; everyone has a few similar superpowers. Everyone tends to play alike. Mine your ore, build your power stations, crank out a bunch of units, throw them at the enemy, and enjoy the fireworks. And what fireworks they are. This is a lovely graphics engine, doing day, night, rain, snow, and nukes.
Each side also has heroes with special powers you can level for a touch of Warcraft III styled RPGing. A few units have special powers. There are tech upgrades to boost damage or increase armor. A tech center lets everyone choose among three "war plans". But these sorts of nuances are easily lost in the shuffle. In many ways, the pace in War Front is too hectic to appreciate what's going on. You're just watching the delicate infantry, paper tanks, and balsa wood planes killing and being killed.
A system of effective counters keeps the action fast and constantly changing. You might have a swarm of infantry suddenly killed by rockets, so you build a few tanks to take out his rockets, so he builds AT emplacements to stop your tanks, so you bomb them with aircraft, so he builds fighters to shoot your strike planes down, so you send in anti-aircraft trucks to take out his fighters, and so on. It's a lot of back-and-forth that doesn't necessarily come down to which player is making the most money. Again, the three rules of an action RTS: destruction, destruction, destruction.
There are a few interface problems. For instance, the units don't stand out very well on the minimap, which makes it hard to keep an eye on the rest of the battle outside your immediate view. Many important features and commands are undocumented. The developers seemed to want you to jump into gun emplacements and actually shoot at the enemy (Could this have anything to do with the fact that one of their upcoming projects, Field Ops, is an RTS/shooter combo?). This is hardly worth the bother and the graphics and frame rate don't seem to hold up at this level.
But for the most part, it seems like the developers have learned from the mistakes made by similarly fast and loose RTSs. War Front gives you helpful aids like being able to set units into formations, shift-queuing orders, and production loops that let you automate your factories. You can even assign a number to a factory so that every unit produced there will be selected when you press that key. You can see exactly how many of which units you have selected, and you can easily tab your way through them to activate special powers or separate them out.
There's a pair of goofy campaigns, which keep you engaged by letting you cultivate and keep "core units". There are also skirmishes against a challenging AI, made a bit more manageable by a variable speed (it's undocumented, but you can change the speed by pressing the + and - keys on the keypad).
Like most RTSs, the multiplayer support is where War Front really comes into its own. There is a wide variety of settings for different matches, including options for random goodie crates dropping around the map, random weather effects that shut down certain superpowers, and a day/night cycle. You can play a standard match to wipe out the other players, but there's also a conquest mode you can win by occupying multiple capture zones at once.
A secret objective mode throws unpredictability into the victory conditions. As soon as the game begins, everyone is given a secret objective. These are things like 'Earn x dollars', 'Destroy all of player x's buildings', or 'Send x number of specific units into the center of the map all at once'. When a player gets half way towards his secret objective, everyone else gets a message that essentially clues them into what that player is trying to do. This is a great change of pace that more games should emulate.
It's a shame that War Front is being released simultaneous with Supreme Commander, and barely a month before Command and Conquer 3. This is a worthwhile RTS that deserves more than to be upstaged by higher profile games, neither of which has battle zeppelins.