Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory

So close to perfection, yet so far away.

By: Jason Ocampo

The Sudden Strike series has always managed to stand out in the crowded pack of World War II-themed real-time strategy games. That's largely in part because it veers away from the conventions of the genre, like resource gathering and base building. Another point in its favor is that it features very large battlefields full of interesting terrain, like a large swath of the French countryside or a tropical island in the Pacific. Oh yeah, then there's the fact that the games in the series can jump around the entire war, from the island hopping campaign of the US Navy and Marine Corps, the sands of Africa, and the frozen steppes of Russia. In many ways, it's like a gigantic virtual tabletop wargame, an effect that especially comes to mind when taking in the 3D richness of Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory, the latest game in the series. Unfortunately, some really problematic pathfinding combined with other issues put a serious hamper on the fun.

This is basically a huge battle simulator, capable of recreating almost any confrontation from World War II. You want Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jim with the Japanese and the US Marines grinding it out? While the map is smaller than the real thing and not a historically accurate representation, it's still huge, full of trenches and bunkers to overcome. How about a German and Soviet slugfest? Check. And no World War II game would be complete without a good D-Day campaign, right? Well, it's here too. Sudden Strike gives you hundreds of units, from different types of infantry, tanks, artillery, and more, and lets you do as you please.

Of course, your job is to complete objectives, and these are presented in a military manner. You often need to cut through enemy territory to seize strategic crossroads or logistical positions. The battles are huge and multistage almost because of the sheer depth of the battlefield. For example, it's not enough to just seize the immediate front, but you've got to send pincers to drive deep into the enemy rear. To assist you, there's a wide range of off-board assets to call upon, like artillery and air strikes. The latter need to be carefully hoarded and used, though, as they're limited in number and aircraft can get shot down if you send them over AA. Real-world tactics matter too. It's all about trying to maneuver around the strength of an enemy's defenses and hitting them where they're vulnerable.

Where Sudden Strike 3 struggles is that while the game gives you these vast battles full of hundreds of men, with vehicles, artillery, and air defense guns scattered around the map, it also requires you to micromanage them to an incredible degree. Ammo trucks need to be dispatched to rearm units and vehicles. Fuel trucks have to continually refuel other vehicles. Medics have to be sent to patch up the wounded. Sure, in a way it's realistic, but it seems contradictory in this game. It feels like Sudden Strike wants to give you the epic scope but then immediately mire you in the minutia. It's too bad that there's no way to just abstract the supply situation or turn it off entirely. On top of that, it's very difficult to distinguish and select different units, like trying to pick a medic out of a ground of grunts, and then send him toward a grunt that's hurting. The interface doesn't help, and in the end it feels like more effort than it's worth, especially since simply healing someone to full strength does little help if he can simply get cut down with a short burst of gunfire a moment later. Since the game gives you a pretty much endless stream of reinforces if you take too many losses, it's just easier to wait for some fresh meat off for the grinder.

What really doesn't help is that the pathfinding and fog of war are so frustrating. If you have a column of tanks on a road and you need to race them up a series of bridges to reinforce the front line, selecting the tanks and giving them a move order will send them all roaming off in different directions instead of racing up the road in column. Those units will eventually find their way to the destination, but at that point they're arriving piecemeal instead of as a giant armored fist. And the fog-of-war is almost crippling, as you'll send men and vehicles forward only to watch them get pounded by enemy units that are dozens of yards away from them in the open, but that you can't actually see in the game because the officer unit with the binoculars ability isn't close enough or isn't looking in the right direction (and yes, you have to micromanage that, too). I set up an excellent defensive position only to watch a dozen of my tanks explode. It turns out that enemy tanks were standing off just outside my tanks' ridiculously short field of vision. At that point it was simply unfair since the AI didn't seem to suffer from the same issues.

The pity is that if developer Fireglow could address these issues this could easily become one of the best World War II games out there. The visuals aren't cutting-edge or particularly fancy or anything, but they still look fantastic. It's really feels like a tabletop wargame, but one that moves. The 3D battlefield is almost entirely destructible, which means that you can wreck many of the pastoral landscapes in the game. Fields are littered with craters, buildings do collapse, leaves are blown off trees, and more. And the sound effects are also effective, especially the booming echo of artillery in the distance.

Closing Comments
There's so much potential in Sudden Strike 3, which is why it can break your heart so easily. Imagine taking a bunch of Shermans and pitting them against a bunch of Panzers on a huge, detailed, destructible battlefield and not having to worry about your soldiers chopping down trees or mining ore. However, your virtual units move and act so dumbly that you'll watch all your carefully drawn-up plans and dreams get dashed before your eyes when your tanks fail to return fire against a foe that's practically sitting right next to them.

©2008-05-02, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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