As mentioned above, Sudden Strike takes place during World War II. All three major players in this particular conflict are represented equally, with well-scripted missions, unique units, and voices. To start from the beginning the first campaign begins a few operations before the landing at Normandy, and lets the player play through some rather easy missions that are comprised of only a few different unit types are obviously key to the mission itself. Once the game hits Normandy everything shifts into high gear, presenting a real-time tactical challenge that has yet to be topped.

The Americans, French, Germans, and Russians all have different unit types. Beyond the infantry (which is very hard to tell apart from other special infantry units), the tanks, trucks, anti-armor guns, and aircraft have all been recreated wonderfully. Telling the different tanks apart is really easy to do, as their shapes are clearly more defined, which is more than can be said for infantry units. During combat it is really hard to find your snipers, officers, riflemen, and heavy machine-gunners. The battlefields are also very well represented and even go as far as to offer several different strategies during missions. Towns can be taken over, the houses being used for cover, groves of trees can be used for masking troop movements, and bridges can be built or destroyed.

Missions in Sudden Strike get larger in scope as the game progresses. The main problem is the amount of micro-management that needs to be done, and how hard it is to do it. Like most RTS titles, Sudden Strike offers up 1-9 control groups and very limited unit formation controls. Now imagine after 3 missions of having command of only a handful of infantry and a few tanks, you are forced into taking over an entire beach with hundreds of units of all sorts scattered along the map. During a large fight that takes place on both fronts it is impossible for the player to match the AI in effectively managing all fronts at the pace this game presents. Realistic RTS war games lack one important thing that made real wars survivable, a command structure.

If you have wondered why most tactical war games have opted to keep things at a snails pace this is why. In a ‘sudden strike’, in heated combat, battles come down to a rush for survival. Units are either scattered across the map, making the hard to see units even harder to locate, or they are all in one group, making it difficult to pick the units you want out of the mess of troops. There is rarely ample time to set up a defense of any sort. Unlike Close Combat, once a mission in Sudden Strike begins, it begins right there. There isn’t time set aside to at least position troops for deployment or defense.

What is said above isn’t one of those crippling flaws that can often mark other games for death, but expect a great deal of challenge from this. The aspect of the game that is meant to present the challenge is definitely not the best I have come across. The enemy AI does its job, but the friendly AI has some problems. First of all, as ironic as this is, watching my troops get run over by medical trucks isn’t that funny. I lost an entire mission because my medical trucks ran over my troops. In other cases troops will not always listen to the commands that you give, and when scripted reinforcements are a made available there is even less control where they arrive, or what they do immediately after they arrive. In one mission, I was in the middle of an assault and reinforcements arrived only to run into the middle of the enemy’s kill zone without my orders, and get slaughtered. These sorts of things have made the game far more difficult than it already is.

The aspects of the gameplay that work for well for Sudden Strike are the line of sight system and the pure flexibility of the missions and the maps they take place in. The line-of-site works so well that you can hide hundreds of troops right over the ridge and the enemy won’t even see you, and if you lack the necessary intelligence (spy planes), you might not see them either. Line of Site plays the most important role in keeping the artillery and tanks in their place. In order to make sure the infantry still has a vital place in this army, Sudden Strike keeps tanks from firing over mountains, through mountains, or moving too quickly. Yet with all of this, even a lighter tank can still presents a target that normal infantry cannot even hope to take out. This is where Artillery comes into play. Through the course of a mission the player can skillfully acquire and artillery placement by killing off the people at the gun, instead of destroying the gun itself. Artillery also follows the same sort of rules tanks do, but they are far more vulnerable to attack, since their rate of fire is slow, and it takes longer to position the gun. A really great job has been done keeping the infantry from becoming obsolete. All units in Sudden Strike matter a great deal, don’t squander them.

Since the player cannot build bases or harvest resources, each trooper is important. I have managed to win a game after losing maybe 70% of my forces by taking over artillery and vehicles. During certain points during a mission infantry, artillery, and tanks will be added to your existing force. These reinforcements can often already have a task set for them, and will carry that out first. Unfortunately this can often conflict with a strategy you have already in motion. Predicting when the reinforcements come is rarely possible, unless it was outlined in the mission briefing. Yet when things get rough, reinforcements in any shape or form are welcome.

Sudden Strike clearly outlines the main snag to realistic tactical real-time strategy war games. The amount of micromanagement mixed with the responsibilities of many that are given to just one person, can present entirely new levels of frustration. Despite the god-like point of view RTS games present, we are only human. Sudden Strike is still an enjoyable change of pace and presents enough atmosphere, and solid gameplay to entertain, just don’t expect any of it to be easy.