With Perimeter already out and a second title nearing completion, Codemasters definitely has some interesting strategy titles on their menu for RTS fanatics to bask in, but Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2 is one title that really arouses my interest. The full version promises an elaborate campaign, realistic physics, some nitty-gritty graphics, a huge number of weapons, objects, and vehicles to interact with, and – best of all – full co-op play, so this game looks to be one hell of a refresher in gaming goodness. An 80% complete playable demo was recently thrown out to the public to show off how this crazy game works, so here’s the low-down.

Soldiers is an RTS game with a heavy tactical slant. Granted, most WW2 games are like this, with a focus on preserving individual units/squads rather than trying to repeatedly zergrush your opponent with a swarm of Sherman tanks or sidecar-motorcycles, but this one is definitely no different. Aside from scavenging for equipment in the field or the possibility of eventual reinforcements, what you start with is what you’ve got – make the best of it. In this instance, the demo mission starts the player off a little ways south of a city, with a whopping three soldiers and an empty tank. The tank is low on fuel and ammunition, so the soldiers hope that some friendlies in the village ahead will have some supplies to help them out. As it turns out, the friendlies are in need of some help of their own, since their position is about to be run over by half the German army, and they have a wounded Colonel in need of evacuation. Hence, your three men step up to plate in a heroic attempt to try and hold the line against overwhelming odds. Weehay! Don’t worry; this kind of thing isn’t going to be typical of the main campaign in the final version, since this is apparently one of the special standalone missions from the game – and, as I quickly learned, unquestionably one of the tougher ones.

Probably one of the hardest things I had to deal with in Soldiers was the interface. Now, I like to think of myself as a particularly perceptive gamer, but a general lack of documentation caused some things to totally elude me until I had attempted the demo mission for the umpteenth time. Add in a very strict time limit (barely a minute passes before the first German attack wave is already on your position), and I found myself more confused, annoyed, and frustrated than anything else. Which really sucked, because this game actually has a really great level of interactivity under the surface – it’s just finding it that turns out to be the hard part. With that in mind, you readers out there can perhaps consider this impressions article to also be a “mini guide” on what can actually be done in this demo and how best to go about trying to win it.

So moving on, the first thing I did upon being informed that a bunch of pissed-off Germans were coming my way was to move my tank up in front of the building containing the wounded soldier, right next to an AT gun. At this point the tank was effectively out of gas (ammunition and fuel levels are fully modeled in the game), so I left two soldiers inside (a gunner and a loader) to leave it as an effective turret, while the third wandered over to a nearby stockpile. Several crates are scattered throughout the demo level containing supplies and weapons - this one in particular holding shells for the AT gun, as well as some extra toys like a pair of Molotov cocktails and a bazooka. By using the “Examine” command on the crate, I ordered my soldier to walk up, and then used the drag-n-drop inventory system to transfer some armor-piercing and high-explosive shells from the crate into my soldier’s hands. The drag-n-drop interface is pretty straightforward, but some strange bugs sometimes make it difficult to use, as the game annoyingly didn’t seem to acknowledge my mouse clicks half the time and would not allow me to “grab” onto an object. Nevertheless, I soon had my soldier’s limited inventory filled to the brim with explosive goodness, which I then transferred over to the nearby AT gun (again with the “Examine” command).

A few distant shots from the friendly AI soldiers (which I had no control over) assisting in the defense signaled that the first wave of Germans had arrived, so I quickly ordered my soldier to mount the freshly-loaded AT gun. Content that my Sherman was positioned adequately to assist in repelling in the assault on its own, I pushed the “End” button on my keyboard to switch to direct control. This is one of the cooler aspects to Soldiers – if you don’t feel that your men are doing a good enough job, you can simply select one and push the End button to enable DC mode and do everything yourself – arrow keys handle movement, while the mouse aims weaponry (a sprint command is badly needed for this – soldiers can run when ordered by double-clicking terrain, but I couldn’t figure out how in direct control mode). In this case, I used the appropriate green box at the bottom of the screen to load in an HE (high explosive) shell, then moved the screen over north, where a few German soldiers were using a ruined vehicle for cover. I popped my cursor over the frame and waited for the aiming indicator to catch up (when in manual control mode, a small dot will follow your cursor around to conveniently indicate the estimated impact point of the weapon you have selected), then clicked. One satisfying second later left the vehicle in utter shambles as it came apart in smoke and flame and enemy soldiers went flying in all directions – I could’ve sworn I even saw a stray arm bouncing around trailing an icky red stream, and all that remained was a couple of survivors stumbling from the wreckage, flailing their arms around due to the unfortunate fact that they happened to be on fire. The amount of detail in Soldiers is insane, and the game holds nothing back in showing the true horrors of war for the sadistic and twisted amusement of the would-be arsonist within us all.

Of course, the fight was far from over – German soldiers kept pouring up the road, only to get cut down by a combination of defensive fire from the AI Allied troops, my immobile Sherman tank’s machinegun, and the occasional HE love from my possessed AT gun. A couple of motorcycles even tried to break through the lines, but were utterly annihilated by the vast explosive arsenal at my disposal and ended up flying far above the terrain before crashing back down in a horrible wreck. A truck drove up the road just out of my reach and started to disgorge troops, but a missed shell from my tank flew past the intended infantry target and actually landed inside the cab of the truck, causing the entire vehicle to go up in a terrific explosion and causing all the nearby enemy soldiers to catch fire or just simply get blown away. Sweet! Unfortunately, my fun came to an end when a nasty enemy tank came rolling in from the west, parked itself on top of a hill, and started hammering away at my Sherman. Despite me switching between AP and HE shells and throwing all my AT gun had to offer at the enemy tank, its frontal armor refused to yield to my might, and all I could do was blow off one of its treads. Since my Sherman was out of gas and there was no way in hell I’d get the AT gun to relocate, I decided to implement a secondary plan. Quickly ordering my soldier out of the AT gun and over to the supply crate, I grabbed a bazooka, stocked up on missiles, set my soldier on “Return Fire” mode, and ran around south of the tank, dodging and weaving enemy fire like crazy. Eventually, I managed to make it behind the enemy tank alive (barely), after which I gingerly yanked out my rocket launcher, switched back to manual control mode, aimed, and crammed a nice missile right up that German deathwagon’s ass. The effect was immediate – flames started shooting out of several of the vehicle’s orifices, and the crew immediately disembarked (some on fire, of course) only to be cut down by my still-functional Sherman. Then a brief calm fell over the battlefield – the first wave had been stopped, but more was still to come.

Seizing the opportunity, I decided now would be a good time to transform my tank from an annoying stationary distraction into something far more dangerous. Past attempts had taught me that it was possible to siphon off fuel from enemy vehicles (even disabled, abandoned ones), provided the adequate tools were available. Using the “Examine” command on the abandoned enemy tank showed it had a gas can inside, which I conveniently tossed into my active inventory (items like gas cans and repair kits have to be put directly into your character’s hands and dropped when a weapon is needed – they can’t be temporarily stored in a backpack like other stuff). Using the new “Siphon” command by clicking on the enemy tank, I grabbed some gas, then slowly ambled over to my Sherman and dumped the fuel inside. Victory! The tank was mobile, and had enough ammunition remaining to make a big dent in the approaching German lines. Electing to keep my handy soldier outside of the tank for escort purposes (a tank can operate with only two soldiers, but will briefly lose mobility or aiming functionality every time it needs to reload as someone switches position to load the next shell or machinegun clip), I decided to park my tank inside of a building to wait in ambush for the next wave, and so headed up the road and stopped at an intersection, where I found a suitable candidate to my right. Blowing a hole in the side of the building with an HE shell effectively collapsed a good portion of the structure, but there was enough left standing that I could remain hidden until the enemy tanks were already past me. The physics in Soldiers are definitely very well done, as building destruction will react in a dynamic manner based on a number of variables rather than just being all pre-scripted – though I found the inability to drive directly through many buildings with my tanks like bulldozers a little disappointing.

Sure enough, the second German wave came in short order, consisting of a huge number of soldiers and two tanks – a sizable Panzer among them. Maneuvering my escort soldier over to the other side of the intersection, I positioned him around the corner and set him to fire at will. In Soldiers, when ordering a soldier to move up near an object, such as tank ruins or a building, a small indicator will appear on the ground indicating that this terrain can be used for cover. When up against the object, the soldier will automatically duck down when being shot at, or lean around corners to fire his weapon when he has the opportunity. In this case, it came in handy for distracting the waves of Germans and the two tanks closing in. Before I could order him to run the hell away, however, one of the tanks zeroed in on my soldier, aimed at the wall he was using for cover, and let rip with an HE shell, causing me to grimace openly as the flying corpse of what used to be my rocket soldier landed several feet away. However, he had done his diversionary job well, and I was blessed with the exposed asses of both tanks as they pushed on to the south, leaving my Sherman with a nice clean shot on both enemy vehicles. Once they had been disabled, I dispatched the remaining crews with ease and turned my attention back north.

Well shit, the Jerries still had one more surprise left in store to ruin my day – a long-range rocket launcher. Quickly I ordered my tank to the north to try and dispatch it before it could take out the building the wounded Colonel was hiding in, but I ended up bogged down by an enemy tank that had appeared in the streets – my mighty crew managed to destroy it before it did too much damage, but one of the treads on my Sherman got blown off, effectively disabling it. Panicking, I told my crew to bail out and run for cover just as a missile landed on it from above, utterly annihilating the tank. Crap! The last remaining option I had involved trying to sneak up to the German rocket crew and take them out by winging over a well-placed grenade, but there were several enemy soldiers stationed in buildings along the street that cut my remaining soldiers down before I could do anything, effectively ending my foray into the demo mission.

I won’t bore you with the details of consequent attempts, but I’ll summarize by stating that I did eventually win – the demo is very difficult, but also highly satisfying once you understand how everything works. That lengthy anecdote effectively demonstrates how the game plays, but there are many things I did not have a chance to delve into – while the game is about trying to get the superior position, assaulting tank platoons from the rear, and just annihilating squads of enemy infantry with explosives in a hilarious and incredibly destructive manner, there is so much else to this game, and a huge number of different ways to go about winning the demo. Mines can be found early on to try and disable enemy vehicles in an easy manner (ensure they are deployed by putting them into your character’s hands and pushing “U” to drop them with the mine cursor, or they won’t arm). Machineguns can actually be removed from tanks and used by infantry in an effective manner. If a repair kit is found (the Sherman the player starts with in the demo actually has one stored in its inventory), disabled enemy vehicles can actually be repeatedly and fully repaired in the field – a bit unrealistic, but it consumes a huge amount of time to get a tank up and running again, so it balances out. Molotov cocktails can even be chucked onto the heaviest of enemy tanks, forcing the crew to get out before the vehicle’s ammunition explodes. Between the vehicles, infantry interaction possibilities, and the additional versatility that the “direct control” mode offers, I had a huge desire to play the demo over and over again just to examine all the different gameplay details.