Silent Storm, upon being released, was a really cool game. As a turn-based strategy title based in a kind of "alternate timeline" WW2 setting, the game offered strategic gameplay with a huge variety of weapons, soldier classes, and tactical depth, but also had an amazing 3D graphics engine with an impressive level of physics detail. Not only were all bodies a part of the game's ragdoll calculations upon becoming corpses, but the excellent building dynamics allowed explosions to literally take a structure down piece-by-piece in a totally unscripted manner. Basically, as far as gameplay and graphics engine went, Silent Storm was a totally awesome title.

What the hell does this have to do with Codemasters' new title? When I think of Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2 (SHoWW2), I now find myself referring to it as "Silent Storm, in real-time format". This is hardly a negative comment, as seeing the raw amount of detail Silent Storm contained put into a much more flexible real-time gaming environment is enough to cause the gaming geek within me to cry out in ecstasy, and this review will cover why SHoWW2 kicks so much ass – and also why it doesn't, though thankfully there’s a bit more of the former than the latter.

But first, the bad. SHoWW2 is among the wave of games shipped with integrated "Star Force 3" protection. While this has had the surprising advantage of offsetting the chance of the game being openly pirated (to date, I've actually seen zero evidence of any kind of cracked version of the game floating around, a surprise given how most games are usually out in the "underground" scene before even hitting store shelves), the game's copy protection has also proved to be a severe hindrance. For starters, it appears to be totally impossible to make any kind of backup copy of the game without jumping through a dozen or so flaming hoops, and trying to play the game in a LAN environment forced me to get up and hot-swap the game disc between the CD drives of the different computers in the room every time somebody needed to launch. After installation, the game also forces you to restart so that the new Star Force protection drivers can be initialized, and will absolutely refuse to run until this is done (while having the Star Force software pack casually slipped onto their system during installation with absolutely no prompt or notice may understandably annoy some gamers, the developers have alleviated the complaints by personally insisting that the drivers do no harm and don't report back home to Big Brother like some versions of the SF copy protection do).

But one of the biggest problems I encountered though was in the game's CD key-based protection system. Unlike most other games, my SHoWW2 discs came in flimsy paper sleeves rather than a jewel case, which utterly failed to provide the CD key sequence I needed to get the game to launch. In fact, the CD key could not be found in the manual, nor on the CD itself, and I had to physically pull the box apart and dig around before I finally noticed a casual, tiny slip of paper with the key printed on. Annoyed, I had to dig up a real jewel case and scribble the key down onto a label just to make sure it wouldn't get lost. But here’s the real kicker – the key for each and every copy of SHoWW2 is exactly the same (check the Codemasters' forums – the key has actually been officially posted online, with slight variations between the US and UK versions of the game), making me wonder what the hell the point was to making me go through that whole charade in the first place. I hate to go off on a long-winded rant about something as feeble as copy protection, but this entire process did nothing but irritate me and make me want to stab whomever came up with the system, especially now that I can't just rip an ISO of the game disc and mount it so I don't have to fish up my disc every time I want to play. Dear Star Force: Go to hell. Signed: Dave.

After all the copy protection hassles are out of the way, the game opens up to the main menu (as most titles are typically prone of doing) with a neat engine-rendered 3D backdrop showing off the game environment, panning around a destroyed tank while some soldiers and vehicles mobilize in the background. There's a good number of options to play with, such as a variety of graphical settings to help scale the game up or down to accommodate your system and the ability to re-bind any control the game utilizes, but the game also offers a built-in "Mods" menu for manually activating third-party customizations to the game engine on the fly – something I'll cover more of later. The main focus of SHoWW2's development has been on the singleplayer aspect, which encompasses four separate campaigns, with Russian, British, American, and German sides being represented respectively over the course of several missions per campaign. The storyline in the game focuses on specific parts of the war for the purpose of each campaign, and the exploits of small groups of soldiers out to try and make a difference. Each mission opens up with a brief narrated introduction on the current situation, then once the player chooses a difficulty level and the game finishes loading, a slightly more thorough briefing is provided to get the player on task about what to do. The way these briefings were presented actually reminded me a little of the famous "Commandos" series from Eidos, but the presentation isn't quite as thorough, leaving players with only a basic description on what to do. Thankfully, an objective listing can be brought up at any time during gameplay to review what needs to be done.

But let's get on with the actual gameplay. While SHoWW2 focuses on utilizing a small team to accomplish your objectives, the game isn't at all class-based or reliant on any RPG elements. Each soldier in the game is the same as the other, in that he can carry and use the same weapons with equal proficiency as anybody else. While this removes a certain level of complexity that might have been neat for this kind of game, it allows a lot more flexibility for setting up a team exactly the way you want it, and also allows you the chance to still pull success out of a hopeless situation if most of your men are wiped out, since there's nothing stopping Private Jerry from picking up a bazooka or MG-34 and using them to the best of his abilities. Every soldier in a given mission has his own little unique inventory that can be modified on the fly through a convenient drag-and-drop interface, although specific inventory loadouts for your own units are pre-assigned when a mission begins. Basically, soldiers have such limited inventory space that players have to make hard choices on what kind of role a given soldier should undertake – will you throw on an MG34, along with several boxes of ammo and a couple of grenades, or take a smaller SMG or pistol to make room for that bazooka, and it's respective rockets? Actual inventory management is done via a simple pop-up dialogue, with a lower array of boxes being an overall representation of a soldier's backpack, pockets, holsters, and other stuff for storing unselected weapons and other items, while a paper doll image is used to directly put a weapon into a soldier's hands, or even put on or take off a helmet (which does have some use – helmets can save from headshot-kills, but will go bouncing and flying across the battlefield after a direct hit).

Unfortunately, a few problems make inventory management between soldiers a little more confusing and clumsy than it has to be. One major issue is the handling of multiple weapons. Say Sgt. Peters over there has a Thompson in his hands, but his inventory is filled with scattered boxes of ammo, grenades, and a medical kit for good measure. Sgt. Peters suddenly spies a rocket launcher and runs over to pick it up, but ends up dropping his Thompson in the process – something the controlling player probably won’t notice until he actually needs it again. Why was the Thompson dropped? Because there wasn’t enough open space in his inventory for the weapon to be stored in the soldier’s “backpack”, causing him to automatically leave it behind. This seems like a menial arrangement until you notice it carries over to weapon switching too – if you have a Thompson in your hands and enough room to store the bazooka in your backpack, but don’t actually have enough space left to put the Thompson away into your backpack at the same time, then when you go to switch to the bazooka, the Thompson will still be dropped, even though switching to the bazooka cleared enough space in the soldier’s backpack to simply swap the two weapons. And this even applies to mounting vehicles, because troops will automatically try to put their weapons away when hopping in, and will be left behind if there’s no space – again, for you not to notice until you’re way over on the other side of the map wondering where the hell your sidearm went.

Secondly, a slightly more complicated affair is troop persistence between missions. Several missions in the game actually carry over information on how many men you had left alive and what kind of equipment they were carrying, but there’s no indication on when these kind of mission transitions actually occur, and if you happen to lose in the new mission and select “Restart” from the menu rather than loading a save game, your personally-assembled group of men and equipment will be reset to stock values designated in the mission design. It’s a really strange way of doing things, and I like the idea of persistence between missions, but I really wish there was a better indication on when it would and would not occur (I actually carried the same trio of men and equipment through several missions before suddenly having them reset for no apparent reason when the next one began) so I’d know if I should spend several minutes looting the battlefield for the best equipment before moving on or not.

But I haven’t really discussed how this game actually plays yet. The game is definitely a point-and-click RTS title, but there are a few modifications that set it apart from just being a C&C: Generals or Commandos clone. One fine example is the context-sensitive cursor, which performs specific actions differently based on the given location. Issuing a standard move order on open terrain will simply tell the soldier to hoof it to that location, but bumping the cursor up against a wall or corner will result in a unique icon appearing on the terrain, indicating that the soldier can use that object for directional cover. Foliage gets the same treatment, causing soldiers moving under it to kneel or go prone when a stealthy approach is demanded. The cursor will dynamically figure out what objects on the map can be used for cover too, so even debris from a tank or other vehicle is viable to have your soldier execute the “cover” action, causing him to automatically duck down behind the obstacle when being shot at, poking up to fire back only when a window presents itself. The other stand-out element (and definitely the coolest of the two) is the direct control system. At any time when a single unit is selected, a button can be pushed to enter direct control mode, which causes the mouse to act as an aiming cursor for the selected unit’s weapons and the arrow keys controlling movement. While this doesn’t offer the same range of motions as the standard control system (you can’t have a soldier actively “use” cover in this mode – you have to get him in position first via the normal way, and despite being able to tell a soldier to “run” at the cost of increased stamina drain by double-clicking in normal mode, this is not possible in DC mode), the increased flexibility in making sure your shots are delivered on-target and ensuring your men are in the exact position and facing they should be makes the direct control system an awesome addition to the game.

Of course, another heavy aspect to unit control is AI. Direct control can alleviate some of the problems related to this sort of thing, but it is both hard and inefficient to tackle the entire game this way – partially due to the control limitations mentioned above, but there are other reasons too. In any case, the AI in Soldiers: Heroes of WW2 is both excellent and mind-numbingly idiotic. The developers clearly had a straight idea on what they wanted to do and how to go about doing it, but they also left some concepts out in the ultimate execution. The good: infantry are, for the most part, smart. They will actually automatically run away from grenades flung their way or oncoming vehicles trying to squish them (a major first in RTS gaming as far as I’m concerned, given the constant complaints on this sort of thing that stem from other games), generally have a decent idea of how to take cover on their own accord if not in the default “hold position” mode, and will actually try to seek new and better cover nearby if their current shelter is destroyed. Pathfinding is pretty good all around, with men and vehicles alike able to wander through rather complicated areas with ease (although to their credit, tanks can generally plow right through most navigational hazards rather than having to work their way around them). But the system is far from perfect. I noticed my soldiers commonly did a bad job when it came to returning fire, as they would commonly only fire a couple of shots off at a time, even if a target was in plain sight, and this eventually offered me the reflex action of switching briefly to direct control mode to manually lay down a field of fire before the enemy got too close. Also, I would sometimes issue an order for a soldier to move somewhere, look away, and then come back to find him running around burning to death because he wandered directly into a blazing fire without any regard for his own well-being. But the one big issue that really pissed me off was the AI’s choice for target selection. This problem was especially noticeable in vehicles (tanks, in particular) and caused me to question if my soldiers weren’t being trained a little too hard, as a seemingly random aggression problem causes them to gun down a distant infantryman, and then waste an entire extra clip of machinegun ammo attempting to ventilate the corpse until it literally turns into kibbles. The only way to bypass this was to either manually tell the vehicle to attack something else, or use the direct control interface.