There’s absolutely no question that the “World War 2” genre is in little danger of dying – particularly given the releases over the course of this year. Of course there are the noteworthy titles like Company of Heroes and Call of Duty 3, but another slightly quieter release that has slipped out is Faces of War. In fact, both Faces of War and Company of Heroes look to be going neck-and-neck with one another, as both are real-time strategy titles and are placed from a fully 3D interactive environment, laden with physics objects and masses of troops and vehicles – but I also feel each game is different enough that they each have the potential to stand on their own merits as very enjoyable games. Let’s dig into Faces of War and how it portrays yet another venture into the historical battlefields.

Like its predecessor (Soldiers: Heroes of WW2 - I’m assuming the sudden name change was due to licensing concerns and the different publisher), Faces of War takes place over a variety of battles from World War 2, and plays in a very similar manner. However, unlike Soldiers, the battles in Faces of War aren’t quite as ‘connected’ to one another. Whereas the last game involved the stories of small groups of men from each of the four factions and their struggles during the conflict – often behind enemy lines - Faces of War now focuses on much more intense and direct action in a front-line basis. This change is very noticeable just from the first mission, which I’m actually sorry to say is heavily scripted and not very flexible. I bring this up as an important point, because one thing I absolutely adored about the game’s previous iteration was how stunningly open-ended each mission was; players had a set of objectives, but were not really limited in how they could complete it. Either going directly for the objective, or breaking off in a totally arbitrary direction to steal an enemy tank and blast through their defenses were two totally acceptable options. This often isn’t the case for Faces of War, where many of the missions put you along a linear path of event, and trying to deviate gives you either roadblocks, or instant death. Of course that was until I noticed there were two missions sets; one for the main campaign (there are actually three campaigns – German, American, and Russian), and a set of secondary ‘special operations’ levels – these extra missions often had much more freedom on par with the original game.

Let me get into more specific detail for those who have never played Soldiers in the past, however. This game focuses on getting up close and personal with individual soldiers – there is no base-building or general recruitment involved. Rather, players are focused entirely on accomplishing the unique objectives set before them using any of the finite resources they can get their hands on, including enemy weapons, ammo, armor, and other equipment stolen in the field. In fact, “salvage” is probably one of this game’s greatest novelties, as there is no greater feeling than disabling an enemy tank, and then using a repair kit to patch it back up again so that you can plow through their own lines using it. The really cool part augmenting this is that each vehicle and soldier has its own inventory, so it’s incredibly easy to turn a basic officer with a pop-gun into a rampaging pyromaniac (providing you can get the right equipment). It’s unrealistic, sure, but also offers a great deal of fun and replayability. An additional novelty is the game’s “Direct Control” feature – at any time players can hit the “End” button to assume total control of a given unit, with the mouse handling aiming and the keyboard doing movement and other functions. This is especially fun when controlling a tank and manipulating all of the different weapons installed onboard.

And that effectively sums the game up – kill the enemy, salvage their equipment, and accomplish your objectives using any means possible. However, my earlier complaints about the campaign scripting really bog this experience down, as I often felt rushed through the game from one cutscene to the next (forced cutscenes no less, which ripped control away from my cunning tactical strategies to show me something that wasn’t really that critical – this was often near-catastrophic when I was using the game’s direct control mode). However, this is offset by some rather impressive AI scripting the developers have implemented to make what initially seems like a micro-management nightmare something that is actually a very simple process. By default, soldiers under the player’s command are set to a “Free Movement” and “Fire At Will” mode – and this means that they’ll automatically maneuver through the environment, get out of the way of grenades thrown at them (thank god), and automatically switch weapons as needed, such as deploying anti-tank grenades or bazookas against enemy armor. These behavioral settings can also be changed depending on the situation calls for, and players can also combine multiple soldiers into a single “squad”, which will stick together and use the equipment they have available to carry out any given orders as efficiently as possible. The sad part is that, while this concept works great on paper, the execution is a little… lackluster. In fact, if anything my major complaint would be that the developers introduced too much autonomy into the system. I really do prefer to take my time when setting up an assault on an enemy position, but I always had to take extra time to reel my soldiers in and set them to fixed positions, otherwise they’d often charge into battle. But it’s even worse when I’d tell my sniper to pick off a specific target he had in clear view, and instead he’d pull out a grenade and run out into the open to throw it, rather than staying safely behind cover and using his rifle properly.

Other than these issues however, the game is still very enjoyable to play – it’s really satisfying taking advantage of the game’s dynamic cover system to lay down a cross-fire or annihilate their armor support, and the game’s graphics really help bring the battlefield to life. Everything in the environment has a beautiful and exquisite level of texture detail, combined with some very pleasing animations. And of course there is the physics system – just about every object in the game has some form of physics property attached, which makes blowing up enemy tanks extra-satisfying (and sometimes hilarious – there’s nothing better than popping the turret off of a tank and watching the rest of it continue to drive around helplessly until you finish it off). This leads to some really cool creative options – in one example, I used my own tank as a bulldozer to push enemy wreckage forwards and navigate a minefield unscathed. Or in another mission requiring the destruction of a bridge, it’s possible to lay down a field of shells and explosive and set off a ridiculous chain reaction. Though the physics system does have its quirks; try driving a tank over the edge of a cliff, and you might end up watching it spontaneously go flying dozens of feet into the air for no apparent reason before it settles down without a scratch. Mapping oversight, or lazy implementation? You decide.

Sadly, this process comes at a heavy cost. Bear in mind that my system is by no means underpowered – an AMD 3700+ processor with an ATI X1800XL graphics card and two gigabytes of RAM should be more than sufficient to handle most modern games effectively. However, Faces of War has shipped with some glaring optimization issues that cause the framerates to dip as low as the single-digit range any time a heavy amount of physics processing is in place – such as, for example, driving a tank through a building. In fact, the game in general runs pretty sluggish overall as soon as the action heats up, and this is hardly an isolated issue; a quick hop on the official community forums will yield scores of users complaining about the same thing. A patch is in the works to (hopefully) fix this, but regardless I still feel the need to complain openly about how a serious problem like this could have gotten through the game’s testing process, and if they really never noticed it was running so slowly.

This problem seems even more pronounced in multiplayer, where the vast contrast in gameplay speeds appears to cause instability and synchronization issues. Which is a damn shame, because multiplayer is actually supposed to be one of the better elements to the title. Not only does the game offer full co-op play (always a major plus), but there are also a wide variety of maps and gameplay modes, ranging from the basic free-for-all matches to more elaborate modes like “Front Line”, where a defending team of players tries to fight off the attackers, gradually falling back as each point is captured (kind of like Enemy Territory) or “Chicken Hunt”, where two teams fight to steal as many chickens as possible from the crazed Wardens guarding them (armed with shotguns no less, whom are very difficult to take down). While these modes are especially fun to play in a team-based environment, the stability problems really detract from the experience. Curiously, while the previous multiplayer options in Soldiers focused around a currency-based system for buying units and vehicles, “time” is now the main resource Faces of War , and players can only purchase a given number of units within a specific time frame before needing to wait for the respective meters to “recharge”. The system doesn’t work too badly in practice, but I don’t quite understand why they changed it when the old system worked so well (and as a testament, I’m noticing one of the changes as part of the upcoming patch is to put the old system back in – possibly due to public outcry?) and this change doesn’t quite feel like a balancing improvement – but that’s just my personal opinion.

If there’s one tremendous flaw Faces of War is most guilty of, it’s a poorly-planned release date. In fact, taking this into account, I find it very surprising that the game shipped out with so many bugs, when a few extra months of development could have not only nailed these problems, but also given it much more visibility. Instead, the ill-timed release of this game has placed it into direct competition with Company of Heroes, which will undoubtedly have an impact on the game’s sales. I hate saying this, because Faces of War ultimately offers a very cool and fun approach to World War 2 combat, that I especially approve of thanks to the direct control mode and co-op gameplay, and it’s incredibly unfortunate that the experience has to be marred by these deluge of technical problems. Once they are fixed I won’t hesitate to recommend the game, but for now, gamers on a budget (and particularly a less-than-powerful system) trying to decide which WW2 strategy title to invest in might want to fall back on Company of Heroes. But my original point about each game being unique enough to stand on their respective merits still applies, and those looking for a bit of a different approach to the basic RTS formula (plus co-op play) will definitely want to check out Faces of War - at the least once it gets a patch.