Let’s start with the name. Arms to Victory? What does that even mean? Arms for Victory I’d understand, though it would still be stupid. A random game title generator couldn’t have come up with a more awkward use of nouns. This sort of awkwardness permeates the game, in fact. Though it is probably the best game in the inexplicably popular Sudden Strike series, Arms to Victory is too uneven to recommend to any but hardcore enthusiasts.
The “3” in the title is for the third dimension as much as it is for the third iteration. Arms to Victory is the first fully 3D game in the series, and it makes a big difference. The battlefield comes alive in a way that it didn’t in the earlier games. The deformable terrain convincingly responds to bombs and artillery fire, hills provide nice vantage points for artillery. The tiny soldiers realistically scramble for cover as shells burst around them.
Of course, 3D here means a realistic scale, so a medium sized hill means tiny, tiny men. Too tiny to make out easily. Which one is a rifleman and which one is anti-tank? Where did that medic go? The only way to figure out which soldier is which is to activate the unit icons. This, however, clutters up the screen. So your choices are hovering blocks that ruin how the game looks, guesswork as to which unit is which or switching back and forth between modes. There are no good solutions.
You might think that this could be remedied by zooming in on your soldiers but the battlefield is confusing enough as it is. The maps are as big as the soldiers and tanks are small so you can only see a small piece of territory at any moment. This makes coordinating a war plan more difficult than it should be. The minimap will point out the major topographical features and objectives, but the enemies are just a mass of red dots. You have no idea what to expect until you get the troops on your main screen and even then it’s as if they are camouflaged from your view. Greens and browns blend into more greens and browns, which makes sense for a real war but if you can see them on the minimap you should be able to see them on your monitor as well.
Fortunately, your own soldiers are actually pretty good at holding their own without you holding their hand. So long as you don’t move too quickly or get too ambitious with your assault, your army can find its own cover and even slowly advance without a whole lot of micromanagement. They won’t be effective enough to just leave alone forever, but you can spend you time carefully moving on one front without a lot of fear.
The problems arise when you need to reach your objectives quickly or when your enemy starts counterattacking. It becomes very difficult to manage everything at once and when you have to face airstrikes in one place, an ammo shortage in another and the flaming wreckage of your tanks in a third, you immediately learn the importance of focusing your efforts and attention on a narrow band of motion. You can’t just jump around from one action point to another, and, if you are on the offensive, a cautious advance followed by holding the line for a while is the only real alternative.
The game has ammo and fuel shortages, adding a nice supply element. An overstretched supply line becomes vulnerable and gives the weaker side an alternative to pushing back with fewer troops. Hit the ammo dumps or resupply trucks and you might be able to outlast the enemy. If the trucks are near empty guns, they will reload them automatically, but as the game goes on, it increasingly becomes a micromanaging nightmare unless you remember to back up your advance with the goods you’ll need to keep moving.
This could make Arms to Victory an interesting wargame, but the interface limits and eye-straining visuals make it a greater exercise in frustration than it should be. Though the look has been updated, the same attention has not been paid to the advances in UI. The more stuff a player has to pay attention to, the more options he/she should have to follow the action. The limited zoom, poor sound cues and negligible in game help turn an amazing sprawling canvas of action into a dull chore.
