Review by: Dave VanDyk

The current state of the gaming industry is what makes releases like The Tomorrow War all the more painful to bear. The concept is easy enough to love - a complex-looking space sim with (optional) Newtonian physics, a detailed interactive cockpit view with nifty gadgets like a 'fire extinguisher' button, and a verbose set of missions that take you through the depths of space, onto a planet's surface, and back into orbit again, all in real-time.

Based on the Russian trilogy by writers under the collective pen name of Alexander Zorich, the game promises a complex, interwoven plot that portrays the fight between two factions: The United Earth Empire, and Konkordia. Naturally along the way, players will face unexpected encounters with pirate and alien fleets, engage in huge space battles, and have a chance to interact with a large number of characters to learn more about the game's backstory.

At least, that's the hype. I knew that my lack of personal familiarity with the "Tomorrow War" novels would place me at a bit of an initial disadvantage in understanding the game's plot, so I was anticipating a verbose introduction to help me get into the swing of things. Unfortunately, this was where the game's faults became evident: the translation. I'm unsure if there's some kind of secret rule that each and every space game to come from the Russian to American markets has to be cursed with a half-assed translation, but sadly The Tomorrow War is no exception. While the actual lines of dialogue are at least somewhat sensible, the voice talent reading the lines is composed mostly of native Russian speakers whom have great difficulty conveying dialogue with emotion and clear wording. The result is that most of the game's cutscenes and dialogue left me unclear and even somewhat amused at what should have otherwise been an exciting and dark story about a desperate fight for survival.

This sets the stage for a game that takes you from mission to mission with promises of more cutscenes, plot, dialogue, and NPC interaction, but ultimately just gives you a headache trying to keep up with it all. Since the real meat of the game should rest with the space combat segments however, I would be more than willing to write this off as a comparatively minor problem if the rest of the game's presentation was solid in comparison. Alas, while fast-paced, explosive space combat does offer quite a few good moments, it's still very easy to come away with the feeling that things just could have been done so much better.