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Review:

24th September 2002:
Sudden Strike II
Command hundreds of soldiers, strategically position tanks, signal air strikes and decide who wins the war - all from the comfort of your own home.
Posted by Marc Hull - PC - UK and Europe

Although war films are woefully plentiful, often black and white and a little worse for wear these days, war games are relatively few and far between. Eidos' Commandos series tried to recreate the feeling of going behind enemy lines with mixed success - it was a good game, with varied missions and plenty of skills to learn, but commanding four men is nothing like sending armies of soldiers to fight for their country. So, on the other side of things, we have the Sudden Strike series, where you take hundreds of men into no-man's land, coordinating your units tactically to get as much of an advantage as possible for when the next massive battle breaks out.

Sudden Strike II lets you take control of German, Russian, British, American or Japanese troops and complete a range of historically accurate missions. While each unit may not have the depth of skills as those seen in Commandos, there's a very wide range of different types to choose from, including machine gunners, snipers, engineers and even kamikaze units, that all have their own particular abilities and must be used wisely. Although all infantry can do basic tasks such as dive for cover or fortify buildings to reduce damage, one of the main parts of the game is getting to know each ones special skill, such as bazooka units that can take down tanks, commandos who can fire flares to signal air strikes, and engineers who can lay mines. There are also many different vehicles in the game, including trucks, jeeps, tanks, motorbikes, trains, ships and aircraft, allowing you to recreate ground, sea and air attacks, although these also require special forms of infantry to drive them.

Finally, there's the artillery, which include anti-tank cannons, howitzers and mortars. These can inflict lots of damage on an advancing enemy force, but usually require two men to operate, and are very slow to move. However, if you've managed to take control of some trucks, you can hook up some artillery to them and move it across the terrain more quickly, although while attached they cannot be fired. Quite often you'll find that missions require knowledge of many different types of artillery, vehicles and infantry for you to succeed, such as an early level where you have to take over enemy infantry, transport it using trucks to a nearby town, and then position it strategically so that it will defend the town against an enemy attack.

Those of you expecting a Command and Conquer style game may be suprised; Sudden Strike II isn't about simply building up a massive army of soldiers and sending them into battle, instead it's about using the resources available to you to complete your missions. Back in World War II they didn't have the luxury of taking a hundred tanks to wipe out a small enemy installation, and so neither do you. Often it may seem like things are unfairly stacked against you, but you can be sure that everything you need to complete your task is either given to you at the start, or available in the surrounding area. Sometimes it's worth just scouting around in villages and fields to find abandoned vehicles, or attack an enemy installation off-mission just to use their weapons and ammunition.

The environments in Sudden Strike II may not be in 3D, but are very detailed, pre-rendered 2D landscapes, which are viewed from an isometric perspective. The sense of scale is pretty good, with a single unit being only a tiny collection of pixels, but in numbers making a formidable army. Vehicles are also accurately represented, and range from small jeeps to massive cruisers, and quite often there's action going on around you, like air strikes, that help to make you feel as if you're in part of a battlefield. My only real concern in the graphics department is with the animation, where the infantry seem to run quite jerkily, and some units turn less smoothly than you'd like, and also the game's similarities to the original, which seems to use the same engine.

For sound, the game has a variety of effects that kick in during battles, and these fade in and out depending on which section of the map you're viewing. Your units also have a limited number of speech bites that play when you select them, and vehicles also sound fairly realistic when moving across the terrain. For music, there are several tracks of varying themes, so there are bound to be some that you like and some that you don't, but none of them are too imposing, and you have the option to turn down the music volume if you don't like them. My only real gripe with the sound is that the music tracks are played in a set order, and not to match the on-screen action. So, instead of playing tense music when you're sneaking up on an unsuspecting convoy, and action music when in a full-scale attack, you get whatever happens to be next in the playlist, which sometimes sounds a bit out of place.

Sudden Strike II contains five campaigns to be completed compared to the original's three, and overall there are an impressive forty different missions to finish. The sheer number of selectable units, and their different skills, mean that hours can be spent simply experimenting, and even once the single-player side has been finished, the game offers a multiplayer mode over the Internet or a LAN to further prolong the enjoyment. For gameplay, the pre-mission explanations give you set objectives to be fulfilled, so the game rarely feels daunting, but you're also given the freedom to tackle these objectives in whatever way you see fit. There's also a difficulty setting, which on the 'Recruit' mode will allow even complete newcomers to the genre to get to grips with the game, while the 'General' setting will offer experienced players a challenge.

However, the one main problem the game seems to suffer from is with its unit control. Quite often, you'll need a certain unit to complete a certain task, such as the Commando who will signal an air strike when you reach a certain building. Unfortunately, with each unit being so small, it becomes very difficult distinguishing one from another, especially when you've got a couple of hundred men under your command. This is made even worse when the unit you want is inside a vehicle, operating some artillery or inside a building, since you can't even see them, so the only way to find them is to click on every vehicle, piece of artillery and building in the vicinity to bring up its unit list until you find the elusive man. Of course, after a while you'll remember to set aside important units from the beginning, or split your men into groups to help keep track of them, but for the first few missions it can be quite frustrating.

Overall, Sudden Strike II finds a nice balance between historical accuracy, realism and fun, providing one of the best war games currently on the market. It has a few niggling problems, and isn't visually spectacular, but fans of the original game will no doubt find plenty of enjoyment from this sequel.

Marc Hull

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Review Summary:

Although graphically the same as its prequel, Sudden Strike II does improve upon many areas, by adding fifty new types of unit and increasing the length of the single-player game to forty missions. Despite some minor gameplay problems, this is still worth getting.

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