I'm a big military history buff. I've always wanted a good World War II combat simulator - one where you could do almost anything you wanted, with a great eye towards detail and realism.

Soldiers has that. The graphics are good, but unfortunately, the user interface and the enemy AI take whatever fun there might be out of the game.

I first hit problems after installing. My DVD/CD-RW drive refused to cough up the second disk after it finished - while you need the first disk in to actually play. I had to reboot twice before I could eject it. In addition, after patching, you'll have to reboot again (which is unusual). After patching I also noticed that the game was much slower to boot. The patch was supposed to alleviate some problems including the difficulty one I mention below but I saw no change.

You see some of the problems in the training. I was amazed at the level of detail when it came to combat and vehicles. Not only does it keep track of things such as fuel and ammo for vehicles, but the vehicle damage system is very realistic. Shooting, say, a fuel truck with an armor-piercing round and a high explosive round has a much different effect, just as your choice of where to shoot the fuel truck will affect the outcome. Use an AP round on the cab of the truck and you'll disable it, leaving the fuel tank intact, but put an HE round into the back of it and you'll get a large fireball.

The terrain is also completely reactive to effects. You can put small holes in the walls with some weapons, or completely level a building with high explosives or by driving your tank through them. If you have extra fuel, you can even set the grass on fire.

After you finish playing with the effects, though, you'll find the various problems. Objectives are given to you with no hint of where to go next or how to do them. Often your next waypoint will be a poorly-marked sergeant standing way off the side of the screen. In the final mission, you have to sneak through broken terrain and avoid two guards. Never is shown how much the guards can see, and the camera does not get close enough to make it readily apparent where they are facing. Thus, it quickly becomes an exercise in frustration.

The controls are fairly basic and often get in the way more than help. Almost every command can be done either by keyboard or by the interface on the screen. In addition, you can take direct control of a single unit by hitting the "END" key.

Direct interface is necessary, especially when controlling armored units. Unfortunately, you aim where your mouse points, so don't rely on using it to do things like switch ammo types or other actions - if you do, your aim point will move towards the bottom of the screen, and the slow moving turrets, while realistic, will lose their bearing just when (often times) you need them the most. In addition, movement is done by the arrow keys, which can be frustrating for any PC gamer used to the more conventional (these days) "WASD" movement scheme.

The campaigns and bonus missions don't make things better.

Each campaign starts with a long animated sequence explaining the situation. You select the difficulty and then get a quick fly-over of the battleground.

Mission difficulty doesn't appear to affect how difficult the mission actually is. I'm not the greatest gamer in the world, but I repeatedly got slaughtered on even the Easy setting.

In addition to the above issues, the missions are often set up in a contrived manner. The first British mission, for example, puts you by yourself in the ocean, having just been dropped off your boat. You have to, by yourself, take out the searchlights and scuttle the patrol boat. If the search lights see you or the boat, you have a 15 minute timer going down. Sometimes the lights see the boat randomly before you even get off of it - which means you're immediately dodging guard fire. There is no clear indication of where you can get on-shore, and the whole mission feels more like a first person shooter level than an RTS level.

The "bonus" missions - which are actually just single piece missions - aren't any better. Some start you off immediately with a timer going down and vague instructions which are often incorrect. You get no information on the mission itself so it's up to you to play it over and over again until you can figure it out. Others will sometimes have all of your soldiers killed before you even have a chance to move more than a few feet.

A real-time strategy game, even one with no economy like this one, is about the conflicts between various units. Placing one man against an enemy platoon, or setting up contrived situations with no explanations, turns the game into a first person shooter or a puzzle game. That's not what I play a World War II real-time strategy game for. Soldiers: Heroes of World War II is unfortunately an amazing engine encumbered with a poorly-thought out user interface, spectacularly poorly-documented missions and campaigns, and an incredibly ruthless AI.

Discuss this Review in Our Forums