War Front does not employ this tactic in any way, shape, or form. Their alternate history exists as its own being, using only the initial framework and generic "real world" technology levels of WWII before quickly striking off into their own realm of fun characters and fancy sci-fi gizmos! It's like a root beer float, you know? The vanilla ice cream floats on TOP of the root beer, except for that really good "frozen vanilla root beer" section where the two meet. Yeah ... War Front is like that - and apparently I'm hungry.

ANYWAYS - on to the game! What I'd like to do is break down War Front as an RTS (that's a 'Real Time Strategy' game, if you don't have an Acronym-a-nomicon) and consider each of the various things that I look for when I play one. This list generally includes: visual appeal, campaign plot and fun, multiplayer fun, and some of the various concepts that the game uses when considering combat units and strategy/tactics/game balance. In addition, I'll add my usual input on game performance, system requirements, and other little bits of the tech stuff that nobody really WANTS to hear about - but we should probably consider anyways. I think of it as the glass for the root beer float ... we don't CARE about the glass, really, but licking root beer and vanilla ice cream off of the counter is unsanitary, so we should probably make sure we've got it covered.

Let's tackle the easy one first, and go for the visuals! Bluntly put, the visuals are very well done where there is the ability to do so. Artillery pieces launch screaming rockets from angled launch tubes, flamethrowers spout jets of fire to toast little infantrymen, bombers soar over the landscape to blow stuff up - it's all very frantic, warlike, and cool! Explosions are particularly well done, so if you get something to go "BOOM", you might want to actually take a sec and watch it do so. Obviously, there's a respectable amount of visual detail in this game, but artists can only do so much with "tank turns its turret and blows the bejeebies out of another tank" or "soldier kneels down and starts shooting his machine gun at other soldiers", and I'll not deny that there's a fair amount of that. Buildings are well done, and if I found some of them indistinct, it can only be blamed on my habit of switching back and forth amongst the factions to the point where I can barely remember if I'm looking for an Allied weapons depot or a German tank factory. Disctinct enough or not, it's fun to watch little soldiers training in the barracks and the hum of my power plants makes me happy, knowing that my factories are merrily churning out tools with which my enemies will be BLOW'D UP! Hah! You can zoom in and out to achieve the view that suits you best, and recentering the camera on its home angle is only a button press away. The overall effect makes you feel like something is always going on, wherever you look, and that's a good thing. I think the visual designers for War Front have achieved a good balance between entertaining and cluttered or confusing, and they deserve a pat on the back.

The campaign is where the hero personalities are introduced and developed, and (like many RTS games) where you first get your hands on the various branches of your blossoming tech tree. Extending my root beer float analogy, I'm going to have to call the campaign vanilla. It's a good vanilla - but it's going to perform like most of the other campaigns you've ever played. Exterminate various bases and structures, survive for X amount of time, escort a convoy to its escape, destroy a convoy before it escapes - all of your favorites are here. Additionally, your typical strategies for battling scenario-based AI opponents hold true. Integrate static defenses in your base and keep a small, mobile defense force handy. Build a main attack column and make sure it can defend itself against specialty units. Once said column is sufficiently big, roll in and thump through your scenario objectives. It's good stuff, it really is, but I found myself blasting through campaign levels to advance the story so I could see what was happening with the various heroes I had at my disposal. The single thing that really stood out to me as "truly excellent" was the minimap management - where all of your main and secondary objectives were clearly marked for you to see and plan around. It doesn't say "destroy the oil rigs to the northeast", it says "destroy THESE oil rigs to the northeast" and provides you with icons to show you exactly where they are. Bravo!

Next up is the multiplayer ... ahhh, the multiplayer. A beverage brewer once told me that root beer is a very complex drink, and a lot went into perfecting his home recipe. Yes, we're back to root beer floats. If the campaign was vanilla, multiplayer in War Front completes our float by being deep and varied. A lot of this is accomplished using unit choice, which I'll get to next, so I'll attempt to give you some of the more generic highlights that make the mulitplayer matches that I found so much fun. First up is the speed. The battle is up and running fairly fast, if you want, but you can also set anti-rush timers if you're one of those folks that likes to build up a bit before the carnage starts. Transportation plays a big part in multiplayer matches, because unit mortality is quite high. It's really tough to build an attack force and set out to do your works. You're going to need constant reinforcements for that assault group, and you'd better have a good way of getting them where they need to go! Resource management is fairly low, and I didn't ever spend a lot of time worrying about my economy. Then there are the game modes: deathmatch style games, conquest style games, and a great mode called "secret orders". Want to simply blow away your foes? You're set! Want to worry about ground objectives and such? Head off for a conquest game! Want to play sneaky-sneaky with your friends and bring social engineering into the mix while you try to accomplish your secret goal before anyone else finishes theirs? Secret orders is a ball! For me, these skirmishes are where the game really shines. I can't put it any simpler than "There are a lot of ways to accomplish what you want, but you better pick one fast and get to it!"

A bit about unit balance and game strategy...

War Front is tremendously "rock, paper, scissors" in terms of unit balance. Anti-air units simply EAT aircraft, whilst infantry dies in droves when faced with anything designed to shred groups of softies. Take those same squishies and give them some rockets, and suddenly they're blowing up vehicles by the dozen. What you're presented with, in essence, is a potency and a carrier. Generic potencies include anti-vehicle, anti-infantry, anti-aircraft, and anti-building, and the obvious carriers that are paired with them are vehicles, infantry, aircraft, and buildings (turrets). Thus, if your opponent has anti-infantry vehicles in the field, you are best served by anti-vehicle {planes, turrets, vehicles}. If he's launching tankbuster aircraft, then get out some air fighters! It's all about maximizing your potency by delivering it in a form that minimizes your foe's potency. Many games have done this, but I don't think any of them have taken the concept to the extreme that War Front does - and War Front pulls it off in grand fashion. The flexibility that you have to create an anti-*unit* *unit* at the drop of a hat means less worrying about which tech tree does what to maximize your grand strategy, and more worrying about reacting to your opponent's force composition in a tactical sense. War Front really brings action back to the RTS genre, and keeps you DOING far more than PLANNING. Don't worry so much about what technology tier you're going to concentrate on, and in what way ... just keep your base building, and get out the units that you need RIGHT NOW! If this mortality-inspired frantic pace is something that you enjoy, War Front is really going to appeal to you.

The glass. My system is squarely in between "required" and "recommended" in terms of War Front's technical specs. I found that the game ran fine, and there was no slowdown to speak of, even when many things were battling it out and blowing up onscreen. With the detail settings squarely in the medium, I still got to see careening shrapnel and trees blowing back from blast waves, so no problems there. I sometimes had issues manually selecting units that I wanted, but once I got into the habit of using group designations for everything, this wasn't an issue. The only real problem that I ran into regularly involved cutscenes. If I finished a campaign mission, I inevitably got skips and jumps from subsequent cutscenes unless I exited back to the campaign menu and manually selected the point to which I had just advanced. Perhaps some form of pass-along routine wasn't handling the movies right - but it wasn't a big deal, I just had a few extra clicks to get my WWII sci-fi story fix. As it should be, the glass in our root beer float is stable and serviceable, and the best thing you can say about it is that you don't notice it!

Lastly, I wanted to mention those cutscenes again ... consider them chocolate sprinkles on top of our float's ice cream - or maybe a cherry! The cutscenes and heroes were fun to watch, and though there were a few recycled clips I consider them to be a real asset for War Front. I was honestly interested in the story, and enjoyed a fresh take on a familiar setting, as well as a rousingly fun rendition of some standard hero-types. Pleasant surprises are always welcome in my games, and I was glad to get one in my War Front package.

So, what do we have in our War Front float? We have a sturdy glass that made our game perform well on an average computer system. We have a skillfully executed scoop of vanilla campaign ice cream that you will enjoy just like you always enjoy vanilla ice cream. This scoop floats on a rich base of root beer multiplayer mayhem that provides depth of taste and keeps you enjoying the concoction through the entire drink. Lastly we have the cherry (or the sprinkles, I can't make up my mind) story that sits on top of it all. Not TRULY important, but when you get a good one you can honestly appreciate it and see how it adds to your experience. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my endorsement of 10tacle studios' root bee ... errr, War Front - Turning Point. I really want to thank the folks at CDV, the North American publisher for War Front, for giving me the opportunity to try out this game. If what I've described sounds good to you, lick your chops and dig right in.