Upon installing
Act of War you are immediately brought into the action of the game. A debate between two rival oil corporations is shown on your screen and you quickly begin to realize the situation at hand. This simple, yet effective tactic immediately immerses the player into the game before they are even playing. This was a brilliant idea by Atari to show this video during installation. A lot of people watch installations anyways, so why not throw a video at you right away.
The story itself is compelling and engulfing. The reason this particular story has engulfed me to continue playing even into the wee hours of morning is because of how true to life it can seem. The whole focus on the game is of rising gas prices. Gas prices in California being $7... Looking at the world today that seems very feasible. This game is obviously the only game to come out recently worth comparing with Command and Conquer. Obviously Command and Conquer is the one of the most played RTS game to ever be released, and even after
Act of War it may still retain that title for many people, however, this is a push in the right direction for Atari.
The graphics turned all the way up look great at distant levels. You can even zoom way far in and fight right there in the streets with your soldiers. The cool thing about it is the graphics will pull their weight and everything still looks pretty good. The environments are greatly detailed and are on scale with the true to life cities. This puts you in the heart of the battle. Fighting in front of the White House is pretty cool as there’s nothing like protecting the building which is one of the bigger symbols of freedom in America. If you’ve ever played Rise of Nations then you won’t find yourself impressed by the graphics in this game, but if you’ve ever played any other RTS then this one ranks right near the top in the graphical department.
You start off with some very simple missions, which do not require you to do much at all, but they get more involved the further into the game you get. The problem with
Act of War is the computer never seems to be fully there. They simply get mowed down because of your elite soldiers and so far I have never lost a battle. I have lost some soldiers due to poor techniques and poor thinking, but in the end I always seem to overcome this problem and complete my mission. The game basically gives you step by step objectives and the easiest way to get there, meaning there never really is any strategy required in the single player portion of the game as the computer has already thought out everything you should do. This takes away from the game experience a good bit actually. I would rather decide which way to go on my own than for the computer to say I should simply take this route to get there. It’s not a major problem or anything, just an annoyance of mine because I like open-ended RTS games. Unfortunately there are not too many of those. Now that is only in the campaign mode, obviously it is very open-ended in just skirmish and multiplayer.
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