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Req.: P3 600, 128MB RAM, 32MB video Card; GeForce2MX or better Reviewed On: Athlon xp 2600+ (2.13 GHz), 512 Meg RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro | |||
Intro  "Another
World War II game," I complained as I opened my package of games to review
and glanced upon Nival Interactive's newest title, Silent Storm. I was
already a grizzled veteran of many virtual battlefields, having defeated the Nazis
everywhere from Normandy beach to their secret underground bunkers full of zombie
Nazis to the Pacific Islands and Japan, home of the Japanese Nazis. But this is
hardly the typical World War II title. Silent Storm is a turn-based strategy
game focusing on tactics and RPG-style character development among your small,
6-person team of Axis or Allies specialists as they shoot, stab, and blow up buildings,
enemies, and various other objects across multiple nations and scores of missions.
Gameplay: 8/10 I remember the exact moment I fell in love with Silent Storm: of my 6 person team, my scout had been prematurely spotted and slaughtered via a hail of heavy machine gun fire, and my sniper suffered several gunshot wounds and was forced to retreat to cover and bandage her wounds. With two guys out of the fight and an unrelenting building full of Nazis yet to make their move, I stopped and took inventory. I had a soldier fully loaded out with a rifle, a heavy machine gun capable of ripping apart brick walls, a rocket launcher, and a tiny fortune of grenades. My two engineers were moved into position along the windowless side of the building, ready to pick off any Nazi foolish enough to come charging out of the front door. And my grenadier was crouched below a window looking into the front side of Haus Nazi. The situation looked bleak and hopeless - from what I could hear and see, there were roughly 10-12 Nazis barricaded in the house guarding the documents I needed to fulfill my objective and they weren't rushing outside after me, but rather waiting for me to infiltrate the house. But I had other ideas. I ordered my lone soldier to dash to the front corner of the house by my engineers where he pulled out his machine gun and punched a hole in the wall big enough for my engineers to do some damage. I then started pouring enough TNT and C-4 charges into the house to get two unsuspecting enemy soldiers and make a good portion of the wall come crashing down (EVERYTHING can not only sustain damage, but be destroyed as well). My grenadier, meanwhile, stood up, looked in the window, saw 4 Nazis, and started pouring grenades through the window. After a couple rounds of sustaining heavy explosions (with the aid of a rocket launcher), the 3 story house came down, trapping and killing any remaining Nazis that were unlucky enough to still be in the house. However, I was frantic: Where were the documents I needed to fulfill my objective? Upon entering the remainder of what used to be the front doorway, there they were, nicely placed atop a large pile of rubble that used to call itself a stairway. A small, lone tear crept down my cheek, and I smiled, because I was in love. In Silent Storm, gamers control a 6-person crack team of either Axis of Allies specialists as they are sent on various missions across several nations to help win the war. There's not much of a story to be told here (we all know what happened in WWII), and what story there is, unravels via vague notes and documents found scattered around each level. Finding these documents is usually the objective or one of the objectives of each mission and, once found, they will open up a new location for your troops to go do the same thing over again. Also scattered around each countryside are random encounters in which your team is pitted against some random number of enemies on a random map, making for a, you guessed it, random experience. These encounters are also how the game's more interesting weapons are found and help level your characters up to ease the transition into the later levels. From the outset of the game, you are given the choice of who to place in your party from scouts, soldiers, engineers, grenadiers, snipers, and medics. Although every character class can use almost every weapon, certain classes use certain weapon classes more proficiently than others. For instance, while my scout may wield a katana with deadly grace, he can't lob a grenade with the same precision as my grenadier. And while my engineers can take long-range pot shots at the enemy with decent accuracy, my sniper can pick a body part, target it, and hit it, causing all kinds of neat status ailments. Once a party is chosen, players can then check out their armory and equip their team. As the party advances, the choices offered by the armory get better. Allies have access to unlimited ammo for all the Allies weaponry and vice-versa is true for the Axis nations. Additionally, more weaponry (and accompanying ammo) can be salvaged from fallen enemies, but without the advantage of having the ammo automatically spawn at your base. Each team member has a wide array of moves, attacks, and positions to help get the leg up on the opponent. For each round of combat, each character is allotted a certain amount of Action Points (AP) with which they can perform actions. Every action in the game, from opening a window, to reloading a gun, to simply standing up, requires a certain amount of points, and decisions must be made regarding how to use these points. Every character can move in a variety of ways - running, walking, crouching, and prone. Moving while running requires far less action points than moving while crouching, but crouching is quieter and less likely to be spotted by enemies. Should a team member be prematurely spotted by enemy forces (or vice-versa), the enemies are then awarded an interrupt with which they can use any remaining points from their prior turn to attack out of turn. Combat also requires AP, and each weapon has several different firing modes that require differing amounts of AP. A rifle is capable of a "Snap Shot," an "Aimed Shot," and a "Careful Shot." While the snap shot isn't nearly as accurate as the careful shot, it also uses about half of the AP, while the careful shot consumes all available AP to make an as accurate shot as possible. Careful consideration must be used when planning your attack to insure that your character can move into the open, fire a shot off, and get back to cover before the enemy has a chance to counter. This is nothing new to strategy fans, but the implementation is as brilliant here as anywhere else. The enemy AI is something wonderful as well. What you won't see: bad pathfinding, enemies stuck in geography, enemies leaving themselves open for target practice, and just plain stupid moves. But what you will see is enemy after enemy come rushing into a choke point where your squad just killed 3 of their brethren on the previous turn. There is nothing in the game to prevent the enemy AI from running headlong into battle when there are 20 enemy corpses littering the ground. In many battles, it's easiest to just set up camp with long-range rifles and take potshots as the enemies come streaming around a corner and into a hail of gunfire - disappointing in an otherwise spotless AI performance. And
even though I'm in love with Silent Storm, there's no shortage of lover's
quarrels between us. Beginning with the aforementioned AI, and continuing into
the broken skill tree: as characters progress, they level up with a full range
of RPG-style points to allocate and skills to choose. However, skills like Hide
and Medic don't go up from leveling like they should but rather from using them.
This means that your level 9 medic won't be able to use the upper level med items
that they should be able to unless you're willing to spend time on an empty battlefield
having them unnecessarily bandage everyone to manually raise the skill. If anything,
this little bug adds difficulty to an already tough game by keeping your squad's
skills down. My last big, nagging problem with Silent Storm is the amount
of time it takes to simulate enemy turns. On several occasions with a lot of enemies
populating the map it can take up to 5 minutes for the AI to figure out what they're
going to do, even with a speedy machine well over the game's requirements. This,
combined with the slow nature of turn-based strategy games, can make for some
unnecessarily lengthy missions.
Graphics: 9/10 Sound:
7/10 Overall:
8.5/10 [ top ] |
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