ORDER OF WAR features massive-scale battles brought to life with a cinematic intensity never seen before in a WWII strategy game. Players take command of an entire army including ground troops, artillery, tank divisions and aircraft in all-out strategic assaults. The single-player mode can be played out in two campaigns - American versus German forces on the western front and German versus Russian on the eastern front. Missions will be based on key historic events and operations from 1944. In the summer of 1944, the Second World War entered its end-game when the Allies launched two major operations that would drive back German forces on both the Western and Eastern Fronts at once. In the ultimate test of military strategy, ORDER OF WAR challenges you not only to lead America’s finest to victory in the west, but also place you in command of German forces charged with repelling the Red Army’s seemingly unstoppable offensive in the east. Even the keenest military minds will find that it’s one thing to make history, but quite another to change it. Do you have what it takes to command? Experience WWII warfare on an epic, cinematic stage; that truly captures the intensity and scale of the battlefield. Command of an entire armed force consisting of up to 1,000 soldiers, tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and air planes. Players can choose between two different campaign modes offering completely different storylines, missions, objectives and environments. Experience the unique dynamic camera that allows players to command troops over huge geographical scale whilst maintaining movie-like vistas and detail. In-depth gameplay mode: two different campaign modes, multi-player, Deathmatch and Skirmish.

Gameplay

Real Time Strategy games are everywhere now days. You cannot enter your local game store, swing a dead cat and not hit a few different RTS games. Don’t believe me? Try it. Sadly the genre almost never evolves except in terms of graphics and the number of units on the screen except in rare cases when a flash of brilliance hits the developers and a new idea becomes part of the game and is then copied by future games.

Order of War is not the first World War 2 RTS, nor will it be the last but it did borrow some now common place features such as controlling key areas for points and destructible buildings and off map calling in of support units. It also does not change up the tired control scheme we have seen for years with click and drag to select units, setting squads or units to a keystroke. So if you are a gamer who has played any of the many RTS games over the last few years you will be at home with Order of War. The game is even easy enough for casual gamers to drop in and with the most basic of tutorials you can send them off and they will run over the enemy units in the full game with ease.

Order of War does not have you running around the map searching for resources to harvest, you gain control points, which are used to buy units and actions, by controlling key locations on the map and using those points to win the battle. I have to say that this has been done better by other games but if you do not mind the “been there done that” feel to it, Order of Wars overall gameplay works well.

Multiplayer works well for the most part, but there is only a few maps and that is a big negative for me because the life of a game like this is the number of maps. Multiplayer is up to 4 player (2v2) and from the few games I was able to get into I found it to be a good experience with no lag or technical issues.
 

The one major issue I have with Order of War in terms of gameplay is the battles are all over too quickly because the AI cannot mount a defense or the actual singleplayer mission was designed to be short. It leaves you wanting unsatisfied to say the least. There are no epic one hour battles that keep you wondering until the very end which side will win, unless you walk away from the computer, you are guaranteed to win almost every battle with out trying.

Graphics and Audio

Graphically Order of War is a very nice looking game, especially if you have a gaming rig that can run it at maximum or near maximum. While I will not say it is better looking than all of the recent RTS games in recent memory it is one of the better looking World War 2 strategy games. The maximum graphics look excellent during the cinematic moments and heavy combat in the air and on the ground. For those gamers who are in love with high tech graphics, this is certainly one of those games to showcase your computers rendering power.

Audio wise this game suffers from having bad and overly cliché voice work which is aggravating and annoying all of the time. The musical soundtrack is good but so repetitive you might just be hearing it at night while you are trying to sleep and you might find yourself glued to late night infomercials. The sound effects on the other hand are great. They sound fantastic in 5.1 and come near the same quality of sound effects we have seen in other World War 2 games from all other genres.

Value

I hate to say the overall value is completely determined by how much fun you will have playing short battles that are very easy from start to finish and take very little tactical strategy to beat. If you like that sort of thing the value is high but if you are looking for something deeper and more intense then I have to say look elsewhere.

Bottom Line

Order of War was certainly one of the Real Time Strategy games that I was very interested in since I first saw it several months ago. Now while I am not completely happy with the overall experience since the game does not bring anything new to the genre gameplay wise and Relics Company of Heroes still offers the best World War 2 based RTS on the market. This is still a buy for fans of the RTS genre, but games should not expect something completely new.