Order of War is a World War II real-time strategy game distinguished by its accessibility and simplicity. It’s easy to learn and easy to play, eschewing base building, unit-level micromanagement, and deep economics, but it’s never boring and it offers ample challenge. Although some players may miss controlling unit special abilities during each engagement, your soldiers’ greater autonomy gives you the opportunity to take advantage of the cinematic camera mode, which provides a dramatic depiction of the battle as it unfolds. Order of War doesn’t try to reinvent the World War II RTS or introduce anything new to this well-trodden genre, but it does excel at most of what it attempts, providing a fun and satisfying experience for veterans and newbies alike.

The Focke-Wulf FW 190s are ready for their close-up.

One important reason for Order of War’s simplicity is its scope. You take on the role of a colonel and control units representing whole companies, rather than squads or individuals. As a result, it’s not your responsibility to ask infantry squads to lob hand grenades at the enemy; they can do such tasks on their own. Instead, your focus is on big-picture tactics such as harnessing terrain, positioning, managing reinforcements, and calling in air support. For instance, antitank guns placed on a hill can devastate enemy armor before it closes to attack range, and swamps create natural choke points since they’re only passable by infantry. The same can be said of thick forests–that is, until you flatten them with artillery. On any terrain, outmaneuvering your opponents, specifically flanking vehicles, is vitally important both to avoid their fire and to take advantage of their weaker side and rear armor. Since there is no fog of war to shield your approach from the enemy, you’ll need to use multiple vectors of attack, including artillery strikes and feints, to force your opponent into a weak position. Additional ground forces and air support, such as bombing runs and paratrooper drops, can be purchased from off-map with resources collected from control points, which provide a steady but finite supply of income. Balancing your expenditures, as well as timing air support correctly, is another important consideration in Order of War.

Two other factors that make Order of War easy to enjoy are its intuitive control scheme and uncluttered interface. The precise camera controls and wide zoom distance provide a good and thorough view of the battlefield, although an even wider zoom for watching multiple fronts at once would be even better. As a rule, Order of War uses standard RTS controls for movement and attack, and every move order also works as an attack-move, which is a handy default. Manually, you can execute a move-only order to speed your units past the enemy’s front line to the high-priority targets, and each time you give any move order, outlines will depict how your units can position themselves at the rally point, which allows you to set their final facing and formation. In addition to helping you position your units, the interface displays a clear attack range for each unit–friend or foe–as you hover the cursor over it, so you’ll have only yourself to blame if you send your men into the firing arc of enemy rocket artillery. The rest of the interface is extremely unobtrusive, leaving plenty of space for the action.

Order of War can be quite attractive, especially in cinematic camera mode, which switches among dramatic shots of your troops in action and showcases unit models and animations that you might not otherwise appreciate. Even when the cinematic camera is off, Order of War looks nice, with striking skylines and realistically diverse terrain. On the whole, the sound is excellent, from the solid in-game voice acting to the authentic sound effects, including exchanges of small-arms fire, rumbling diesel engines, and thunderous artillery barrages. However, the incessantly repetitive musical score pollutes the soundscape and tends to stick in your head long after you’ve left the game. While not a game breaker, the lack of any additional music is a definite flaw.

While Order of War is remarkably easy to play, its two campaigns, each nine missions in length, can be difficult. Whether your mission is to ambush a convoy with paratroopers, destroy a massive German railway gun, or hold out against overwhelming numbers of Russians, you’ll be put to the test. While most missions involve seizing all control points from the enemy, there are enough special objectives and other variations to keep the missions interesting. As you progress through each campaign, you earn experience points that you can spend toward persistent bonuses, like better tank armor or firing range. In one campaign, you lead the Americans on yet another romp through occupied France, in which preventing a German breakout from the Falaise Pocket and storming the fortifications of the West Wall are the most memorable missions. While the American missions are challenging enough to counteract any feelings of deja vu, the German campaign is more fun, thanks to awesome units, such as the King Tiger tank and the railway gun, and a two-front war, featuring epic battles against the Soviets. Unfortunately, this otherwise outstanding campaign is marred by two bugs: the mission where you defend the West Wall against the Americans often crashes to desktop, and in another mission, the victory trigger rarely fires properly. One disappointing omission from Order of War’s single-player game is a Soviet campaign, instead the Soviets are represented both in multiplayer and as adversaries in the German campaign.

If you are going to attack Tigers with Shermans, be sure to hit them from behind and bring a lot of friends.

Multiplayer in Order of War doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s great for a quick blitzkrieg on your lunch break. MP is limited to six maps, each with two- and four-player variants, and there is only one game type, in which you must capture all the control points to win. However, the maps are well designed, with diverse terrain and natural choke points, so you do get quality if not quantity. Matches tend to be fast paced, with a one-vs.-one matchup typically resolved in under 30 minutes, partially owing to the fact that turtling is not an option, since you can’t build any sort of static defenses or hide any weaknesses under a fog of war.

Overall, Order of War is a fun game that’s far more engrossing than the sum of its simple parts suggests. Although it doesn’t show any ambition to innovate the WWII RTS genre, Order of War roundly succeeds in delivering all the thrills, drama, and grandeur you’d expect. While some players will sorely miss details like battlefield scavenging and squad micromanagement, most will be having too much fun to care. So, if you are itching for an epic tank battle or just need a simple RTS game to bait your friends into the genre, Order of War is worth your attention.

You’ve heard of Batman no doubt, but if you don’t read comics, it’s conceivable that you might be unfamiliar with Arkham Asylum. The iconic psychiatric hospital is essentially Gotham City’s Alcatraz, and it has housed just about every villain Batman has ever tangled with at one time or another. Now, thanks to Eidos and developer Rocksteady, Arkham is also the setting for a great third-person action game in which the lunatics take over the asylum and only you can stop them. As Batman, you not only get to go toe-to-toe with thugs in fast-paced punch-ups, but you also employ satisfying stealth tactics, play with great gadgets, solve some remarkable riddles, and do a decent amount of detective work. In short, you get to do all of the things that you want to when you don a Batman costume in a game, provided you weren’t hoping to get behind the wheel of the batmobile.

The close-ups you’re afforded every time a combat sequence comes to an end are always a treat.

Because just about everything else needs to be unlocked, the first time you boot up Batman: Arkham Asylum, your first port of call (after creating or logging into a Games for Windows Live account so that you can save your game) will inevitably be the Story mode. Here, you learn that Batman has captured Joker, and as the lengthy intro sequence plays out, you see him being returned to the asylum under Batman’s watchful eye. Joker doesn’t seem at all perturbed by his predicament, and it quickly becomes apparent that he has deliberately allowed himself to be captured as part of a grand plan that involves taking control of Arkham Island and throwing a party there with Batman as the guest of honor. Clearly it’s a trap, but as Batman (and as someone who demands more than two minutes of gameplay before the credits roll), you just can’t walk away from it.

As you take the controls, Arkham Asylum wastes no time throwing you into the thick of the action. Almost immediately, you’re rushed by a few of Joker’s goons and encouraged to knock them out using both basic attacks and counters. Both the Xbox 360 controller and mouse-and-keyboard control schemes work very well, though the latter occasionally demands a bit more dexterity to perform certain actions. You’re free to move between the two options on the fly though, and the onscreen prompts for context-sensitive controls change accordingly. Using just two buttons on your mouse or controller, you can perform a huge number of moves from Batman’s superbly animated repertoire, and it isn’t at all difficult to string together combos worthy of Hollywood’s finest fight coordinators. That’s because for the most part, at least early in the game, combat requires you to do little more than mash the attack button and then hit the counter button anytime you notice an enemy with an “I’m about to attack you” icon above his head. None of the thugs that you encounter pose much of a threat individually, but you rarely encounter fewer than three or four of them at once, and often, you’ll be up against six or more. Furthermore, the vanilla thugs are joined by enemies with knives, cattle prods, and guns later on, who force you to raise your game and incorporate stun attacks and evasive rolls into your deadly dance routine. Boss battles against supervillains like Scarecrow and Harley Quinn are definitely among the game’s highlights, though it’s a little disappointing that there aren’t more of them. One supervillain in particular makes a number of appearances, but you never actually get to fight him.

Hit Y or the right mouse button, and the attacker with lines above his head will be countered with style.

The combat in Arkham Asylum never gets overly complicated, though the number of moves and attacks at your disposal increases quite dramatically as you progress through the Story mode, earn experience points, and subsequently spend those points on acquiring new combo moves and gadgets. Throws, takedowns, and even batarang attacks can be incorporated into your combos this way, but you never need to press more than two buttons simultaneously, and the timing of your moves doesn’t have to be particularly precise. Fighting against mobs of up to a dozen enemies or so is a blast, and while they’re not smart enough to all just jump on you at once, they’re not stupid either. Given half a chance, thugs will pull pipes from walls to attack you with, pick up boxes to throw at you, and recover weapons from fallen colleagues. Fortunately, there’s one weapon that your foes seem blissfully unaware of but which Batman is incredibly comfortable with: the environment.

Your surroundings don’t always have a role to play in combat, but during large set piece encounters (many of which can be replayed against the clock in Challenge mode), using them to your advantage is practically a requirement. Picture this: You walk into a large room where eight gun-carrying enemies have been instructed by Joker to keep an eye out for you. You can’t leave the room until every single one of them is unconscious, and going toe-to-toe with them isn’t an option because–at least as far as this game is concerned–bullets are Batman’s kryptonite. What do you do? Job one is to stay out of sight, which can often be accomplished by crouching atop gargoyles mounted high on the walls that, while an unusual interior design choice, make near-perfect hiding spots from which to survey the scene using your X-ray-like detective vision. From a vantage point like that, you can perform glide kicks to swoop down and floor enemies passing nearby, perform awesome “inverted takedowns” to grab guys as they pass directly beneath you and leave them hanging on ropes for their comrades to see, and throw batarangs that serve a number of useful purposes. Or, if you need to move, you can use your grapnel gun to zip to another location. Just be sure to suspend your disbelief as you do so because you’re invisible to the enemy when you’re in transit.

If this guy had looked up he might have seen the inverted takedown coming.

Once you’ve thinned your number of enemies a bit, it’s safer for you to move around on the ground, and that’s when you can really start to use the environment to your advantage. You can rig explosives to bring walls and ceilings down on top of enemies, crash through windows and ceilings, hide in floor grates and emerge directly behind unsuspecting enemies, and, well, you get the idea. All of these actions can be performed quickly and easily, but that doesn’t make them any less satisfying when they work.

The reactions of enemies who know that their colleagues are being picked off one by one adds massively to the feeling that you’re playing as a bona fide superhero. As their numbers diminish, enemies become visibly more scared–they start to move around in pairs rather than individually, press up against walls and lean around corners, and ultimately get so panicked that they fire a shot anytime they turn a corner. Listening to their superbly voiced conversations clues you into their state of mind as well. Initially, your enemies will be quite bold, loudly making threats and musing on how famous they’re going to be for killing you. But as the odds gradually shift in your favor and Joker taunts them, they exude less and less confidence–ultimately sounding like they’re resigned to their fates and might start crying at any moment.

The quality of the voice acting never falters for a second in Arkham Asylum, and while Mark Hamill’s Joker is unsurprisingly a standout, there are great performances from other characters too. Listing them here would be to risk spoiling elements of the story for you, particularly where the other villains are concerned. You just need to know that every character in the game is well written, well voiced, and often well worth listening to–whether it’s a supervillain, a thug, an ally, or a lowly security guard.

Over 50 characters from Batman’s universe are detailed in unlockable bios.

One character that you definitely want to listen to carefully is Edward Nigma, also known as Riddler. That’s because there are no fewer than 240 “riddles” for you to solve on Arkham Island, and doing so not only earns you a good number of experience points but is also the only way to unlock character bios, character trophies (detailed character models that you can examine and admire at your leisure), and Challenge mode maps. The riddles come in a number of different flavors, many of which don’t involve riddles at all, and the one thing that they all have in common is that they’re rewarding to solve. For example, finding hidden patient interview tapes or chronicles of Arkham affords you additional insight into the asylum’s history and inmates, while cracking a cryptic clue to locate an item that you need to take a photo of might make you feel smart and, if you’re lucky, earn you enough experience points to purchase your next upgrade. The best of the proper riddles are those that lead you to photograph question marks painted around the island, which doesn’t sound very interesting until you realize that these question marks can only be seen using detective vision from very specific locations. That’s because these elusive punctuation marks are painted in two parts at different locations that are often quite far apart, so the solution requires you to find both parts and then figure out where to take the photo from so that they line up perfectly. It’s clever and compelling stuff, though it does encourage you to spend more time than you’d probably like in detective vision mode.

In fact, it’s likely that you’ll spend a good portion of your time with Arkham Asylum in detective vision mode even if you’re not looking for hidden question marks. In regular vision mode, you just get to see that this is a great-looking game with superb animation, excellent lighting, and impressive attention to detail. But when you switch to detective vision, you can immediately spot destructible surfaces, more easily locate hidden items, and spot enemies through walls. You can even tell at a glance which of those enemies have guns and which don’t because they’re colored differently. It’s unfortunate that the predominantly blue-with-white outlines vision mode is so invaluable because, while it’s an interesting look, it’s akin to reading a black-and-white photocopy of a beautifully colored comic book.

Detective vision mode makes it easy to spot nearby threats, among other things.

If you’re a fan of Batman comic books, you should feel very at home in Arkham Asylum. There are plenty of nods and winks to inmates who don’t actually appear in the game, and even some of the minor characters have neat backstories that are faithful to their previous, infrequent appearances in comics. You shouldn’t feel intimidated if you’re not that familiar with Batman, though, because the game does a great job of giving you all of the information you need, as well as plenty that you don’t. For example, taking the time to read prominent character Harley Quinn’s bio and listen to her patient interviews offers valuable insight into her motivations that might add to your enjoyment of the game, while unlockable information on such characters as Prometheus, Calendar Man, and Humpty Dumpty just adds a little flavor.

More significant unlockable content comes in the form of eight challenge maps, which come in regular and extreme difficulties for a total of 16. The maps are based on areas that you visit in the Story mode, and the challenges are split 50/50 between purely combat-oriented sequences and stealth-based “Predator” gameplay. In the former, you’re pitted against four increasingly tough waves of enemies and score points for performing combos, avoiding taking damage, executing ring outs, and using a variety of different moves. In the latter, you’re dropped into a level where every enemy has a gun and your goal is to take them all down as quickly as possible. The twist is that to earn a respectable position on the online leaderboards (which you need a Games for Windows Live account to access) in the Challenge mode, you also have to earn medals, and in order to do that, you have to deal with some of your enemies in very specific ways. During a stealth challenge, for example, earning the maximum possible three medals might require you to perform a silent takedown from behind and an inverted takedown, as well as pull an enemy down from a walkway while hanging from a ledge.

Joker is ever-present, taunting you via TV screens and PA systems.

The medals get even more demanding in extreme challenges, where you need to knock guys out while crashing through windows, pull floors out from underneath multiple enemies, and even cause three different walls to fall on three different thugs simultaneously. In regular stealth challenges, the wall-mounted gargoyles are your best friends, but on extreme maps, all of the gargoyles are booby-trapped to blow up shortly after you land on them. Robbed of these safe vantage points, you have to spend a lot more time moving around on the ground, which–because you have detective vision–you can do without needing to stop and peek around every corner. Stealth gameplay is almost never this fast-paced or action-packed, and it’s rarely this fun.

Regardless of whether you’re getting sucked into the Story mode or competing for high scores in the Challenge mode, Batman: Arkham Asylum does an outstanding job of letting you be Batman. Everything about this game–the impressive visuals, stirring soundtrack, superb voice acting, fiendish puzzles, hard-hitting combat–feels like it has been lovingly crafted by a development team that’s both knowledgeable and passionate about the source material. Miss out on this one and the joke’s on you.

Far away from the prying eyes of the war-fearing citizens who make up the bulk of peaceful society, a battalion of armor-clad soldiers stages needless battles in desolate environments. Section 8 is a generic look at the struggles futuristic space marines will have to go through, but despite its uninspired trappings, the intergalactic fights are unpredictable and chaotic, and the diverse array of objectives gives more thoughtful players a chance to help their team in ways other than unmitigated destruction. There are a few missed opportunities in Section 8, such as vehicles that are all but worthless and environments that are too large for their own good, but the main elements are enjoyable, though not quite gripping. With a dull aesthetic and heavy reliance on gameplay techniques found in other first-person shooters, Section 8 struggles to stand out from the pack, but the engaging matches and satisfying gun battles make this online-focused game worth playing.

Cornelius may win this fight.

Although the focal point of Section 8 is the 32-player online conflicts, there is a single-player campaign that goes slightly beyond mere training levels. The story surrounding your feats is entirely forgettable, but the levels themselves are generally well designed, offering a fun alternative to the online warfare. The maps in the campaign are the same as in the online mode, but they’re structured differently, and their vast size mimics a real-life siege as you slowly gain ground, complete objectives, and push the enemy further and further back. Whereas the multiplayer versions of these maps are completely open as soon as matches begin, the single-player offerings have walled-off areas that open only once you reach certain checkpoints. Because its levels are structured in an easily digestible fashion, Section 8 is able to introduce you to this world without overwhelming you with sprawling levels and an overabundance of objectives.

The only match type in Section 8 is called Conquest. Here, two teams strive to earn victory points by killing other players, capturing control points, and completing dynamic combat missions (DCM). There is no way to choose just team deathmatch or a capture-the-flag variant, but the different objective types are all rolled into this mode, making for an ever-changing, unpredictable experience. To capture a control point, you have to find either a neutral or enemy-owned computer and hack it by tapping a button. Once it’s in your possession, you earn the accompanying turrets and other defensive structures, making it difficult for the other team to steal them back. Every few minutes, teams earn points for the number of control stations they possess, and victory is awarded to the team that reaches the designated number of victory points first.

Although the tug-of-war aspect of capturing control points can get tiresome before long, the dynamic combat missions do a good job of keeping matches fresh. You earn feats by completing certain tasks, such as killing two players with a knife or destroying one tank, and once you earn enough feats, a DCM is automatically triggered. There are six different mission types that can be initiated, and these diverse objectives add a lot of excitement to the matches. You have only a limited amount of time to complete these, so it makes for frantic action as you try to beat the clock while your opponents attempt to halt your progress. Not only do you get more victory points for successfully passing (or thwarting) these missions, but you earn other bonuses that make victory easier to achieve. For instance, if you can successfully steal intelligence from within your enemy’s base, you can see your opponent’s positions across the entire map. Because of the importance of these mini-missions, teams usually go full throttle trying to complete them, which makes for exciting combat sequences.

You drop in from the sky instead of normal respawning, and you can choose where on the map you want to land.

Whether you’re playing alone or with 31 of your closest friends, there are six guns and seven gadgets to choose from, though you can carry only two of each at a time. It’s not easy to switch your gear midbattle, so you’ll have to choose your loadout wisely depending on which objectives you want to go after during your life. The guns are entirely standard, and include the requisite fast-shooting automatics, a slow but powerful shotgun, and an ultraprecise sniper rifle. They each excel in specific circumstances, so you can’t rely on just one gun throughout. The missile launcher, for instance, has such unpredictable splash damage that it’s virtually worthless against another human, but it can destroy a turret with just a few blasts. The gadgets are just as diverse, including a wrench that can repair structures and heal fellow soldiers, remote-controlled mines, and a knife that gives you a melee attack. The sensor blocker is one of the most valuable gadgets, allowing you to mess with your opponent’s radar so you can rush into his base unseen. The limited number of weapons and gadgets is disappointing, but they are well balanced and fun to use.

While walking from fight to fight, you character moves incredibly slowly, but you have a few tricks that make movement a little more interesting. First, you can sprint. If you run for a few seconds without interruption, you kick into overdrive, which lets you move at an exaggerated rate, and if you crash into enemies, you kill them instantly. More importantly, you have a rocket pack, which allows you to jump ridiculous distances. The ability to jump all over the place lets you tackle objectives in new ways, since you can easily crash through the ceilings of certain buildings instead of simply walking through the door, but the difference it makes in combat is even more apparent. It’s easy to fly behind cover midbattle or surprise your opponents by dropping in unexpectedly from above, so you have to constantly be on your toes. The difficulty of hitting a flying target is mitigated by a lock-on system. By zooming in on foes, you can enable lock-on, which gives you a steady aim as long as they stay within view. This feature isn’t overpowered because an enemy can quickly jump or run away from your sights, but if you lock on to oblivious foes, you can kill them before they have a chance to evade you.

When you kick into overdrive, the game moves into a third-person perspective.

As you complete objectives, you earn money, with which you can purchase turrets and vehicles. The turrets are especially helpful, letting you set up minigun-wielding or rocket-spewing units to defend your control points while you go off to complete a dynamic combat mission. The vehicles, on the other hand, are quite lame. You can summon either a mech or a tank, but both are extremely disappointing. The mech is even slower than your sluggish walking pace. With no ability to sprint or jump ridiculous heights, it can only plod along the ground, drawing fire from enemies tauntingly out of your reach. Although you have more energy within the mech than outside of it, your foes can easily surround and dispose of you, quickly showcasing how fruitless your purchase was. The tank is just as ineffective, getting stuck on every divot and pebble along these rocky roads. It’s a shame the vehicles are so utterly pointless because the battles could have used a dose of variety. With only six different weapon types, battles can unfold in only so many ways, and the worthless vehicles don’t add any much-needed spice.

Beneath its generic exterior, Section 8 is a fun take on the ongoing battle between rival space marines. Though there is only one match type, the dynamic objectives keep the action feeling fresh and continually force you to switch your tactics to counter the changing battlefield. The expansive environments can get lonely if you find yourself far away from everyone else, but they are well constructed, giving many different ways to try to capture control points or ambush your hapless enemies. And if you can’t find enough players to fill all 32 spots, you can add as many bots as you want. The bots present worthy adversaries and allies, not only in their battle acumen, but in the way they approach objectives or just hang back to defend your base. With a few more weapon types and vehicles that actually worked, Section 8 could have been a lot more exciting. As it is, this is a satisfying take on the genre that makes up in fun what it lacks in innovation.

From: gamespot.com