Will Of Steel – Preview Release
First off, this is yet just another game to exploit recent events in
the middle east. Most of the good real-time strategy (RTS) games are
built around a creative story line that takes you into their world,
lessening the harsh realities of war. WILL OF STEEL does not. The thin
story line follows a USMC Lt.Colonel that has issues with his now dead,
military General father. Battles take place in Somalia, Afghanistan
& Iraq. Like other games that have tried to cash in the U.S.’s
Middle East conflicts, this is just bad taste. My guess is that someone
thought “Hey, there’s squad based shooters based on this, lets make a
RTS”, and that was the most thought put into it. Now some might say,
“What’s the difference between making a WWII RTS & this game?”. My
response would be that for the most part, we have healed, learned from,
and moved on from those events. Making a game based on a war that’s
still going is both disrespectful to those fighting (since you can
simply restart if your units die), but those who have lost their sons
& daughters in these wars.
Just like most RTS games, your units and environments are presented in
a 3-D world. The game’s marketing even advertises “High Quality and
exceptionally detailed objects for 3D RTS games”. I’ve seen more
detailed units in AGE OF EMPIRES or the COMMAND & CONQUER :
GENERALS. Try to zoom into your units and your still limited to be an
equivalent of about 200ft. Honestly, without clicking on the units
themselves, I couldn’t make out what kind of units they were. To add
insult to injury, namely my units’, most of the time my units wouldn’t
attack, instead they reply “Negative sir” or “I can’t do that”. My
guess is that I had a medic among the units with guns, but even then,
the others should’ve attacked.
This leads me into the
game-play and it’s interface. Not only is the camera control clunky at
best, but it’s restricted to a static angle to look down on your
troops. 90% of the time I was trying to find the units that were being
attacked. Which brings me to another point: your attackers. Apparently,
most of the units attacking me had firing ranges outside my army’s
ranges and the camera’s. While trying to position troops, my units were
getting run over by MY OWN vehicles. In addition, I couldn’t tell the
difference between my army and my enemy.
Upon further
inspection, I found that WILL OF STEEL is built off the RTS game
engine, PERUN
