Article Type: Preview
Article Date: August 10, 2001
Recently a padded package found its way into my mailbox. Ripping into it revealed the latest build of the slightly delayed, comparatively speaking, real-time strategy title from Simon & Schuster/Rival Interactive. My Real War beta build had arrived! The public demo, previewed here, was very enjoyable, so I was looking forward to the next iteration.
To say the least, I was impressed. There is definitely more work to be done before release, but what I have tested in this latest build looks very good. One of the greatest innovations in this RTS is the menu system. There are tabs for land, air, sea, special ops, and buildings. There are also buttons to see viewable targets (those that are not shrouded by the "fog-of-war") and turn the mini-map on and off. This original idea works well when involved in a firefight.
 |
Quicker selections via the menu system.  |
For example, I tried to punch a hole in the enemy's front-line, and their rear-placed rocket launchers started peppering my armor. Instead of wasting valuable seconds scrolling over to my loitering CAS aircraft, encircling them, scrolling back, and clicking on the units that need elimination, I go to the air tab, click a jet marked with a handy "A," for airborne, and hit the Target menu button, and choose the victim's icon. You can create more enemy scrap iron by clicking on multiple target icons while holding the CTRL key. All this takes half the time, and leaves your view right where the action is, so you can see what's going on the whole time and are ready to respond to the situation. Very, very cool.
Another of the high points are the animations. Canisters for the cluster bombs airburst with a puff of smoke, then the halves separate and the individual bomblets spread out before impact. Each vehicle has multiple explosion effects that seem dependent upon damage inflicted versus hit points remaining. If the hit points on the target are low, and the damaging unit is major overkill, then a detonation with disintegration occurs. When the damage incurred brings hit points to zero or only slightly below, then an on-the-spot detonation seems in order.
The vehicles are all modeled well, with different camo patterns for the three terrain types.
 |
| Arctic Blue and Grey |
 |
| Desert Brown |
 |
| Woodland/Jungle Green |
Certain building limitations and hierarchies are invoked in each of the campaign missions. For instance, it seems, as it is not explained anywhere, that all of the command structures (sea, air and land) need to be built before any upgrades are available. I could not get the stealth center to build anything of use, yet a pair of stealth fighters were available off-screen during one of the latter of the twelve scenarios. A non-functioning item in the beta to be instituted for the final release? I'll check and get back to you. One thing that was working is the ability to build and launch tactical nuclear missiles. Not exactly a city buster, but they do some impressive damage.
 |
| Tac Nuke Launch |
This beta release also has the voice of R. Lee Ermey, the "motivational speaker" of Full Metal Jacket fame, Gunnery Seargent Hartmann.
 |
| Lee Emery of 'Full Metal Jacket' Fame |
He is not the belittling "drop-and-give-me-twenty" drill instructor in this simulation. What he does do is give the briefing prior to all the single-player campaign missions . . . so you WILL listen up, maggot! Heehee! If you play the ILA side, you'll get briefings from a man with what sounds like a Russian accent.
The quality of the briefings is very good throughout the campaign; lots of effort went into their production. The briefings unfold in a couple of stages: When available, one of the fourteen introductory full-motion video is played followed by an overview of the map area with voiceover and animated graphical indicators of hot areas; from there, you launch directly into the game. Helpful, informative, and just plain well done.
 |
| US Jets in Desert Livery |
Another game feature that is done well are the aircraft. A-10's, F-15's, F-16's, even the Navy F-14's & F/A-18's are at your disposal. And if you want to quickly reduce an area to toothpicks, create the single B-1B Lancer available for tasking. Any of these jets can be called upon to do evasive maneuvers while in the target area. The F2-F4 keys command the selected unit/s to break, loop or toss flares to assist in missile lock breaking. The enemy ILA have a plethora of airframes that look just as good, but I prefer to see them trailing smoke and spiralling in!
 |
| Naval shoot down |
The advantages of rank is not a new thing to the RTS genre and is implemented well in Real War. When you select a unit, to the left of the hit-points graph is a star. It starts out white. If kills are recorded, it can change to blue. If an indeterminate number are done in, a gold start will be awarded. Gold star units are veritable juggernauts.
 |
| Warthawg with Gold Star lands |
If you get one to this level, damage taken is lowered, and hit accuracy and potency are increased. If you face off against an enemy gold star, swarm it…The enemy AI will try to do so in return to yours.
The storyline is plausible, and the introductory scenes are incredibly well done. I took them for stock footage scenes obtained from CNN. I was assured, however, that they are all in-house CGI and have been shown the wireframe versions of the scenes to prove it.
This is an introductory offering by Rival, and they have done an excellent job with the details. I like to think back to 1994 and Westwood Studio's entry into this category with their mega-series, Command and Conquer. Compared to that, Rival's offering seems to have so much more of the feature bases covered right off the bat than Westwood had back in 1994. A very good entry into the real-time strategy market indeed.
If you want to keep abreast of all things Real War, Rival have instituted an E-Mail newsletter. They have also announced a second, updated demo version that should be available soon. Go and snap-up it as soon as it is released, or get the original demo, to tide you over until this gem comes out in the full retail version.
