Dumb AI, stupidly hard (most the time), Annoying looped music, Slow loading times, Frustrating.... But quite addictive.

User Rating: 5.5 | Men of War: Condemned Heroes PC
After quite a long comment (and some more playtime) decided to give this 1 a review.

So I started playing and the first major annoyance...... The music.

The game only seems to have 3 or 4 music sheets. Each of them are ok at first but as they are only short loops you will soon be having a headache.... and thats before starting the game.

The first mission was pretty much like a tutorial. Just to get you into it and started. It felt very basic. In fact the who feel to the game at this point made me feel it was a cheap and poorly produced game. the graphics, the voice overs, the brief commentary (especially where some subtitles dont match what is being said).

On to the game. As many say, it is exceedingly hard..... You do have a few advantages though.

On the map green dots appear (and a lot of them). They are computer controlled army. A mass army to try and help you. Due to their large force with a lot of levels you can simply pull your troops back and let them do all the work for you.

Dumb AI. This swings both ways. The green AI controlled army are also as dumb as enemy AI. This can be pretty fatal. I recall several times the friendly AI trying to take out a guy in a house before they advanced to help me. It was barmy. They were running round shooting at a wall, the enemy AI was standing there doing nothing and when some of the friendly's finally managed to get inside the building the just run past him, shot at a few walls next to him, pulled guns on each other but after 20 mins I had to send a guy through enemy lines to take out that 1 guy so they could help me.

The plus with dumb enemy AI is that if you are lucky enough to be near artillery cannons and capture them, you can simply pick off the strongest units from a distance and they wont even move to dodge your fire. That is the best way I advanced, perhaps it could be unbeatable if you couldnt capture enemy machine units. Although what is strange is that whilst you can capture some units. Others will be unoccupied, however all you can do to it (weather it be a tank or armoured truck) is attack it and not enter it.

What makes the game difficult is that you are outnumbered bigtime. You usually control less than 10 units. They are often not responsive. On a few levels my units became stuck (Once in between hedges and another behind a truck). There was no way of moving them and I had to do the level without them. They are pretty stupid when you give them commands. For example. I was hidden crouched down behind a wall. Over the wall was enemy artillery and about 10 germans. The guy was in range to throw a grenade and blow them all up. Instead though when I commanded him to throw a grenade he got up, walked out of cover and within a few seconds was spotted and blown to bits. The odd thing with enemy AI is if you are lying down in cover, they could not spot you. But then the second your arm raises to throw a grenade (before the grenade even leaves your hand) they know where you are and open fire. The good news is you can take literal control of your units, but its very tricky and you can guarantee a quick death (Unless picking them off with artillery as above).

I am on the final mission. Even the though of it makes me want to bang my head against a wall. You start with about 15 guys. You get no green AI friendly's. You have to sneak into a german base and take out several well guarded AA guns. Then once thats done you have to take your remaining troops to part 2 of the map. This time its the most guarded base in the game. Filled with tanks, armoured trucks, artillery, and a load of enemy soldiers. Your objectives are to take out air defences, cannons, and then capture a train. You will be lucky to have 10 guys to do this, no vehicles, just them guys. Bear in mind you will encounter tanks and the armoured trucks which leaves you little hope. Then once you have taken the train you have to repel the counter attack with what you have left (then im guessing theres more parts to the mission but I cant pass that part at all).

The serious annoyance of the game is loading times. Trust me, you will be reloading a hell of a lot. The game doesnt seem to store and save loaded parts of the game to your ram. This means when you reload a save, it loads everything from scratch. Painful if you have very few guys left and 1 slip means a reload since it can take 3 or 4 minutes to reload the game (not my system, its a brand new quad core system with 1 of the best graphics cards on the market).


Overall theres just too many problems with the game for it to be too great. Dumb AI, Your characters are dumb, no real storyline...just missions, annoying looped music, frustrating load times, dull narration, way too outnumbered,