We Just Played Order of War (in Multiplayer)

Order of War is a PC real-time strategy game published by, of all people, Square Enix, and developed by Russia-based Wargaming.net. The game was originally released in Russia as Operation Bagration, but has been retrofitted with an all-new American campaign, new cinematic cutscenes, and full English voice acting. We recently had a chance to play a few quick multiplayer sessions in head-to-head competition (the game will offer both one-on-one team competition modes).

Tough guys go into battle as infantry, but real men drive tanks.

In multiplayer, you can play as one of three factions, the US, the Germans, or the Russians, each of whom has between 25-30 units apiece. While the factions are roughly symmetrical, they differ somewhat in their unit mix and strengths according to approximate strengths that Wargaming.net has built into each faction, such as the tank superiority of the Germans.

Multiplayer is more or less a completely tactical exercise in deploying the right troops at the right time and right spots. There aren't any in-game bases to build or resources to harvest--just a requisition meter that gradually fills up over time, which can then be spent on purchasing units, though your meter will fill up faster if you're nimble enough to capture the various control points on the map. You can even capture your oppponent's home base, which acts like a control point, and if you do so, you cut him off from gaining any more points until he either recaptures his home base, or captures yours. The game will launch with six multiplayer maps, and two of these maps will appear in the upcoming multiplayer demo.

Though you start off a new match with a squadron of light infantry (who are perhaps better utilized when garrisoned in buildings once the heavy armor starts rolling out) and a medium tank squad, though you can commission different types of tanks, transports, infantry, and stationary artillery, as well as calling in one-off assistance attacks offscreen, such as artillery strikes and airstrikes.

Order of War, and its multiplayer demo, are incoming later this month.

Matches seem fairly fast-paced and, in some of the smaller maps, you may even face a decision to go after control points or try to rush your enemy, since you start new matches with a small chunk of requisition points in the pot. Different maps will have different layouts (one map will have several narrow chokepoints, which makes swarming your opponent with massive clusters of tanks unfeasible), but the general path to victory seems to be doing more than one thing at once; locking down as many control points as possible while either defending yourself from your opponents' rush or staging a rush of your own.

Order of War ships later this month, and the multiplayer demo will be available soon.