Gameplay Footage

The New England Alliance fends off the Confederacy.

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Take the turn-based combat of the popular Advance Wars series and combine it with a Tom Clancy-style techno-thriller plot, and the result would probably look very much like Shattered Union, the upcoming strategy game from 2K Games and PopTop Software. Shattered Union promises to be a throwback to the popular turn-based PC strategy games of yesteryear as well as an effort to build on the popularity of current turn-based combat games on consoles and handhelds. After all, many console gamers are familiar with turn-based gameplay, thanks to Advance Wars, as well as role-playing games such as Final Fantasy. We got our hands on the PC version of Shattered Union recently to see how it's shaping up in advance of its shipping date later this year.

This is the Disunited States of America.

The premise of Shattered Union is that a controversial presidential election polarizes the country (like that would ever happen). To make matters worse, a nuclear weapon vaporizes Washington DC, taking out the nation's leadership. In the resulting power vacuum, the US splits apart into six factions, organized along geographical and cultural lines. For example, the South rises again with the Confederacy, California and the Southwest form the California Commonwealth, the Pacific Northwest forms Pacifica, and so on. To make things even worse, those meddling Old Europe nations deploy military forces to the ruins of Washington DC for "peacekeeping" purposes. Your mission in the campaign game is to choose a faction and battle it out to reunite the country by force.

The campaign is split into two different modes. The strategic map divides the US into more than 20 territories, and each faction starts with approximately four territories each. In the strategic map, you can purchase and repair units, not to mention invade neighboring territories. When you invade, you select which units to deploy in the coming battle, and then you switch down to the battle mode to resolve the combat. Win, and you gain control of the territory. Lose, and you'll have whittled away precious units in a losing cause. It'll be important not to commit all your units to an invasion (a mistake we made early on), because you won't have any in reserve if another rival invades one of your territories. That's right--once a unit has been used during a turn cycle, it can't be used until the next turn. Capturing territories is important, not only to win the game, but also to generate cash, since each territory generates revenue. Thus, the more territories you control, the more cash you have to purchase and repair units.

Shattered Union is set in the near future, so the vast majority of military equipment that you get to play with should be familiar if you're a military buff. There are plenty of high-tech weapons, like Abrams tanks, Apache helicopters, Joint Strike Fighters, and more. Meanwhile, to represent a lot of the older equipment that gets handed down to National Guard units, there are M60 tanks and other obsolete units in the game. There are even some fictional superweapons, such as next-generation tanks, and each faction has its own special unit.

Ever wonder how an M1 tank would do versus an MLRS? Wonder no more.

Additionally, Shattered Union keeps track of your "political reputation" during the game. This is important, because it's how you're viewed by the rest of the world. If you tend to flatten cities in battle, your reputation will take a hit. Or if you drop a nuke, your popularity will plummet faster than a lemming off a cliff. How your reputation translates in the game is in the form of partisan units, which appear to either fight for or against you in a battle. Though weak (these partisan units consist mainly of civilian vehicles with weapons mounted on them), these units are free, and they serve as useful scouts, or, more cynically, as cannon fodder to make a unit waste its moves in battle.