Not a bad game for those willing to look past its faults.
User Rating: 7.5 | Original War PC
This game definitely qualifies as a guilty pleasure. The voice acting is indeed quite bad, and the AI and overall mission layout are fairly average for a low-budget circa 2001 RTS. But where the game really shines is its innovative mix of RPG and RTS elements, and how it uses the time travel plot device to make resource management a bit more interesting than the standard fare. This is not a game for people who want their RTS to follow the usual, "put turrets at the resource spawn and then spam lots of tanks" C&C type gameplay. You have to take care of your soldiers as you don't get reinforcements, and because resource crates spawn randomly you've gotta go out and look for them. The campaign is actually pretty engaging and the save/load is on par with a typical RPG as long as you play it close to the vest and don't fall for that old RTS conceit of sending waves of units on a one-way trip to the enemy base. It's got multiplayer support, and the developer has actually significantly improved this in post-release patches, but I'm not really into multiplayer RTS so I can't speak to it personally.
Like the official review says, the game has a very early 90s feel to it but the poor production values grow on you when you play the game a bit--particularly when contrasted with the seemingly endless stream of slick but uninspired big-budget games pumped out by the major publishers. Even the terrible dialogue is strangely endearing, in a Zero Wing sort of way (the developer is Czech). It's a pretty old game by now, but I find myself coming back to it every couple of years, when I get bored with new releases that aren't any more interesting than early 2000s games. All in all, my advice is this: skip it if you're looking for a "serious" RTS, but if you're wanting a throwback to the days when games were bold, fresh and totally unpolished it's worth a look. Not sure where you can get it now, Ebay may be your best bet.
