Theatre of War Video Game Review

Ratings: Graphics & Audio: 23/25, Gameplay: 19/25, Creativity 20/25, Fun 18/25
Total: 80/100

Theatre of War has been in the making for some time with Battlefront.com and veteran World War II airplane sim company 1C. The game has released with some fantastic realism and great gameplay on both digital download and DVD purchase.

1C are the creators behind Il-2 Sturmovik and all it's expansions and they surely know a thing or two about World War II. Theatre of War is a ground fighting simulation with a bit of a twist to the strategy and tactical genres.

Using the common and easy to handle real time strategy format and a broad view of your battle field you will be in charge of a good assortment of ground based units with an occasional air strike or artillery barrage thrown in. Theatre of War starts you off in one of five great campaigns from either the German, Allies, Polish, Russian or French perspective.

You play out each campaign following realistic and historical battles from that particular standpoint and accomplish the major goals for each. Many of the goals are the realistic ones of the unit from history that you get to try your strategic hand at. At the start of any particular battle you will have your choice of changing some or all of the units available but you may not get to choose some. They will lock some that the designers decided you would have to fight with but others are often a matter of strategy or personal preference.

For each battle you will be given a total number of points with each unit costing so many points depending on the units specialties. Tanks and heavier weapons will cost more and ground troops less so you have to decide on the mix you think is correct for any given battle situation. You can restart the battle and change the units as well as save the battle at any point to allow a return point to try out different tactics once the battle has started.