A Look Back at Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2

When you think of real-time tactics, World War 2 and fully destructible environments, what comes to mind? Maybe the smash hit Men of War or perhaps Company of Heroes? Or maybe you’re thinking what kind of combination is this? One release which may be lurking at the back of your memory is the 2004 release Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2.

It’s game where each individual soldier is literally at your beck and call on the battlefield and comes from publisher Codemasters, who brought us such games as Operation Flashpoint, Micro Machines and Colin McRae Rally to name a few. It’s developed by Best Way: a Ukrainian game design company that brought us both Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2, Men of War and Nuclear Union to name but three.

This game brought us a period in history that had been pretty well overdone by both Hollywood and video games in general. Yet, in my opinion, Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2 (SHOWW2) was one of the greatest World War 2 games to be brought to our PC screens. Why would I make such a bold claim when the graphics compared to today’s standards are certainly blocky and very harsh on the eye up close and the game’s overall difficulty meant that most of your squad would be eviscerated within seconds of being sighted by the enemy?

Mere minor bumps in the otherwise smooth-ish road to victory in SHOWW2 when considering the missions you undertake have almost laughably simple objectives. Get to rendezvous point X or take out Bridge Y. The maps are large and full of possibilities. You can go straight up the middle and slaughter all you see before you or maybe sneak round the back and pick off the sentries one by one before making good your escape. The possibilities are endless and given the lack of a time limit on some of the missions, you can study the group for hours and plan your movements in intricate detail before setting off from the starting line.

What makes this possible is the way you are given control of each individual soldier. Whilst you can manoeuvre your squad to your heart’s content, the beauty in the game lies in using the individual units to achieve your goals, be it sniping from far away or taking control of an anti-aircraft gun and bringing a reign of fire down upon your enemies. Although it is not always about blowing up the first thing that moves, though that is part of the fun, you can also get behind the wheel of over 100 authentic vehicles. One thing to note is that your soldiers aren’t limited by certain abilities, any one of your squad can be a loader/gunner/driver/commander of any vehicle which brings even more possibilities for death and destruction. With the physics engine akin to that of Men of War/ Company of Heroes where pretty much everything around you was destructible along with the soldiers themselves. this has made for a far richer gaming experience.

The game does have its drawbacks, unless you tell your men to actually fire back then they’ll probably stand and admire the enemy’s expert fire positions. The AI can be infuriatingly clever/stupid at the same time. For example, in one mission I was seeing a pile of corpses at the end of a small passage that should have told the AI that the tank at the end of the pathway was not their friend, but maybe it was the AI trying to give me a break and decided that Fritz and his mates would wander down the dark alley with a floor made of his comrades. Saying that, if your eye wanders to the next vantage point and you think of how you will get there with everyone intact, you’ll find yourself in a middle of a firefight with your men hopelessly out of position and therefore dead within a quarter of a second. Then it becomes all too clear that all that progress you made was worth nothing as you have to start the mission all over again. This in itself can be infuriating, the lack of a quick save, whilst a regular occurrence in games now is nonetheless an important one, but what would bring me back after watching my men literally scatter over the rooftops would be the fact that I could see how I could do things differently. The ability to vary the way you approach a mission with the same objective is certainly an impressive feat for SHOWW2.

Apart from the single-player campaign, you get the opportunity to play through some quirky side missions that involve anything from escaping from an advancing army to a tank stand-off and doing this while playing as your favourite World War 2 participating nation, Great Britain, Russia, the USA or Germany if you’re so inclined. Whilst multiplayer was something of a more recent addition it gives you a chance to experience the manic highs and crushing lows of playing against real people on the internet. You have been warned, they’re good…

My final word on this would be to mention one other part of the game. The looting. Something that has been sweeping battlefields from Thermopylae to Tobruk from Marathon to Monte Cassino. From the Wake Island to Waterloo, well you get the picture. This isn’t new in games, although it probably hasn’t been labelled as looting before. Missing a helmet? Grab any old one off the floor, low on ammo and grenades, bandages and a tool box to fix tanks? Help yourself to your recently departed brother’s stash. This isn’t limited to the people around you.

Any vehicles either running or disabled can be cannibalized for spares and ammunition so that you can continue to wreak havoc safe in the knowledge that you have a spare tire in the boot if you really need one. To me, this adds another dimension to the game. Yes, it’s a pain in the ass when you have to get out of your safe and comfortable tank to fix a track in the midst of death dealing shell fire, but it means that you can no longer go smashing through people’s front rooms without considering the consequences. I would urge all who read this to look up SHOWW2 and give it a shot and for £3.99 on Steam or for much less off Amazon, you can relive what still is one of the greatest RTS/RTT World War 2 games ever brought to our PC screens.