As of late, having tired of playing both Starship Troopers demos, I've given the demo of Panzers 2 a try. I played it for a weeks or so but eventually uninstalled it having mastered it. It's one of those god's eye view games with miniature troops and vehicles rushing about in real time. Not too bad but not very realistic. The most useful and powerful unit was the M-7 Priest mobile howitzer.
After that I gave the free download (legit) of the old game Enemy Nations a try. You can download the game legally from bit torrent from
www.enemynations.com/thegame/landing.htm.
Not a bad game but like most games of its type it is better suited to on-line play against humans. In solo play on anything over the easy setting the game is seemingly unbeatable. It cheats. By the time I had my first factory up for producing weapons it has masses of troops and tanks already invading my city. No matter how I rushed or cut corners the computer would always beat me to the punch.
I gave the Strength and Honor demo a try. I uninstalled it after a couple of attempts. Basically it is a poor-man's Rome Total War. The battles were uninspiring to watch and hard to control. I got rid of that one quickly.
A fun little demo, but too short, is the new Star Wars Empire at War. It puts you through multiple tutorial steps in a controlled battle, and then gives you a very short demo campaign which ends all too quickly just as things were getting interesting. The campaign only lets you play the Rebellion side. It would have been fun to have played the Empire side, which they have you do in the tutorial. It's another one of those "god's eye" view type games with minature rebel and empire ships doing battles in space and imperial walkers and storm troopers vs rebel troops, tanks, and artillery units on one planetary battle.
The Star Wars premise is intriguing and the Star Wars music sound track and sound effects all add to the experience. Normally these sorts of games lose appeal quickly for me, but this one seems to be quite entertaining.
Watching the walkers collapse with the appropriate mechanical and comical sound from the movies is very funny.
The demo displays nicely the "cinematic battle view" in the game. Clicking on this button will zoom into the actual ongoing battle and display it full screen as if you were watching a nice animate shockwave or BIK movie file that one normally sees at as the intro or cutscenes in other games.
I'll have to think about tetting SWEAW or not.
The one I've been playing to death lately is the Call to Duty 2 pre-release demo. A first person shooter, where in the player is part of a British infantry unit attacking the occupied city of El Daba in North Africa. You arrive into the fray delivered by a captured "Jerry" lorry along with your squad and are faced by the murderous fire of two MG42s and numerous German troops on the other side of a baracade. You have to make your way around the right flank, wipe out some Germans defending it and then take out the MG42s.
You then have to pass through a house into a back alleyway were you face another MG42 setup in ambush with two Germans supporting him.
After that you have to attack the 88mm Flak batteries firing on the ships out at sea, take out their gunner crews, fight your way up the dock past more Germans lobbing grenades, firing MP40s and MG42s at you.
Next comes the German occupied building just past the dock with a MG42 sandbagged on the very top of the second floor roof and Germans inside firing out the doors and windows. You have to watch your right flank because a group of them will dash to your right flank and try to setup a second MG42 for a crossfire.
After cleaining out that building you have to use the radio to signal the barrage of the dock and destroy the silent 88mm batteries. And then dask up the road through another alleyway under the fire of two MG42s being a sandbag wall in the distance.
One of your buddies will kick through a door and instantly get cut down by a hidden MG42 on the inside guarded by a couple of more MP40 toting Germans. You have to be clever here by tossing in a grenade as soon as the door is open and then tossing a grenade over a grated wall into a alleyway where the MG42 gunner will dash for cover from your grenade.
If you manage to take out this position you can move around the left flank of those two MG42s in the distance and will encounter two Germans that will attempt to run from you and hide in a room a the top of some steps. If you get them both before they get in the room you'll have an easier time of it, otherwise you have to use grenades or a frontal assault to clear that room.
Once in the room, you will see the German MG42s through a hole in the wall down below, but don't stand in the open because there are hidden Germans across the way on balconies and roof tops and inside a building across the courtyard firing at you. You have to take all these out one by one then with some grenades jump down and run to the building door across the courtyard and take out the two Germans hiding behind the walls of a inner open doorway.
Next comes one of my favorite parts. After taking out those last two, I stand outside that open doorway with an angle viewing the base of some stairs leading to the second floor leading. in the far left corner. I carefully toos in a grenade, and then pass through the door triggering a German to run down the stairs to shoot at me, but as he reaches the bottom of the steps and turns to fire, the grenade I've tossed there in the corner by the steps goes off and blows him into the air.
Then carefully standing at the bottom of the steps I toss more grenades through the openings along the side wall of the upper floor near the steps taking out the Germans still hiding up there.
After collecting the secret papers on the desk I jump down from the balcony into the courtyard triggering a German attack from a side alleyway to the left front and from behind our former positions down the street behind a derelic car and baracades that the Germans were firing on from the MG42 in the now occupied courtyard. One of your mates will man one MG42 and fire on them and other mates will fire on the Germans that come out of the lefthand alleyway. A toss of a grenade in their vicinity helps deal with them and then the rest of the grenade chucked down the street at the Germans behind the baracade.
A dash through the lefthand alley, runs you into three Germans making a break for it from the battle, and after cutting them down and another that appears at the far end of the alley you dash up some stairs through a room and off a balcony back to the dock area. And the battle is finally over.
I've managed to get through without getting killed a few times, and dozen or so getting killed once or twice, and many more having been killed a number of times all on the hardest difficulty setting. I've got it down now to where I can complete the demo in about 15 minutes.
Every once in a while you may get restarted from the last autsave point if you accidently kill a friendly with a grenade or if he runs in front of you while firing.
Obviously this is a very popular game on-line, but I don't normally play on-line. If the rest of the game is as good in solo play as the demo, I'll definitely get it.
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