Act of Aggression

It's no secret the pure real-time strategy games have been few and far between in recent years. Eugen System is here attempting to modernise the genre without dragging it too far from its place of origin, at least on the visual side of things.

Proper army-commanding real-time strategy games have been in a slump, surpassed by more accessible and instantly gratifying online battle arena games akin to Dota and the likes. Act of Aggression tries to bring back the original vision of building bases, training troops and managing resource collection before venturing forth to your opponent's base with a sizeable welcoming committee. The modern military shooter aesthetics are clearly visible here in everything from the units to the locations.

Two reasonably long campaigns let you play either as the UN-turned-military-state Chimera or the criminal-slash-mercenary-band Cartel. US troops are reserved for skirmishes and multiplayer. The Chimera relies on jack-of-all-trades units capable of dealing with multiple opponent types while the Cartel relies on speed, stealth and firepower at the expense of durability. The US faction lack the sophistication of the Chimera and doesn't have the Cartel's punch, instead relying more on armour and the ability to upgrade individual units on the fly. The factions have some notable differences, but aside from the Cartel's extensive stealth capabilities, they don't factor too much into how you're supposed to play them. All have tanks, attack choppers, artillery (which is tremendously powerful in the game), air support and a faction-specific mega-weapon.

Neither of the campaigns is anything to write home about. The Chimera missions acts as a tutorial for basic functions and follows a familiar path to many an RTS before it, introducing new game mechanics, units and scenarios piece by piece. The early levels restrict or completely disable building more units, forcing you to rely on your initial band of soldiers. Most of the events are scripted, so everything happens the same way it did on your first play-through. This inevitably means your first try at a level is always the most difficult and the second is almost too easy, since you've now learned the opponent's attack vectors, force compositions, and any ambushes.

Preludes and prologues are handled via rather boring mishmashes of satellite photos, stock footage, and general military nonsense. Both soundtrack and unit sound effects repeat themselves ad nauseum, but otherwise the sounds of war are of rather high fidelity. A major artillery barrage both looks and sounds the part. Voice actors teeter between passable and cringe-inducing, taking the entire imaginary war situation of 2025 very, very seriously. The rest of the game follows this ethos as well, with very little humour or light-heartedness. This can be both good and bad, depending on your own preferences. It's all very Clancy-esque and as such, a bit silly by default.

From the user interface to the battlegrounds, the game tries its best to be very military, very believable. The UI is passable, but the sometimes weirdly named (Chimera's snipers are named SAS instead of, well, snipers for example) troop titles are shown in odd places instead of where you'd expect them to be. Eugen Systems has made improvements over the course of its the development, so maybe the last oddities are to be fixed in later patches. The maps are most often very large even in 1 vs. 1 scenarios, making you appreciate the considerable speed boost vehicles get on the paved roads. Some feature urban centres, docks and industrial areas full buildings you're able to garrison, others have more open spaces between the bases. The three resources (oil, aluminium and rare earth metals) are scattered semi-randomly across the area, so your second skirmish on the same map may not be completely the same as your first. The urban areas can be particularly confusing because of the clutter, and units can get lost behind tall structures.

The game's pretty to look at. There's explosions aplenty, from multiple small ones through to the huge mushroom clouds caused by the super-weapons. They do come with this annoying CRT-screen distortion effect, which we personally don't like at all. Visually the units and base structures are a bit too similar to each other, making rapid recognition hard. The US faction is the worst culprit here with tanks, APCs and structures obviously taking many design cues from pre-existing material. Proper DirectX 12 support should be on its way, too.

A map plays out in a pretty standard fashion to anyone who's familiar with the genre. First you grab the nearest resource points and start churning out the early units to either scout or defend the base from an early rush, which up until a recent patch was very efficient due to basic unit's default ability to capture enemy buildings. Then you either confront your opposition head-on or try to disrupt the resource-gathering units while developing your own base further. In the end, both the skill in micro (the ability to control individual units) and macro (efficient base development) can take home the cake. AI opponents usually rely on the latter more. Their units may sometimes get clumped up into a pocket, too.

Once you're done with the AI, it's off to face human opponents, which up until the actual release were disproportionately comprised of veteran players participating in the beta. Here you can start to see the horrific effect of a well-planned artillery assault or attack chopper strike, both of which can level a significant portion of your base in seconds. It's too early to tell whether a certain tactic is overpowered, but balancing patches are sure to follow. Stealth units already received a major nerf to their ambush abilities.

All in all, Act of Aggression is not half-bad in its attempt at bringing back the days of the classic RTS. The base is solid if not entirely novel. The single-player campaigns act as competent tutorials but offer neither the storytelling nor the structure to keep you interested in them. The three sides are somewhat similar to each other compared to say the variety that Starcraft II offers. If you're into the serious modern military theme with believable units and battlegrounds in a traditional real-time strategy game, Act of Aggression is for you.