Sudden Strike 4: Review

We all know the games that gave rise to entire genres. Sudden Strike (better known to us under the more familiar name "Confrontation") is one such example. It was under the influence of this series that almost all military strategies of the 2000s were created, including the famous "Blitzkrieg". Despite his advanced age, the old man is still alive today – for Sudden Strike 2 still release mods that are very popular among strategy fans.

The third part was unable to return the series to its former glory and remained, in general, unnoticed among fans "Confrontations", and among those who decided to get acquainted with the genre. This year – a new attempt, Sudden Strike 4.

The enemy poses a serious threat only in the event of massive use of armored vehicles. Yes, and this only happens in scripts.

"Listen to the combat mission!»

The main idea of ​​such strategies is simple and elegant. Under the command is a certain set of troops – infantry, tanks, artillery, air support, a few highly specialized “units” like snipers or sappers. The goals can be very diverse – from layered defense to raids behind enemy lines, but still the focus of strategies like Sudden Strike there was always a combined arms battle.

No one led the player by the hand: here are your subordinates, a short combat order – carry out! How exactly the newly-minted commander will go to victory is not important, it depends on who has enough imagination. A fine balance between the realism of wargames and the simplifications of standard RTS allowed you to feel like a real military leader without much stress – the game remained a game. Here you won’t find dozens of parameters for each “unit” and strict adherence to the technical characteristics of equipment, but there is also no almost instantaneous (on a mission scale) construction of bases and soldiers appearing in the barracks in exchange for money and resources. Decent graphics and scale also played an important role – each soldier and each tank was a separate model, and almost entire regiments took part in the battles (in Sudden Strike 2 there could be up to two thousand combat units on one map).

At first glance, the fourth part in many ways tries to be similar to the first projects in this series. In any case, this is how they expected her and this is how they wanted to see her. Three campaigns – Axis, Allies and USSR; clear and unambiguous tasks – hold, attack, capture; a minimum of conventions like buying subordinates for points in a “single” game, which multiplayer strategies have spoiled us with. IN SS4, By the way, the emphasis is on single playthrough – as is customary in the genre. Everything is the same as before? Unfortunately no.

Zerg Rush is our everything

It is clear that re-releasing an old game in a new wrapper is at least a dubious idea. Developers have always been criticized for such a fear of change. But here is exactly the case when careful copying of the original, taking into account modern technologies, could bring success. Instead Kite Games I decided in vain in this situation to reshape the time-tested formula.

"Battle on the Ice". https://pocketwin-casino.uk/bonus/ The mission is not difficult at all, the main thing is to make more holes in the ice, because the AI ​​is not trained to bypass ice holes.

It seems that the studio workers are unfamiliar with the first parts of the series. Some elements were added as if to loudly announce them in announcements, but no one thought about whether they would be of any use in practice. Others, on the contrary, were thrown away without noticing very important things.

For example, the commander system. Quite in the spirit of modern games: before the mission you can choose one of three generals, each of which gives certain bonuses to the troops. The infantry doctrine strengthens ordinary soldiers, the armored doctrine strengthens combat vehicles, and the support doctrine allows you to win due to accelerated repair or reloading. Each branch has several skills that are responsible for such bonuses. They are not immediately available – winning a mission gives from one to three stars, and those are spent on unlocking these skills.

It seems that everything is logical – variability appears, you can use different tactics, complete missions in different ways, in the end. But not this time – such a system is perfect for multiplayer, where the player knows his strengths or independently determines the set of troops. And here we don’t even know who exactly will be under our command in the coming battle! You choose to strengthen tanks, and in the next mission you have to fight only with infantry – or vice versa.

In fact, the further you go, the more such useless bits you notice. Dynamite, which has nowhere to be used, limited ammunition and fuel for vehicles that are unlikely to run out by the end of the mission, all sorts of unused little things, like the ability to open the commander’s hatch or put infantry on armor… Why, if for a better view it is easier to keep the infantryman next to the tank, and the soldiers move at almost the same speed as the equipment? It gets ridiculous – for example, it’s easier to shoot mines than to call sappers.

After completing several missions, you realize that the problem is much broader. I honestly tried to act like in the good old days – I tried to break into enemy defenses with combined artillery and aviation fire, followed by an infantry attack with the support of tanks, mined possible enemy offensive routes, took care of people and equipment… And everything seemed to work out, but the feeling that something was wrong here did not disappear.

Finally I realized. For the sake of experimentation, I decided to act in a classic way – I singled out all the forces available under my command and gave the command to attack the point indicated in the briefing. And it worked! A disorganized crowd of soldiers mixed with armored vehicles slowly but surely crushed the enemy with minimal losses.

Why these ingenious combinations of military branches, reconnaissance and similar tricks, if this time-tested, most primitive technique works great for us?? Except that among the French bocages you won’t be able to win this way – the corridors made from bushes are too narrow. But most of the other missions are completed with a bang this way.

Good is not enough

And this is not all that the developers have prepared for us: long-range artillery with a range slightly larger than the game screen, an incredibly poor implementation of combat itself – we have before us everyone’s favorite (actually not) version of it, when enemies stand at full height opposite each other and exchange fire for a long time until someone wins. No maneuver, no attempt to use cover. Moreover, the “units” located a little further away pay absolutely no attention to their comrades dying a couple of meters away – this does not concern them yet. It’s good that during shelling, soldiers can lie down on their own without waiting for the player’s command.

And here the scriptwriters tried to portray drama – no matter how hard you try, the mission ends with the surrender of the few surviving soldiers. It turned out so-so.

Finally, the most offensive thing is the meager scale of action. Forget about massacres – the fate of the world and the outcome of the war are decided at the level of a couple of platoons and three or four tanks! No, sometimes there may be more significant forces under our command (as in the Kursk Bulge mission), but they are given out in doses and little by little throughout the battle. It will not be possible to organize either an impressive tank battle or an artillery barrage from dozens of “barrels”: the most serious force is a couple of Katyushas at most. Yes, and they fire at a tiny distance with modest volleys of several missiles, and not with powerful hurricane fire. The cards are the size of a thimble; you won’t be able to implement your strategic plans on them. Sometimes a level is not a huge arena free for action, but a winding corridor with a clearly defined progression route. It’s as if ours is not a strategy, but a party RPG – even though the “party” is a little larger than the usual six characters.

But belonging to the series obliges us to adhere to that very significant scale, when hundreds and hundreds of soldiers converge in battle, and the number of destroyed equipment goes into the dozens. Failed due to technical limitations? I don’t believe it – even with this level of graphics this has long ceased to be a problem. Okay, let’s say we have more of a tactical level strategy "Behind Enemy Lines" – but the game mechanics clearly don’t suit it!

If you dig hard, you can, of course, find some pleasant moments. A decent picture, especially in dynamics, or interesting finds such as a destructible environment and a cover system. There is a “Test” mode with special conditions for each mission – lack of air support or reinforced enemy “units”. But you won’t get far in strategy with one chart, and the ice of the lake breaking from explosions and destroyed buildings is also little consolation.

Among French hedges you have to be sophisticated to avoid large losses. However, this doesn’t look much like a strategy – there’s too much microcontrol.

Of course, you can console yourself with hopes for mods and developers who will suddenly remember that they need to make a game, and not lump together disparate gameplay concepts (after all, they are patching the same No Man’s Sky still!). But if you look at the truth, in its current form Sudden Strike 4 – this is a complete failure.

Considering the equally “successful” start Blitzkrieg 3, the revival of the genre is once again postponed – and probably until someone who is not afraid to create a banal remake of the early games in the series gets down to business.