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Through all the ups and downs of the RTS genre over the last several years, one theme has been largely ignored - WWII. Turn-based strategy games have typically dominated the WWII scene with games such as 101: The Airborne Invasion of Normandy and others. While turn-based games might offer more grit and depth than RTS, they sometimes miss the mark in the action and graphics departments. Additionally, the fact that a WWII theme hasn't been fully explored in RTS games is a bit perplexing since such a theme lends itself very well to the strategic breadth of the RTS format. Finally, along comes Sudden Strike from German developer Fireglow. Sudden Strike is a large scale WWII RTS game that plays like a combination of Red Alert 2 and Combat Mission. With dozens of individual, accurately modeled WWII units at your command plus deformable terrain and top quality graphics, Sudden Strike easily rivals the best RTS games released this year.

At first glance Sudden Strike appears to be little more than the typical C&C clone dressed up in a WWII skin. However, after firing up the first mission it’s soon clear that this game involves much more than just producing as many units as possible and sending them out to battle. The single player game consists of three separate campaigns, with roughly a dozen missions for each of the German, Allied, and Russian campaigns. Rather than including separate training missions, the first mission in each of the campaigns serves as a basic introduction to the tactical type of play which is at the heart of Sudden Strike. There is no production or base building to worry about in the game. Instead, the player is given a set amount of starting units followed by various numbers of reinforcements as each mission progresses. In the absence of unit production, it’s very important to keep units alive.

Combat units gain experience as they progress through the mission, but they will also run out of ammo if not re-supplied by a supply truck. Such attention to detail is what gives Sudden Strike greater depth than you might expect. While the first few missions of each campaign are fairly simple, the difficulty ramps up rather steeply with massive casualties becoming inevitable. Reinforcements are delivered at appropriate intervals, often arriving right after your forces suffer heavy losses while taking over an important enemy position. Many times, however, the game advances at an arduously slow pace when you’re down to just a handful of infantry and maybe an artillery cannon. Taking on a company of mixed enemy troops with only a handful of units is possible if you use the right tactics. This is where Sudden Strike gets really interesting, because although there are potentially hundreds of units on the map at any given time, there are always little pockets of heavy fighting going on as your troops encounter enemy strongholds. It’s these little pockets of fighting that force you to think tactically.

Successfully managing a large scale war in Sudden Strike is not an easy task. You can’t just band-box your entire army and send them off to an enemy location. Using mixed groups of units results in the greatest success since each type of unit has advantages and disadvantages on the battlefield. For instance, placing a high-ranking officer or a sniper among a group of tanks or standard infantry will greatly increase the group’s fighting capabilities. Line of sight is very important in Sudden Strike. Snipers can see much greater distances than regular troops, and artillery cannons use a straight projectile and therefore cannot shoot over tall objects. Howitzers, on the other hand, use ballistics that allow them to shoot long distances over the tops of houses or other obstructions. Thus, it becomes evident early on that the way to win the war is by carefully grouping various types of units together for maximum battlefield effectiveness.

A narrated briefing introduces each mission with a set of goals to be accomplished. A typical mission might consist of advancing to location A, taking out enemy fortifications there, building a bridge over a river, advancing to location B and setting up a defensive position. While the objectives are specific, the way to accomplish them is open-ended. Sudden Strike is definitely not one of those games that tries to bottleneck you into a certain predefined path. There are usually several possible routes to each objective, allowing the player to freely move about the map and engage the enemy at their weakest spot. “Hitting them where they ain’t “is a phrase that applies well to Sudden Strike, and is often the only way to defeat an enemy with superior forces. Scouting is absolutely essential because of the limited visibility of most units. Here, the Allies have the advantage in the form of scouting biplanes, while the Germans’ primary scout unit is a motorcycle with sidecar.