military and espionage

First thing first. This review is based on the UK release of Silent Storm by publisher JoWood. The US folks have to wait till January 2004 to get this superb game.

I have always like turn based strategy games. Games like that are true strategy games because they let the player strategize how to win a combat with limited resources. Games like Warcraft and Command and Conquer are called real time strategy but in my opinion, I don't see much strategy in those games... one can win by building good defense, accumulating lots of units and swarming the AI with those units. Strategy? Not at all!

In my 15 years of gaming experience, I love two turn based strategy games: X-Com: Enemy Unknown (aka UFO Defense) and Jagged Alliance. These jewels were released around 1993/1994. They spawned a cult of faithfuls but sadly, they never reached the mass players. But these games never left my hard disk. I still play them whenever I am bored or when there are no new games in the store.

All these years, I have been wondering why no one will take the advances in 3D graphics and make a turn based game set in a 3D world... a world where everything is destructable - walls, doors, windows, trees, trucks, etc; a world where the action takes place in a building with multiple storey - for example, a sniper can hide in the attic of a 3 floor mansion and snipe any intruders.

Heck, with a capable engineer, you can demolish the whole 3-level building to dust, killing all the enemies (and destroying the furnitures at the same time) with the weight of the building on top of them. That is how destructable the terrain is!

I have always wonder when I can get to play a game where the gameplay is not predictable and you can replay the level again and again and again without getting bored; a game where there are many classes you can play: either as a scout like Tom Clancy's John Clark or as a sniper or as a Rambo-esque machine gunner - with each class having a Diablo 2-like skill tree in which the player choose which area the soldier should improve in; and finally a game where you and your friend's experience of the game are totally different and you get to regale your combat story over a glass of beer and hear in amazement how your friend achieve a mission objective in a totally new way that you have never even considered and can't wait to rush back home to try this new tactic.

These are what you get from Silent Storm, a game which sets you and 5 operatives in a World War 2 era. A game where you get to play either as the Allied or the Axis troops and yet not a historically correct World War 2 depiction which creates a new level of intrigue and creativity.

Silent Storm is a true turn based strategy game set in a 3D world in which firing a salvo of ammunition on a wooden door does not "remove" the door from the world but splinter it pieces by pieces, with the sunlight filtering through the holes into the darkened room, killing the poor medic who was hiding behind the door. Your sniper can then come out of cover and fire through these holes in vengeance.

Truly an amazing game which I believe will last in my harddisk for many years to come. The game comes with a map editor and 4 modifications, most notably are Inventories affect action points and Headshot always kill. I can imagine more player made modifications in the years to come - how about a Mafia era modifications? Or a Star Wars mod? Or a AD&D's Dragonlance mod? Or a Samurai mod?

I didn't as much as I wanted.

Let me start out by saying that I loved XCOM I and III and Jagged Alliance I and II. Initial impressions of Silent Storm were very similar and there were so many things to like. It ran smoothly, the commands were intuitive, the graphics were great, the game engine was great, each squad member had a personality.

I won't repeat all the good things about the game, because you can read those in the other reviews. However I started to notice AI behavior for certain (not all) enemy troops. They would find a hiding place and wait. You could sit for hours and they would not move.

If you knew where they were, you could toss in a grenade, but often they were on the map and you didn't know where. I would send my best scout crawling through the underbrush ahead of my units. The problem was that they were so well hidden, that he could not see them. He only be a few yards away when they spotted him and opened up - instant dead scout.

It is very much the same as those ships in XCom II where the aliens would wait around a corner and you knew that first man to step around it would die. As near as I can tell - there is nothing you can do about it. I don't mind losing men to bad luck or mistakes, but I hate where a game design "forces" you to lose a man to proceed.

Still a good game - just not "great."

i thought silant storm was a great game, not only were the graphics amazing but the way it is played is great as well.
You can destroy anything i mean anything if a doors locked shoot it if somethings in you'r way shoot it.

you can also make you'r own characters... their faces,voice,body all and all i gave this game a five out of five for great everything.