Joint Task Force Preview

Joint Task Force is the latest RTS to come out from HD Interactive, the folks behind Nexus – The Jupiter Incident, the well-received space sim released last year. While that game dealt with real-time space combat, Joint Task Force takes a modern approach, putting you in realistic war situations in current hotbeds of conflict. While still in initial stages, Joint Task Force is already shaping up to be an engaging RTS with well-conceived units, fully interactive environments and great graphics.

Joint Task Force puts you as a member of the titular peacekeepers, a fictional group established to quell upstart conflicts and terrorist situations before they come to a global head. The story-driven campaign will take you to several different areas of global interest, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Colombia in order to subdue dissent in the interest of global peace.

At first glace, Joint Task Force doesn’t stand out much from the current crop of Real-Time Strategies. However, the game does have several things that make it a compelling entry to the genre. Much like modern warfare in general, the media plays in heavily to how battles are dictated in Joint Task Force, especially in the story-heavy campaign.

Civilian casualties are highly frowned upon, and can certainly hurt your rankings as well as your news coverage. Other missions actually have you escorting a news crew during a mission, requiring you to keep them alive for the duration.

The gameplay is also focused on short and fast battles as opposed to hoarding resources and amassing units. You’ll be able to up your units’ stats, giving them stronger attacks as well as secondary attacks. The tactics of battle come into play more than the ability to sit back and amass units.

The interface is very easy to navigate, and the entire playing field can be rotated to your viewing preference. All in all, the interface is very clean and simple to navigate.

Another thing that makes battle-strategy interesting is the fact that the environments are almost completely interactive, meaning that you can use just about anything for cover, and just about anything can be destroyed. Trees will topple realistically under tanks and HummVees and buildings will topple under fire. From planes to tanks, vehicular combat is very important in Joint Task Force, and therefore you'll have a lot of firepower behind you to decimate the landscape.

Graphically, the game is looking very impressive, with very detailed units and terrain. The fully-destructible environments look very realistic and the game makes great use of real physics. To sweeten the deal, the game will make use of AGEIA physics hardware, so those of you out there with physics cards have something else to use it with.

Joint Task Force is turning out to be a very solid entry to the modern day RTS genre with realistic graphics, meticulous details, and tight gameplay. Look for it in September.