Rush for Berlin

There are so many games based off the World War II setting that it is unimaginable. The games based in this setting range through all popular genres, including first-person shooters, strategy (both real time and turn based), adventure, flight, and many more. Well, another strategy game has emerged and wants a piece of this gaming pie, and that game is entitled Rush for Berlin. Read on to find out if this is a game that you will want to have in your collection.

The best way to describe Rush for Berlin is that it is a real-time strategy game. Your ultimate goal is to capture the German capital of Berlin as this will show the world the total defeat of Hilter’s Third Reich, which means the end of the war in Europe. As you get closer and closer to your goal you will find new and interesting challenges for you to overcome.

There are two modes for you to get your “game” on in Rush for Berlin. First off you have the multiplayer mode, which you can play over a LAN or Internet. There several modes to play with: cooperative, deathmatch, domination, R.I.S.K. (Race-Intensive Strategic Kombat), and R.U.S.H. (Relentlessly Utilized Score Hunt). Since you can all guess what the first two are let me explain the other two. In R.I.S.K. mode players get one to three randomly selected tasks to perform, such as hold an object, search and destroy, massacre, and many more. R.U.S.H is more like the single-player game, which means that you have to rush to complete the objectives and the person who does the best and has the most points wins. These two modes are really nice as they help give the game a bit more depth to the multiplayer instead of using the same cookie-cutter modes over and over again.

Next up is the single-player campaigns, and you will be happy to know that there are four separate single-player campaigns for players to take part in, that offer their own unique set of challenges and rewards. The four campaigns are: Soviet Union, Western Allies, German, and the French. The first campaign that you will play will be as the mighty Soviet Union, and just like in real life you will have vast human resources at your disposal throughout the game. You will be fighting through seven action packed missions that took place between January 1944 and May 1945, with the final mission being that of taking the German capital. Next up is the Western Allies Campaign, which your goal is to continue harnessing power and preserving your military and nation’s interests. If you can do this task then you will be in great shape to deliver the final blow to Germany.

After that is the German missions, which take place in a “historically plausible” scenario. Players find out that Hitler has been removed from power in July of 1944. Now you have been given command of a nation that is fighting for nothing more then survival against the onslaught of two superpower nations. The final campaign is the French, which deals with the French Resistance and their struggle to take back their pride by liberating their country from their enemies. All of these campaigns will keep players busy for quite a long time to see if they have what it takes to win the war in their favor.

One of the things that I really liked about this game is that you only have to deal with only one resource in this game: time. The way that it is presented is very easy and fun to do; you always have a looming feel of urgency to get your missions accomplished quickly. For instance, say that you need to build up tanks, you have a decision to make: do you build 10 light tanks, or build a super heavy “destroy the land around it” tank, which makes strategy a really important part of this game. One thing that you can do to help save time is to use decoy which will make the enemies think that you are fixing to flank them only to find out that they are getting setup in a more sophisticated trap.

The graphics for this game are both impressive and a letdown at the same time. First of all, the details on all of the vehicles (tanks especially) and the environments are very nice. What makes it really look nice is when you are under fire and your tanks starts to smoke and eventually explode to what I imagine it would have looked like in real life. The environments that you will be doing your duty at are pretty nicely detailed as well, with trees and various debris scattered everywhere gives players a sense of real war time. The only bad thing about the detail in the environments is that when you are in a big battle with lots of units on the screen at once, you will get some slowdown, which really puts a huge damper on the game.

Another big letdown is the infantry units, because they all look the same. I was beginning to wonder if they were this was going to be called the “Clone Wars” due to the fact that everyone looks identical. This is such a shame since the rest of the game has a nice variety in appearances.

The music for this game is pretty decent, meaning that it gets the job done, but it really doesn’t try that hard at making sure that it really puts the game over the top. The developers did a pretty good job with the use of the sound effects for this game. Everything that you would expect form a World War II game is here, including gun fire, explosions, and anything else that you could imagine. The voice-overs are palatable but not really that rememberable.

The system requirements for Rush for Berlin are:
Windows 2000, XP with SP1 or XP64
Pentium 4 with 1.7 GHz
512 MB RAM
DirectX 9.0c-compatible 3D-Graphics card with at least 32 MB RAM
DirectX 9.0c-compatible 16 Bit-Soundcard
DVD-ROM-Drive
4.0 GB free HDD space
56K-Modem for Multiplayer

Gameplay: 8.3
If you have played any strategy games in your life you will know exactly what to do in this game. If you do not there is an EXTREMELY detailed (and very boring) tutorial mode for you to go though that covers every aspect of the game. I really did like how you only have to manage time in this game as it gives you a greater sense of urgency on the things that have to be done.

Graphics: 8.1
The graphics in this game are a mixed bag. First off you have the nicely detailed environments and vehicles, but then you have the carbon copy infantry that ruins the whole experience. Also I encountered some slowdown during the game when there was a lot of action going on.

Sound: 8.2
The sound in this game is pretty good;, it includes all of the gun fire, explosions, and anything else that you would expect to hear from a game of this nature. The music is not perfect but it does get the job done. Last but not least, the voice acting is decent meaning it is not excellent nor is it bad - it just gets the job done.

Difficulty: Easy
The game AI is on the easy side and really doesn’t present too much of a challenge, especially for those more familiar with playing strategy games.

Concept: 8.7
Having to only deal with one resources makes this game a blessing. I really dislike playing games where you have to keep up with more then two/three resources as you spend ALL your time with resource management and not enough time building your vast armies to do battle with your enemies.

Multiplayer: 8.5
Playing this game with friends or online is a really fun thing to do. The various online game modes really help give this game something fun to do instead of just keeping with the “cookie-cutter” game modes.

Overall: 8.4
If you are looking for a new World War II strategy game, then you might want to check out Rush for Berlin because of some interesting ideas that it brings to the table.