Great War Nations: The Spartans

Players are hard pressed to find real innovation in real-time strategy games. If they go to their favorite electronic store and look at the PC section, most of the games look appealing on the outside, but inside the box contains something else entirely. The problem is that most developers are happy with being distastefully complacent by delivering the same game, with a different face lift. The same can be said with the oddly named game (more on that later): Great War Nations: The Spartans.

Players will be dumbfounded by the lack of options when they first load Great War Nations: The Spartans. There are only two main options: single player and multiplayer. In single player, gamers will find a small tutorial mode, a decent campaign mode, and an average skirmish mode. The multiplayer mode is even weaker as the only way to play is on a LAN (Local area network). This could have been forgiven if the campaign mode was outstanding and lasted a while, unfortunately it has neither quality.

There are two different campaign modes for players to take part in: Spartan and Macedonian. Each of these campaigns will lead players through the standard “kill the enemy base” missions, until they reach the conclusion. There was very little thought given to these missions, which is sad because this is where the meat of this game located. While playing, games will find out that there are some interesting settings, such as bribing allies to do malicious things to the enemies and even get their healing units to heal troops under their command. One of the poorest choices the developers made was limiting certain upgrades from each mission. In many games, players unlock various upgrades with each mission, and they will get to use them until the campaign ends. In Great War Nations: The Spartans, players might unlock cool technologies in one mission, and the next mission they will not have access to these upgrades, needless to say it becomes really frustrating, especially in later missions.

The best thing that this game has going for it is the unit creation system. In all RTS games, players only have certain (pre-made) units they can use for battle. In Great War Nations: The Spartans players have blanks slots that allow them to edit their units. They will be able to select the weapons that each solider can use, either from what they have researched or collected on the battlefield. This small aspect of the game makes each battle interesting and unique because players could lose an entire army but gain an advantage by searching the battlefields for new weapons to incorporate in their army. To make this feature even better players can create units that have more than one weapon (that can be switched on the fly); the only downside is that each unit will create more to build.

One of the worst things about this game is the pathfinding, which can really make or break an RTS game. The main problem is that players can command their units somewhere on the map, and they will not even stay formation, which make them vulnerable to attack. Sometimes several members of the units will “refuse” to go by standing still, and others will take the longest route to get to the destination. This simple act of insubordination might ruin a player’s strategy of overtaking their enemies, and might even cost them that battle. In the end, players will want to tear their hair out and use the game disk as a freebie for their dog in the backyard.

The graphics for this game have high and low points. The great thing about this game is the amount of detail on the individual units. Players will be able to discern exactly what weapons and armor the units are carrying, which is great since players get to edit each unit type. The realistic animation set also helps make the graphics look great for each of the units. They move and react realistically to their surroundings, which is always a treat to see in action. The various structures that players will build are also teeming small details that make this world come alive.

The downside to all of this is when players compare the units and structure to the rest of the game’s environment. It appears barren and void of life. This is a stark contrast to what the rest of the game is showing the players. It is just a little weird to see one side of the game full of energy and life, while the rest seems empty and missing something. The other bad thing about the graphics is the slow down players will receive during some of the bigger battles. It is not game-stopping slow, but it does get annoying.

The music for this game is pretty good as it gets players in the mood for some good old fashion battles. Also the sound effects, ranging from metal clashing to other battle sounds, are adequate, but other games have done it better. The main problem is the voice acting; while it works, at times the actors get a tad over the top and it ruins the flow of the game as well as the story.

Great War Nations: The Spartans is rated Mature for blood and violence.

The system requirements are:  
Windows 2000/XP 
2.4 Pentium 4 GHz or greater 
512 MB of RAM 
8X or faster CD/DVD drive 
4 GB of disk space 
128 MB Video Card 
Direct X 9.0c

Gameplay 6.1 
This is a very predictable game; other than the unique character creation system, Great War Nations: The Spartans offers the exact same thing that can be found in better RTS games. There are only two very short campaigns that really don’t do anything out of the ordinary.

Graphics: 7.3 
The graphics in this game are a mixed bad. On one hand the units are very nicely detailed and animated. The problem is that the game environments need more work to complement the units.

Sound: 6.5 
The battle sounds and music are decent, but they do not stand out very much from what other games have offered. The voiceovers are adequate, but they can get over the top at times.

Difficulty: Easy 
If player have ever played any RTS game in the past, they will feel right at home here as nothing is different.

Concept: 7.5 
The only real interesting aspect of this game is the troop creation system that allows players to build the exact army they want. Even this is borrowed from a previous game.

As a side note, it seems that the developers tried to stay close to history, so why is a game that is entitled “The Spartans” contain Alexander the Great, as these two were “super powers” 200 years apart?

Multiplayer 2.1 
This game only supports multiplayer via LAN. One of the staples of RTS gaming is to obtain all the knowledge gained in single-player mode and then take it out against everyone online. The only setting available in the LAN is just a simple skirmish. This is very disappointing of the developers to omit this important portion of the game. 

Overall: 6.1 
Great War Nations: The Spartans is an average RTS game that had the potential to be more. Only get this game if you were fans of the previous game then you might enjoy this; otherwise it would be best to wait until some of the more promising RTS games come out later this year.