Dateyourgame: Attila’s community blog about Video Game – Walkthrough – Gameplay – Reviews – Tips and Tricks

Hello everyone this is Greatdictator and for a change, an interview with one of the developer over at Digitalmindsoft, who is currently working on a title with big potential Men of War, I advise you guys to go check it out it worth it.

Hi, thanks for this interview.

First of all, can you introduce yourself to our readers? What is your job and responsibilities in the Men of War project.

My name is Chris Kramer and I’m Managing Director of Digitalmindsoft. In Men of War I was responsible for outsourcing and project management tasks, as well as map and mission design. I was also working on the cinematic experience the game delivers.

Men of War is a World War II game, an era that quantities of games already cover. Why did you decide to go back to World War II, a genre that has been done several times over? What does your game offer that we didn’t already saw in countless other games and that could attract players that think they’ve seen it all in term of the era and in term of the real time strategy genre?

We could have searched for a more innovative or less used scenario. However we decided to put all our energy into the impressive gameplay of Men of War. Our task was to give Men of War an unique level of depth, as well as a gameplay you don’t see in any other game no matter they are in the same genre or cover the same topic. World War II is a huge topic with a massive amount of scenarios involved, a topic that offered us a lot of features and technology to add.

What new players will attract for sure is the enormously level of detail the game has, if it comes to the point that every soldier carries his own inventory, or that every AI soldier reacts to the environment and to the enemy on its own, or the most detailed armour penetration system ever created in the genre. You have barely any limitation in defeating your enemy and thus the game entertains you for many months, especially in multiplayer.

In Men of War players can take control of an individual soldier, it’s a fairly unique feature that very few RTS games ever included when did you come up with this unique gameplay element?

When the first part of the series was under development by Best Way, they added the basics of the feature at a very early stage of development. The game had only very simply AI and path finding routines, so they added this feature as a temporarily substitute to the very limited control mechanism. The feature went on growing with the time and Best Way liked it more and more until it became one of the most unique features in the genre and a key element of Men of War’s gameplay.

Did you guys at some point think about making a modern times tactical RTS game set in the Middle east regions or other hotspot regions of the world where conflict could occur?

“Could” is the very point, we don’t want to use an actual or uprising conflict for our games for moral reasons. I simply find it very unattractive to entertain with conflicts that aren’t solved and are still going on, it would hurt too many feelings, especially when it comes to involved parties.

More interesting and likely would be some slightly futuristic, complete sci-fi or another time period in history.

The Men of War engine seem very good. Can you tell us about the history of this engine, is it built from scratch or an already used engine. If it an already used engine, what other games use it that our reader could be interested to try and what kind of improvement does the engine has gain during the creation of Men of War?

Men of War’s engine is built on the GEM engine from Best Way, in fact MoW uses the GEM 2.5 engine whereas the first part in the series called Soldiers: Heroes of World War II featured GEM 1. It’s improved in many aspects, graphics wise, technology wise, physics wise and especially performance wise.

We are noticing that Men of War has a colorful, nearly joyful color tone, while most recent video games have a gray or brown feeling, is there any reason for this artistic look to the game?

Yes, we don’t want to have “yet another” game. To be fair, Men of War has quite some dark scenes too, however we wanted to have a colour balance to keep the game refreshing, even after quite some gaming hours.

While playing the beta we noticed a great attention to the vehicle damages which are very realistic from our point of view. Realism in the game work both ways, you can destroy the enemies by aiming at the weak points but you can also be destroyed the same way. What advice would you give to new players that are not use to such realism in video games?

Be open, try stuff out, there is always something you can learn in MoW. I myself find out strategies after years, just because you have so much options. A great help of course is to watch matches from players like Attila, they teach you a lot. Try what you would do in real life and find out how well it works in MoW.

What I also recommend is to play with friends to learn the game, you get a faster feedback and they can explain their moves and how they did something. Learning together is always a lot more joyful.

An other aspect we experienced in the beta is the great extent of the individual and collective AI capacity. How smart is the game AI and could you gives example of what kind of amazing thing the A able to do?

Besides most RTS/RTT the game doesn’t have a master AI that moves troops around and gives them orders. In Singleplayer they have a certain guideline from the mission designer, for example their tasks and attack points, but other than that they are acting on their own and have an individual smart AI, you usually only know from first-person-shooters.

So the unique element is the group communication, that means individual AIs will communicate with other AIs in the same area, they will attack together or retreat together, depending on their situation. If they are under heavy fire they will come up sneaking and if they get hit, they will run back to cover and try to heal themselves, whether they act cowardly or heroic depends on the AIs decisions, not on the mission script. This AI makes the game feel very realistic and ads so much to the replay value of it. You never know what the AI is up to.

There are many features to Men of War which one would you say your most proud of?

It comes all together, Direct control would be useless without detailed physics, physics on the other hand wouldn’t make a difference without direct control and the micromanagement abilities. Of course direct control is a totally outstanding feature, but I’m proud of how everything comes together and supports the idea behind the game, rather than just an individual feature.

Is there any plans on having updates with more then unit balancing in the future, like expansion, sequels?

Let’s release this great game to everyone first, than we shall talk about the future =)

Thanks for you time!
You’re welcome!

To Complete this interview here is an other exclusive coop video from Attila.

Episode 3: All Fall Down.

Bring down a Golem rampaging around Times Square in order to retrieve Pandora’s Box.

Check my Empire Total War info page
You can see the system requirement and where to preorder it.
This video shows the Land battle you can play in the Empire Total War demo.
Before questions start flowing about the UI. I used the minimal UI, that you can find in your options.
Enjoy! =)

These are my impressions of the Battleforge and Dawn of War 2 beta please note that by the time you watch this video the betas are over but they should still give you a nice overview of how the game actually is….or for the most part at least .

Dawn of War 2

Battleforge

Well Tabula Rasa what can i say about it …its not like any other MMO out there its fast paced , the enemys are fun to fight…and i never thought id feel like a badass in an MMO but i did when i mowed down a platoon of Thrax infantry with a chaingun , blow em up with a sonic cannon or torch them with a flamethrower but the short adventures i had in Tabula Rasa were definetlly filled with fun….oh and the emotes there are a plenty….well you can still try it till Febuary the 28th…..so what you waiting for try it its free.

DONT go TB dont go.

This video show the sea battle you can play in the Empire Total War demo.
Before questions start flowing about the UI. I used the minimal UI, that you can find in your options.

Also take a look at the information page for Empire Total War, it answer the most regular question on the game, where to get it and help me in the process.
Enjoy =)

This is a video of Men of War in coop that I had the opportunity to try in exclusivity. This is base on the Beta so you may notice a few visual difference with final version of the game. This mission is the first German campaign mission with the massive invasion on Crete. The attack was the first step to the North African campaign that was shortly following afterwards and dominates the rest of the campaign.

Some of the nice feature you can see in this video is that in coop you can revive your fallen allies with a limited number of morphine that your main soldiers have with them. That limited number of “revive” force you to remain vigilante with your forces, without being frustrated at losing all your soldiers one after the other until defeat occure.

Coop also split the available troops between up to 4 players, in doing so the coop make it easier for players to use the direct control, without being overwhelmed by the management of a large forces where the fight can be heated and confuse like any real war.

This attention to a smaller group of soldiers also mean that you can use them more effectively. For exemple in Men of War coop, the inventory management is much more important and useful. You have more time to get ammo to your troops. You also have time to gain from using the guns of your enemies instead of simply ignoring them like most players would do in multiplayer.

The coop also allow you to specialize your role in the team. for example, some player can focus themselves on infantry tactic, while others can provide sniper support and use the enemies guns left behind, in order to support your advance.

Since each soldiers become more effective thanks to a closer control of humans, you can also advance on a wider front leading to a better positioning of your forces. This better positioning give you new angles of fire on enemies positions and protect your flanks.

The cooperation can also go beyond simply dividing forces but can also include spotting dangerous enemies like we did in this video. While one player is busy aiming at the enemies the other player scan the horizon and report the position of the next dangerous target using the “N” button. This is also true in multiplayer games.

This video also contain many useful tricks about how to finish the the mission on hard and one of the many ways to do it. This video doesn’t contain the last part of the mission, because we ran out of disk space, and that should allow you to spice things up when your the one playing. =)

This is a battle of Men of War multiplayer beta. In this video I’m in charge of the left flank and I must hold the flank.

What is important to note in this video, is how I deploy my infantry around to scout the enemies movement. It’s important to find the right positions where they can hide and at the same time keeping them in a position of mutual support in case enemies infantry find them.

In this battle, my side successfully pushed the enemies out of the center of the the map and we didn’t advanced further for the following reasons. The enemies spawn nearby in a line, so they could have fired at the weak sides of our tanks. The flank being weak combine with the close range would also have made their armor piercing round stronger, exposing our forces to a certain death. Spawn camping your enemies isn’t very fun for them and for yourself so it was better holding the center.

For the most part, I was able to hold the line with a Sherman M4A2 against Panzer IV. The M4A2 has the advantage of having an heavier body armors then the M4A1. This mean that the your M4A2 can take much more punishment then the M4A1. You can get at closer range to the enemies and survive while shooting them back with stronger Amour Piercing power.

Of course the M4A2 while better then the M4A1, it didn’t resisted the powerful Nashorn anti tank gun and was destroyed later on. I avenged it by sneaking a crew member behind enemies line and trow dynamite that blew up the Nashorn. One thing you should notice is the limited view the enemies tanks have and that are represented by the red line with you click on the units. Also your prone infantry are harder to see for them. So if you use your infantry smartly you can easily destroy very important enemies vehicle with a low cost.

When I spawned a Pershing the fate of the enemies was seal considering the Pershing have a very heavy armor and a powerful cannon. The enemies medium tank were then destroy from a far without much chance to inflict any damage. So this was a clear victory.

***NOTE: The sound isn’t the best ever because windows changed an option without asking me, preventing me from having a “good quality” sound while recording. I tryed to reduce the inconvenient as much as possible and if it doesn’t do the job, i recommend cutting the sound to half. The game sound is much better then what you will hear in this video.

This is an other video of Men of War Multiplayer Beta. Once again this is an infantry only battle. As you can see this battle happened at a different time of the day as the previous videos. The game randomizes the time of the day and the weather each time you play giving some welcome visual diversity in luminosity.

The action starts as my riflemans rush toward the central hill and if you look carefully you can see a horde of german soldiers rushing toward the same hill. Fortunately, my rifleman had the time to build up a first line of sandbags before the firefight begins.

This strategic sandbags line would become the center of the front. I was in charge of holding it, but most of the action actually happened on the flanks. You could expect the center to be the hot point of the battlefield, the reality isn’t so because of the difficulty to make frontal assault.

On the other hand, the main challenge of being in the center isn’t so much holding against enemies charges, but more the fact that you become a target from all side of the front. this is why sandbags are your best friends. Since your are under fire from all side it is clear that your soldiers will remain pinned down most of the time and they most likely will be targeted by, heavy machine gun, cannon, mortar, sniper fire, etc. Sandbags provide you hard cover against most of those weapons.

This mean that the best way to hold your line, is to go prone without trying to fire back. Doing so has multiple advantages, your enemies will waste ammo, your soldiers will be “safe” and they are available to get back behind those sandbags to push back any direct assault.

Later on in the game I finally got mortar support and it really did push back the enemies away from the central position. The hill also provided a safe cover to the mortar making it impossible to destroy by cannons or sniper fire and the mortar indirect fire make it the ultimate infantry combat weapon. But while the central front was more or less static and that this game started as a 8 vs 8 players.

The game when on and we lost 4 players for diverse reason and it soon became a 4 vs 8. Which is what made this battle even harder. While we did manage to take advantage of the relief early on, the lack of players in our team leaded to hard fights on the flanks. The left flank got overrun by the enemies soon to be followed by the right flank. At that point I was still holding on to the center but out number by mortars and cannons combine with the expected charge, we were to be push back. In a vain effort my mortar fire in every direction killing many enemies but was soon to be destroyed by enemies mortar fire.

Finally forced out of the center the only remaining option for us was to try to reform a front line by trying to push back the left flank that was held by a cannon. I send a squad of SMG and managed to kill most of the outpost soldiersof the outpost soldiers and the cannon but resulted with the sacrifice of my own squad. My squad was soon to be follow by a ranger / assault group that finished the remaining outpost soldiers. The enemies had reinforcements nearby and using the truck to kill a few rangers combined with heavy fire from all direction the rangers didn’t lasted long.

Finally out of time, resource and artillery of anykind, we tried to prevent encirclement but were forced to pull back due to the number of cannons aiming toward us and this is how we were defeated, outnumbered and outgunned but still alive, which was a victory in a way. =)

You can get the open beta here

Episode 2: Escape From…

Battle creatures on the New York streets and subways, whilst attempting to rendevous with Vivian.

This Men of War video demonstrates the “Battle Zone” mod. It was probably one of the most evenly matched game of Men of War Multiplayer beta I had with adversaries of fairly equal styles. The video demonstrates how intense Battle Zones mode can be in a two vs two game with only infantry units.

The objective of this battle forced both sides to rush and hold the positions. You can see how grenades are key to push back the enemies and the necessity to use half of your soldiers to suppress the enemies, while a few well armed soldiers run toward the enemies trowing explosives.

In this kind of intense battle you need to anticipate the action. For example, ordering where your squads should throw grenades and where the your covering fire soldiers should suppress from to be effective.

The type of grenade also matter. For example against fortified infantry in building or behind sandbags, “Heavy Explosive Grenades” and dynamite are the key. While in open space fragmentation grenades may kill / wound more enemies.

This position where you put your heavy machine guns are also important and coordination with your ally is important.

For example, in this Men of War battle we deployed two heavy machine gun on high grounds. It was a good idea because it gave us the hill advantage. On the other hand we deployed them too close from each other providing too heavy fire for what was necessary. Deploying both of them on the enemies flanks would have allow us to defend them with much more ease and lower casualties and if well deployed we could have actually covered flanks and center at the same time. Always time to learn …

You can play find the open beta here
http://www.digitalmindsoft.eu/?fi=2353

I’m back! I finally overcame this games initial show stopping issue by, how you ask? Actually recording the game whilst playing it, weird I know, but enough jabbering. One new episode each day and I’ll add my other walkthroughs as well later.

Episode 1: Flashpoint.

Escape the New York museum and rendevous with Vivian.

This is a tank battle between US and German Panzers in the Men of War Multiplayer Beta. Me and Instinct choose to play without the fog of war so that you guys can enjoy a more colorful environment. It also decrease the risk of close encounter where the first shoot would kill the tanks.

When the video start I’m looking at two type of Sherman to see their stats and check if it was worth waiting for the points before spawning and get a heavier Sherman. If you look carefully you will notice, that all tanks have different armors defense and that to destroy them your cannon and Armors Piecing rounds need to have a greater power than the enemies armors. Also note carefully that in this game the crossair I have, in direct control, indicates with 3 colors, my chance of actually piercing the enemie armor. When it’s green there are high chances that the round will pierce the enemies shield. This means that you need to be careful about your tank positioning and face the enemies from the side with the best defense.

This video also demonstrate how all the environment is destructible and since i was the driver, i did not see any issue at rolling into the buildings… =P

I ultimately got my tank destroyed after its track was damaged and I could not evade the enemies fire.

Spawning a Pershing ultimately won the battle that was clearly in our favor and after seeing or testing the might of the Pershing tank, one of our adversary gave up. Shortly after the video end. So I hope you enjoyed that battle. =)