Officers (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.5 stars OK
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 5.5 (2.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Daniel Shannon
• Reviewed on: 09/14/2009
• Released on: 07/14/2009
• Originally published on GameSpot: Officers (PC) Review

With a Russian developer and an opening cutscene that depicts fierce fighting between the Soviet Union and Germany, you might expect Officers, a real-time strategy game set in World War II, to feature a Soviet perspective. However, the Red Army is entirely absent from Officers' campaign. Instead, you'll be taking American forces on yet another tired trot from France to Germany. To Officers' credit, its epic scale and unique focus on supply issues and reconnaissance differentiate it somewhat from other games in the genre, but unfortunately the insane difficulty, the translation and voice-acting failures, and the protracted load times will dissuade you from signing up for another tour on the western front.

The biggest difference between Officers and every other World War II RTS is its scale. Every mission takes place on a gigantic map, comparable to the largest maps in Supreme Commander. At first the grand scale seems like a strength, but other gameplay elements turn it into a liability. First, unlike in Supreme Commander, you can view only a small portion of the battlefield at a time, which means that you won't even be able to see all of a single skirmish at once. Second, because of your incredibly fragile units and the dangerous and often unseen enemies that lurk behind every tree, you're forced to use extreme caution and play on slower speed settings. As a result, missions can take up to five tedious hours to complete, and unless you have the patience of a sniper, you'll eventually succumb to boredom. Every map consists of five or six zones, which change hands based on the ownership of a central strategic point, and each zone is full of numerous optional objectives, such as capturing farms, radar stations, and fuel depots. Securing these locations provides you with resources and reinforcements that you'll almost certainly need to complete the mission.

Resources and logistics are major considerations in Officers, and their mechanics are both novel and realistic. While you don't have to worry about farming, mining, or oil drilling, you will have to ensure that your troops have ample supplies of food, ammunition, and fuel. These resources are liberated when you capture objectives and are stored at strategic points, which supply nearby troops. If you run out of food, troops will start dying, and if you run out of fuel, then you can forget about any armored offensives. To keep your troops in supply, you must move supplies from rear areas to the front lines with escorted convoys of supply trucks. Traveling over roads rather than cross-country conserves precious fuel, and if you control the roads, you can force opponents to waste a lot of fuel, minimizing the threat of any mechanized offensives.

More than anything else, Officers puts heavy emphasis on reconnaissance. Because each unit has a different range for attacking versus detecting enemy units, it's imperative that you make excellent use of recon units such as jeeps and armored cars. Nothing is more frustrating than watching as your Shermans are blown to pieces by unseen antitank guns, but thankfully, you too can exploit a blinded enemy. For instance, although you may not be close enough to destroy an enemy artillery piece, you can silence it by destroying the infantry scouting your location. While this battlefield awareness mechanic is unique and interesting at first, as the hours wear on, being constantly alert becomes more work than fun.

In addition to the difficult demands of reconnaissance, units just seem to lack staying power. In under a minute, a force of a dozen vehicles could be wiped out by unseen tanks, and elite infantry squads have about as many hit points as a roll of toilet paper. So, you'll constantly err on the side of caution, tiptoeing your units delicately through their tragically short lives. Although they die too frequently for you to develop any emotional attachment, the limited availability of reinforcements forces you to treat each and every unit like it's an endangered Siberian tiger cub.

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  "Realistic, simulation of WW2 warfare, serious challenge"

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