GameSpot editors' review
-
CNET editors' rating:
stars
OK
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 08/31/2001
- Updated on: 09/04/2001
- Released on: 08/22/2001
- Originally published on GameSpot: Sudden Strike Forever (PC) Review
Expansion packs cannot fix games. No matter how good an add-on is, it simply can't repair serious deficiencies found in the original title. The best expansions might be able to gloss over some problems and incorporate some new features to make the flaws of its predecessor less of an issue, but cracks in the foundation will remain. After all, you only get so much for $19.99. So don't expect a great deal from Sudden Strike Forever.
Sudden Strike Forever adds some noticeable enhancements to the original game.
While the official add-on to this year's surprise real-time strategy hit enhances both basic playability and the World War II backdrop, core gameplay remains untouched. Russian developer Fireglow may have added some welcome niceties to the basic package produced by German design house CDV, but it wasn't able to do anything to rectify the original's strategic paucity. These frills fail to add appreciable depth to the single-player experience, which still devolves into a mouse-clicking exercise involving animated toy soldiers and tank rushes. There is nothing to build, little to plan, and not much worth thinking about.
Still, Fireglow certainly tried to make things better. Adjustable difficulty levels have been introduced, along with four new campaigns (incorporating a total of 12 missions) and seven single missions. This allows for a greater depiction of World War II's theaters of operations across the globe. You can now carry on the fight in North Africa, on the wintry Eastern front, and on an autumnal Western European landscape dotted with brightly colored trees. New artwork does an admirable job of portraying this terrain.
Warring sides now specifically include the British, who were strangely omitted from the original in favor of a supposedly polyglot Allied army that was really just American. In addition to the Brit forays in North Africa, you can play as the Germans in Russia, the Russians advancing into Eastern Europe, and the Americans fighting in Western Europe. The missions in each campaign are very similar to those seen in Sudden Strike, in that they will occupy a great deal of your time but never amount to anything beyond gathering troops and hurling them in waves at enemy positions. Unit balance remains ridiculously off, evidenced by the way that seven or eight American infantrymen can finish off a group of attacking German Tigers. There's little or no thought required--tactics have been replaced with a guessing game where you need to determine which way the designers want you to move your forces, since many maps are puzzles where heading in the wrong direction means certain death. Trial and error is the only way to get through most of the missions in Sudden Strike Forever, which will increase your time with the game if nothing else.
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