For quite a while WW2 has been a favorite subject of strategy game developers. Consequently a lot of WW2 RTS games have been released up to date. Some of them are good, some bad, while some fall in the middle. Frontline Command is yet another 3D RTS game, this one coming from legendary UK based developer Bitmap Brothers (more familiar to most of us for Xenon, Z and Z: Steel Soldiers), putting you into the boots of an Allied commander back in 1944. No matter their reputation, seeing that it's their first WW2 RTS game, how did they cope?

Gameplay:

Frontline Command is a mix of the super-realistic Close Combat series, and the arcadish feeling Sudden Strike. As a matter of fact it attempts to take all the good elements from both of the titles and combine them in one piece. It actually manages to make it fun. Coming from Close Combat series is the ability to place infantry units in buildings (although all of the latter can be destroyed); very simple control interface; ability to give units “advanced” commands, such as defend or ambush, crawl or run, and the like; all infantry units are divided into squads instead of fighting as individual soldiers; units have a morale bar that influences their response to the action that you demand (for example when one of the units saw its comrades die before its eyes the bar will go down, and they might stop responding for a bit, although I've never seen them cower and run away; or on the other side when the morale is high your units can start running up to enemy vehicles and throw grenades at them from point blank, all by themselves). Coming from Sudden Strike is the slightly higher tempo gameplay, and of course a bigger amount of units that you have under your control. Speaking of the units, there's a rather large variety of those, with a lot of detail given to each: for example tanks have different armor thickness from different sides, which makes the game much more realistic. Another nice feature is that some of your units have secondary fire modes (e.g.: there's a switch option between rifles and grenades for regular rifle infantry, while tanks can either shoot or simply run over enemy infantry) that prove to make the gameplay more thought-through.



One of the biggest achievements of the game is the properly implemented line of sight / sound system, that is basically very similar to the one in Close Combat – your troops can't see through bushes, buildings and so on. And as a matter of fact the game features a very interesting concept – your motorized units (such as tanks and halftracks) are only able to see what's happening directly in front of them, so in reality someone could sneak up on them from behind undetected. The line of sound also works accordingly, enemy units are able to “hear” your units when they're for example running next to them instead of crawling and react accordingly, and vice versa. As well the game features a “shared” line of sight – what that means in reality is that whenever one of your units (for example a mortar infantry unit) is within shooting range to an enemy unit, but doesn't see it while another one of your units does, the mortar infantry will still be able to shoot at the target, since your other unit has it in sight. Some of the units also have special gadgets that allow to extend their LOS when activated: for example the Commander's binoculars and the Sniper's scope. What should be noted as well is that the fog of war is actually viewed as a fog and disappears accordingly, instead of many other games that use a simple “black color” to mark off unseen to you areas.

But like all other games Frontline Command is not without fault. The enemy AI isn't exactly the brightest I've encountered in an RTS game. It doesn't adjust to the situation – for example when a few infantry AI-controlled units patrol the same pattern and one of them gets annihilated, the other ones will keep walking the same pattern. Or if you've just eliminated an infantry squad that advanced towards you with a bunch of your Sherman tanks, instead of sending an even force towards your position, yet another infantry unit will come. By the way, enemy units are somewhat suicidal, as they will attack you as soon as they see your units, no matter how many of them there are. Often enemy units won't help friendly units that are being attacked in their proximity, no matter that their comrades are in their viewing range. And while the AI becomes slightly “smarter” in the Veteran mode (more on that later), it still leaves much to be desired.



At the same time your units seem to be unable to stay together when selected as a group and ordered to move somewhere. That means that after a few movements your entire platoon will be pretty far from each other. Not a big problem, but getting them all back together all the time isn't exactly a very exciting task. Speaking of dull, during some of the longer missions it's easy to lose interest in the game, as another annoyance for some people will become the field guns – every time you want to move one, you'll need to connect it to the jeep, move, unhitch and man with infantry. When you need to do that often, this action while being realistic, becomes repetitive and dull. Yet another thing worth mentioning is that there's no option to make the game run faster or slower, which is somewhat annoying at times. Finally one last fault is that while buildings do give extra protection to your units, there's no different type of protection for different type of ground terrains, which was featured in Close Combat. Although different terrain types do give different movement speed bonuses, which is a nice touch.

But even with all those problems and minor annoyances, the gameplay is very deep and satisfying. A lot of innovations and a big number of features “borrowed” from other games combined into one make Frontline Command unique. Add to that two campaigns, one of which (recruit) is linear with 12 missions, while the other one (veteran) is non-linear and consists out from 25 missions. The campaigns also feature slightly different rules of play – for example in the recruit campaign the ammo is infinite and units can keep shooting all the time, while in the veteran campaign your soldiers' ammo can end (that's where supply vehicles come into play), and they actually have to reload once in a while. One thing that I didn't like, however is the inability to play “single missions” - there's no such option at all, you will have to play in campaign mode only. However the campaign modes do give quite a bit of variety of different missions and gameplay rules for both experienced and inexperienced players. There's also a very well made tutorial in the game, that introduces you to the basics, although you would have to consult the manual for in-depth information.

Graphics:

The game uses a much revamped and improved version of the same engine that powered Z: Steel Soldiers. In short the graphics look very good, while not making you concentrate on them more than on gameplay. The units models look terrific, down to the smallest detail, and you can even see the serial numbers on tanks' bodies. The animation are also very varied and all beautifully animated. The textures are very smooth and it does look like a lot of work was put into them. The buildings you will see in the game are also very well done, and since they all can be destroyed you see them gradually become more and more damaged. The explosions and the like look nice, although not spectacular. The performance, however, is just fantastic. Even on my two year old rig everything was highly playable with all the details being turned on, and at a decent resolution too (800x600). It's really rare to find a graphically nice looking game that will give you a decent framerate on an older machine, but Frontline Command is one of them.

One of the biggest issues in many 3D RTS games are the camera controls (an example of horrible camera controls can be G.I. Combat, released by Strategy First last fall). There's almost no problem with them in Frontline Command: they're very easy to use, and although the camera is not exactly “free”, you can even fine-tune the camera control options from the game options menu. There's only one real problem with the controls – I've noticed a rather obvious bug that doesn't let you open the unit command interface in some of the resolutions. The bloody thing pops up and hides itself again, so you'll have to adjust the zoom level in some of the resolutions for it to work properly. While it's not really a big deal, it's strange that no patch for that has been released yet, especially considering the fact that the European version of the game has been available for the last two months. The videos in the game are made from real archive footage, and are nicely done too. Overall the graphics, while not astounding, are pretty damn close to that.


Sound:

The title music track is well done and adds to the WW2 feeling of the game. The explosions and other unit sounds are very well done as well, with a great variety of them available. On the downside the unit voiceovers and mission briefings are of good quality, but seem to be somewhat repetitive and not completely sincere at times. There's also no 3D positional sound support in the game, although most of the latest games support that. In conclusion the sound does its trick fine, but could've still been improved.

Multiplayer:

There's support for up to 4 players in multiplayer mode, both over the Internet and LAN. Gamespy is also included in the bundle, which makes multiplayer games easier to find. In multiplayer you can play any of the singleplayer maps, or try your hands on one of the multiplayer-only maps. The strange thing however, is that no computer-controlled opponents are included, so you sadly can't play against the computer. The gameplay itself is just as fun and satisfying as in the single player, and maybe even more so, because you don't have to deal with the rather easy AI that is present in single player.

Conclusion:

Frontline Command is an unique piece of work: Bitmap Brothers have successfully used their prior experience and knowledge in making of what might be one of this year's most interesting WW2 RTS games. A lot of features “borrowed” from other games and put together in one bundle as well as some original inventions make Frontline Command an irresistibly charming and attractive game to play. Great graphics and more than decent sound really help its cause as well. While there are still some obvious flaws in the game or things that simply should've been fine tuned before the game got to stores, namely the poor AI and inability to change gamespeeds, they don't ruin the overall experience. The game is surely to appeal to loyal fans of Close Combat and Sudden Strike since it combines the best from these series, and even surpasses them in some ways.