Recent reviews by Welkon

You get arguably the best Warbond in the game, with a unique gun (It's basically the P90), and some unique armor.

Men of War: Assault Squad 2 (MoW) with RobZ 1.28.6 is a lot better, in pretty much every way, but there are some improvements in this game

IN DETAIL

POSITIVES
Gates of Hell (GoH) does offer some compelling features:

General Overview
- The single-player campaign missions are exceptional, potentially the best in the Men of War series
- Graphics have been noticeably improved, you do need to tweak your settings though because by default it pains your eyes
- Refined mechanics, such as trench-digging, are more intuitive and visually appealing
- There are some innovative features like first-person tank and infantry control, even being able to sprint while direct controlling infantry units
- There's a couple of cool things you can do in GoH like putting a Kar98K on a machinegun tripod, just adds to the "That's useless but cool I guess"
-The layout of objectives actually makes sense, if an objective is a factory building, the actual capture point is that entire building, not just a circle within it like it is in MoW
-The game is stable and runs much better than MoW, practically no glitches or performance issues
-All of the maps are functional and playable
-The AI are much more functional than they are in MoW, but still aren't really improved much, really the only difference is the AI continue to spawn things in instead of giving up halfway through the match
-The planes in this game are implemented a lot better than in MoW, they actually fly on the map and drop a bomb or strafe with their guns (Although it's a little awkward because bombs have no momentum so they just fall straight down), and vehicles meant as anti air actually shoot at the planes

NEGATIVES
The game suffers from several significant design issues that dramatically make for a worse experience:

Resource Management
-The rate at which you gain money to buy things is different from MoW, and overall you'll be able to afford less than you would be able to in MoW, meaning shorter games with less things on the map in general, makes the matches feel empty and boring
-Restrictive Command Points (CP) system, which basically is how much you can have on the map at once, allows only a few units on the map at one time for each player
-Officers don't increase your CP like it does in MoW, so you're limited even more than you would be in MoW
-Matches typically feature only 1-2 large tanks, which are locked behind the doctrines special points system, compared to MoW where if you manage your money well, you could get a handful per player

Lack of Unit Variety and Design
-Infantry squads are very limited in their variety, you get access to generally a few squads with similar purposes, this is also affected by which doctrine you choose
-Squad sizes are unnaturally small, whilst in MoW the squad sizes depend on the quality of unit, the faction you're playing, the equipment they have, and the price of the unit
-Instead of location-specific damage, units now have generic health bars, bullets simply reduce a uniform health pool rather than simulating realistic wound mechanics
-The ranges of tanks and vehicles in general are pretty low, no such thing as a long range tank engagement, tanks feel like they "facetank" each other instead of having a tank duel
-The map variety is mostly just "field in Russia" copy and pasted, even the Stalingrad frontlines map is mostly an empty field with a few buildings, with the USA faction being added in now we have "field in Normandy" maps, there are a few good maps though
-A lot of the interesting vehicles like the Thor can't be used in multiplayer, they aren't even overpowered, in MoW they are expensive and usually get 1 shot off on a bad target (Because their range is pretty bad) then get countered in 5 seconds

General Game Design Issues
-You are forced to use the "doctrines" mode in this game, which is not a horrible idea, but vehicles that were just normal purchases in MoW are now locked behind special points, things like the tiger tank or even a flame tank are now locked behind this doctrine special point system
-One of the reasons MoW RobZ 1.28.6 felt so good was the unresponsiveness of the tanks, makes it feel much more realistic and tense when things are hitting the fan, but in GoH everything drives around like a modern MBT
-In general, in MoW you can win by doing a lot of different strategies (Even meme strategies like spamming conscripts or suicide chargers), but in GoH it feels like you have to buy specific tanks and units to win effectively

Presentation Issues
-Tanks exploding and explosions in general aren't as spectacular and happen much less often compared to MoW
-When you're selecting your infantry it's very difficult to see them and to mentally keep track of what's going on, and when you select them they start glowing

Factions
-Besides the base game USSR and Germany, each faction is locked behind an expensive PAID DLC

Overall, while Gates of Hell has some positive improvements, it falls short of the depth and quality of Men of War: Assault Squad 2 with RobZ 1.28.6 in quite a few ways

Overall a good game, decent amount of bugs and crashes here and there, but it's not enough to frustrate me. I've off and on tried to play the other STALKER's and could never get into it, but this one I have got into. I'm sure with mods coming out as time goes on for this game it'll get even better.

Seek grass, and a better build.

This is one of the best co-op games I have ever played. Game holds true to it's original self, but it's 3rd person with a lot more added to it, great game.

My Helldivers 1 Review:
> Fly onto a planet
> Call in backup
> Backup comes and lands ontop of you
> Backup calls for more backup
> Backup crushes backup
> Finally stop crushing eachother
> Call in equipment and crush backup
> Run because overwhelming enemies

Reminds me of Starship Trooper

Not in development anymore.

Has a learning curve, but is extremely rewarding.

I have a few thousand hours in Men of War: Assault Squad 2, and I wanted a modern take of that game, but this game is so bad. It turns a fun hardcore strategy shooter into the CoD of strategy games. Everything has a very arcade feel and is extremely handholdy. The UI although it has a similar layout as MoW is a lot more in your face. One of the best parts of MoW games is that they have massive amounts of infantry, tanks, and equipment all over the map which makes for chaos and fun. Exploding bodies and dead tank carcasses will litter the map by the time the game is over. Not at all in Call to Arms though, which has nothing but small skirmishes and barely to no vehicles on the map throughout the entire game. The maximum amount of money you can use in a game allows at the MOST 1 or 2 tanks, and that's if you buy nothing for the entire match.

Now typically speaking I play solely for the multiplayer (Which is dead for good reason), but the multiplayer is horrendous. Pricing of units and lack of variety make the games multiplayer basically unplayable. The huge lack of unit variety for example, you play as America and the only tank you can get are 2 abrams variants and an MGS (Which is barely a tank)? Why not do what MoW does and either add earlier tanks like M60's or add more than 2 variants of the abrams (M1 Abrams, M1A1, M1A2, M1A2 HC, etc.). Even Russia is horrible on unit variety, they have so many different T-80 and T-72 variants as well as the T-90 and it's variants and I don't think I've even seen a single one in-game yet.

Another big problem is the cost of infantry and how many you get per squad you buy, you buy a squad of marines for 300 MP and you get 5 guys (MP being the games currency, average MoW match maxing out at 6k MP, gaining more with the "overtime" mechanic). What am I supposed to do with 5 guys? You might be thinking US Marines are elite units so you don't get as many, but all squads spawn with barely any infantry. Compared to MoW where you on average get 12-15 people in a squad for an average 200 MP (Elite units will cost around 400 MP while cheaper units can go down to 80 MP). It's just unbelievable what they did to this game and sadly it will never get fixed, it's already been years since this game has been out and nothing of interest has been added. The Ostfront DLC is not as bad but does suffer from it's set of problems, much more playable though.

It also lacks maps, Men of War: Assault Squad 2 (With RobZ Mod 1.28.6) is 100x better, 100x cheaper, 100x more fun and is just better in every way. Although RobZ Mod is mostly dead these days due to a takeover of the Mod trying to copy the Ostfront DLC.

The game is a definite step up from the previous titles. Just know you can't run this game on your 10 year old laptop. Run the game on borderless because fullscreen may bug your game out. Other than that I have experienced 0 bugs so far and 0 performance issues.

Japan when?