Real War: Rogue States Demo

The RTS genre may not be very popular nowadays, with the exception of Starcraft 2, but that is only because technology puts a tremendous strain on games of this type. Unlike in the beginning, when everything was isometric and all that mattered was coming up with cool unit ideas, a decent story and a sturdy set of mechanics, developers now have to worry about 3D battlefields, terrain deformation and a thousand other things, if they wish to impress the audience even a little.

Real War: Rogue States is a real-time strategy game that theoretically aims to provide you with a solid dose of tactics and war, in the form of an old-school set of gameplay mechanics. Hence, although there are some modifications here and there, the basic rule of building a base, gathering resources and training an army is largely the same. These units can also be used in a manner of different ways, so the bigger army does not necessarily win, although size is a pretty important factor.

Speaking of which, the two factions that clash in this conflict are the US and the ILA HUD, which means that they have different type of vehicles and infantry as well. However, they are not all that different, in the end, but that is mostly because the poor graphics quality cannot properly relay the differences between them, except through color. Other than that, the factions are pretty well balanced and you should not build your entire strategy around a single type of unit.

The AI is a big part of the gameplay, since it defines the quality of the main campaign and amount of fun you can have in the skirmish mode. On the other hand, it also governs your own individual units, since they use algorithms to move around the battlefield and attack according to your commands. While the latter has been somewhat repaired with a pretty accurate pathfinding algorithm, the enemy AI is still very weak, while the user interface makes it even more difficult to properly enjoy this title.

This is because the mouse button functions are reversed and the camera cannot be controlled by clicking on the minimap, which is definitely a huge annoyance. Moreover, the graphics have been only slightly improved from the previous installment, with the 3D infantry models being among the most noticeable of these changes.

In the end, Real War: Rogue States cannot really be considered a good game, although it tries very hard and there are many things that could have gone much better than they did. However, the end result is not very desirable, nor attractive, which means that you would be much better off playing something else.