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An innovative title that catches you off guard

User Rating: 6.5 | Act of War: Direct Action PC

By major_mayhem_01 | Review Date: April 18, 2008

Act of War: Direct Action is one of those RTS games that can easily be overlooked. I played the Demo years ago and thought to myself that this would be worth a purchase. Over time, as life goes, I forgot all about its existence. Years later I saw it in a twin pack, (with KohanII: Kings of War) and purchased it. I always enjoyed Command & Conquer for the original Play Station console that is much similar to Act of War so I had an idea what I was in for. The verdict is that Act of War is just as good or if not better. The idea between the two is very similar in collecting resources, advancing technology, variety in mission objectives and good vs. evil. However, AoW pulls away with clever ideas such as cash collecting for taking prisoners of war. There remain many other original ways to collect bucks too such as account hacking. Another innovation is being able to strategically place infantry and snipers within buildings. Amazingly enough AoW puts credit into special infantry units that can actually damage or destroy vehicles quite effectively. Mowing troops down, considering they're on the ground, is an option if this happens to you. If not you can always blow up the building they occupy. Being able to ambush units with infantry is also an original idea in AoW. My favourite innovation is being able to strengthen units through experience. The more a unit survives enemy encounters the stronger it becomes. Unfortunately this isn't carried over to the next level. There remain many other little details to this title, but I won't mention them here as you can either purchase this title for a cheap price or read previous novel size reviews. ;)

Game play is pretty good; however, the AI can become pretty brain dead when you order your units around the map. Sometimes they bottleneck in narrow areas and you have to manually maneuver units around to correct it. Other than that it's fairly fluid.

Sound is done fairly well, but the in-game cursing may violate virgin ears.

Graphics are nothing great, but there is a lot of attention paid to detail in explosions, vehicles and terrain. The only real gripe I have here is that sometimes the smoke from a raging fire gets in the way of your view of the battlefield. This can be dealt with if you stop for a few seconds and it disappears, but in the heat of battle it becomes fairly annoying when you're trying to select a unit.

Replay Value with AoW will always be high due to a variety of tactics that a player can implement when replaying single player levels or multiplayer.

Unfortunately there are downsides to AoW. At times the variety of units available and the hectic micro management can be somewhat overwhelming. The biggest flaw that, surprisingly, I haven't seen commented on at GameSpot is the Securom issue. Unfortunately this issue damages the overall score of this title. I had one hell of a time to locate a work-around for this problem. If you're one of the lucky ones that haven't had or won't have this problem, great. If you don't believe me than all you have to do is Google: Original disc could not be found or authenticated for Act of War and you'll see what I mean. The following link helped me if you too have the same problem:

http://m0003.gamecopyworld.com/games/pc_act_of_war.shtml#Act%20of%20War%20v1.06%20[ENGLISH/GERMAN]%20No-DVD/Fixed%20EXE

The issue stems from a crappy exe. and Securom conflict within the original installation. Patch version 01_06_3 doesn't address the issue either. At least I got it to work and for $5.00 bucks I can't really complain all that much. Either way good luck and good gaming.

Act of War: Direct Action

An innovative title that catches you off guard

Dont judge it if you've played it for 30min

Many people passed up this great game.