You can get a strong sense of déjà vu while playing Squad Assault: Second Wave, the follow-up to 2003's Squad Assault: West Front. That's because Second Wave isn't so much a sequel as it is simply a repackaging of West Front, along with three new campaigns and assorted new missions. Thus, aside from the new content, virtually everything remains from the 2003 game, which itself was a fairly good tactical wargame set in World War II. While we still admire the unique gameplay mechanics of Squad Assault, it certainly feels as though the series, as well as the technology, is being pushed a game too far with Second Wave.
When you get down to it, Squad Assault is basically a 3D version of the semipopular Close Combat games that Microsoft published a decade ago. This is no surprise, since Squad Assault was originally developed by a veteran of the Close Combat development team. What makes Squad Assault unique compared to other wargames and real-time strategy games is that it models realistic psychological behaviors for each of the soldiers in battle, meaning that they behave like real human beings rather than soulless automatons who will do anything they're told without hesitation. In other words, watch a squad get torn apart by machine-gun fire, and the survivors will cower, panic, or even break and run instead of follow your orders to fight to the death (though some might snap and go berserk as well). Because of this, you have to use proven tactics to even have a chance of success; otherwise, if you waste your men in battle, they'll get wise and won't listen to your suicidal orders anymore.
The good news is that the strong gameplay mechanics of the Squad Assault system remain intact from West Front. Instead of micromanaging your men, all you have to do is use the simple interface to issue general commands, and they'll take it from there. Tell them to move cautiously up a road, and they'll crawl and move from cover to cover. Order them to assault a building, and they'll rush up and toss in grenades before storming in. It's the next-best thing to being an actual company commander in combat, especially since you can easily gauge the success (or failure) of your decisions. Fail to pop smoke grenades to cover a field of fire, and you'll see (and hear) your men get mowed down by enemy fire. Drop artillery or mortar fire on a fortified house, and you'll see it smashed into rubble.
Since it incorporates all the content of West Front, Second Wave is predominantly set in France, and you can control the Allied or the Axis forces in more than 50 battles--the majority of which, again, are recycled from the previous game in the series. In fact, the three new campaigns simply feel tacked on, especially after you consider that the strategic map for the Market Garden campaign still shows France, when it should show Holland. Another campaign, based on the exploits of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division, seems designed to cash in on the popularity of Band of Brothers, while the third campaign is set from the perspective of the Germans trying to contain the Normandy landings. Many of the new maps look similar to the older maps; as many of the existing terrain elements are recycled. Therefore, you get more of the infamous Norman hedgerow country to battle through, as well as a slew of French towns and villages in which to go from house to house.
The difficulty level of these new battles seems geared toward veterans of Close Combat and Squad Assault, and they're definitely not easy. You need to tinker with the difficulty level quite a bit (ramping your troops to elite level while also lowering the skill level of your opponents certainly helps), but the battles can still be brutal. Part of that can probably be attributed to the graphics engine, which is fairly basic in terms of visual appeal. Squad Assault already looked dated when West Front shipped in 2003, and it looks even more rudimentary today. The main issue with the graphics, though, is that the environments are fairly plain, and that translates into huge killing fields where machine gunners can mow down troops hundreds of yards away. That can turn even the slightest mistake into a fatal one, because squads can get quickly cut down. To the artificial intelligence's credit, your men will automatically toss smoke grenades to provide concealment and fall back on their own, but it's still a bit frustrating to see attempt after attempt to maneuver around the enemy fall apart thanks to the scarcity of decent cover. You really have to use everything at your disposal, including smoke grenades, artillery, naval gunfire, and bounding tactics, to win. Even more frustrating is that there still isn't a decent in-game save system, which would alleviate a fair amount of annoyance. Currently, you have to redo each battle from scratch if you fail--and you'll fail quite a bit.
Because most of Second Wave is simply recycled from West Front, there seem to be very few improvements in the overall game. The multiplayer is still the same, letting you and a fellow player go head-to-head in battles. The graphics are still relatively crude, from the low-res, blurry textures and the blocky, chunky unit animations to the fact that the battlefields still seem to exist on a vast, blurry plane as there's not an attempt to hide the edges of the map. Meanwhile, the sound effects are literally the same, from the cries of your men when they're hit to the weapon and vehicle sounds. You certainly won't mistake Second Wave for a next-generation game, and while wargamers aren't that deterred by low production values, mainstream gamers certainly are.
That said, there's plenty of content in Second Wave, especially if you haven't played West Front before, and you'll find that the original campaigns and missions hold up well. If you have played West Front, though, it's harder to recommend Second Wave, since you've seen most of the content already; the newer missions are even harder to recommend. Still, if you're looking for some realistic World War II tactical combat, Squad Assault features some solid gameplay, and if you can get over the production values, it's a pretty realistic simulation of what squad-level combat can be like.
