Faces Of War

Another day, another WWII game. This setting is so overused in games these days that even my first sentence has become clichéd. However, developers seem to finally be cottoning on to the fact that they need to try something different in order to stand out from the hordes of other WWII-based games; so we’re starting to see a couple of interesting takes on conventional genres – including Ubisoft and Best Way’s Faces of War, a real-time strategy game for the PC.

Faces of War will dump gamers into the decisive battles of World War II in Europe. Players command American, English, Soviet and German troops while fighting famous (and, by now, highly familiar) conflicts such as the Normandy Invasion, the Battle of the Bulge or the Battle of Berlin. Any of these battles can be found in other WWII RTS games, but the way you’ll play through them in Faces of War is decidedly different.

Basically, you can say goodbye to resource gathering, base-building, and nearly all the other staples of real-time strategy games. Instead, you’re given command of a small number of elite soldiers, thrown into a mission, and essentially left to your own devices. The developers are focusing on several key aspects to ensure that you can still have a fun time. The environment has been touted as being ‘fully destructible’ and ‘highly interactive’ – catch phrases we’ve heard before, but hopefully Best Way can go the extra mile with them.

The squad AI is also being talked up - soldiers don't simply execute any order given by a player, they apparently also think about how to do it in the most efficient and safe way. In other words, your soldiers will actually be more than just mindless robots. Finally, the levels themselves have been described as ‘WWII-themed sandboxes’ – meaning you’ll generally have several options for how to achieve your missions, and in what order.

All of this makes Faces of War sound like you might actually be able to focus on tactics, rather than just churning out as many grunts as you can in an effort to rush the enemy. The removal of many standard RTS elements has given the developers an opportunity to focus on fleshing out areas that have never really been explored before. We’ll see if they manage to pull it off when the game hits here around mid-September.