Sudden Strike ME
|
| Sudden Strike ME

As a boy growing up, there's no getting away from the fact playing soldiers was great fun. Creeping through the undergrowth of the three or four gardens that had become a mammoth combined war zone; nervously stopping dead as someone quietly signalled the enemy had been spotted seeking cover on the roof of the far easterly ammunition bunker (the garden shed)…

Of course, before hostilities could commence, the sides each team were fighting as would have to be decided. Was it to be the Wild Frontier, and would you be on the cowboys or Indians side? Or was it 1940s Europe, in which case would you be fighting for or against the Allies? Nobody ever wanted to be on the side of the bad guys if they could help it...

Thankfully, no one has seemingly told Living Mobile this and thus it has given players of this mobile version of Sudden Strike the option to choose to fight as part of the German as well as the Russian or Allied campaigns (all have to be attempted eventually to complete the game).

Via an elevated isometric viewpoint, then, you control a team of soldiers, with each member possessing a dotted-line yellow circle which represents visibility range. Enemies are shown as small red flashing dots, giving a rough idea of their location – you're only able to see their precise position after they put themselves within your soldier's yellow circle.

Once you are in a position to engage the enemy, your men will start firing automatically (they have unlimited ammo) until the enemy move out of sight again. All you have to is direct the displayed crosshair in the direction of the enemy – which will in turn depend on whether the weapon of the soldier you are controlling is of short or long range nature.

An interesting aspect of Sudden Strike is that you can move members of your company to take up position in enemy buildings and even take over enemy vehicles – you'll have a great fun driving a big tank around, which is controlled using the exact same principle as when your men are on foot.

There's also a strong strategy element running through the game. For instance, you may decide to position a member of your squad just out of harm's way behind some trees, say, so that you can employ his vision to see enough of the enemy, while you use another of your soldiers – equipped with the sniper rifle – to pick them off.

Other strategic touches exist, such as pressing the right soft key to order each member of your team to merge into one group, thereby offering a greater visibility radius.

The game allows you to pull together a team of up to six soldiers in one go. Or you can swiftly cycle through your individual team members with the '*' key and control them lone-wolf style in order to re-position them to cover the rest of the team when you feel it necessary.

You can even send a soldier into a building or guard tower and shoot your enemies from there. As you might expect, having this improved vantage point increases the amount of area you can see at any one time.

As if all that weren't enough variety, to shake things up further some levels require you to radio in to HQ and request for air support to take out massed ranks of bad guys.

Backing up the comprehensive strategic shooting side of the equation are an impressive array of WWII-themed visuals and sounds, with both doing a swell job of setting the right atmosphere.

There's longevity, too, as not only does the game require you to be at your most astute and cunning, but each of the three campaigns offers four different levels based on famous WWII theatres of war. Plenty to get your teeth into, then.

In the mobile game world there's a select band of squad-based shooters that actually work on the format, and Sudden Strike ME warrants membership to that elite club. It can be a hard game, but there's certainly much here to keep you entertained and busy while on your daily commute.

Sudden Strike ME

A tough, graphically detailed real-time shooter that has some nice touches and a fair bit of depth
Score
Chris Maddox
Chris Maddox
Liverpool fan, Chris, loves to watch the mighty Redmen play. In between matches however, he's an avid mobile games reviewer for Pocket Gamer. Chris has assured us that he only thinks about Liverpool FC a mere 80 per cent of the day.