Men of War: Assault Squad

[Pirandello]

I tried the demo, since I'd heard RockPaperShotgun talking about it quite a bit, and I must say, it is brutally hard. It's single-man control, but you can assign men into squads. There's a cover system in place, that your men can use, but I have to admit that it really does rape you, even on easy. As the subtitle to the topic says, it really is like CoH on Hardcore.

 

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So here was my foray into this demo (it's on Steam if anyone's looking to pick it up). This was played on Easy, so ammunition does not run out (yes, there is limited ammunition in this game for your men. Crazy, huh?).

 

First initial objective was the storm the beach. Control men, assign squads, etc. It didn't seem to hard, I had a fun time taking direct control of my sniper and shooting off the heads of the men on the Japanese defensive line while my Marines stayed nice and comfy behind their boulder cover. Boom, objective completed. Alright.

 

So I had one whole squad of Marines and a Sniper. I decided to divvy up the six Marines into two squads: each with 2 standard Marines and a specialized one. One had a medic, the other had the MG. We received our second objective to clear the next defensive line and proceeded forward with purpose. We followed the AI's men over the hills, and I stopped my men shortly over the top of the hill to consolidate our resources and determine which way next was the best advance method.

 

It just so turned out that the AI soldiers who had just gone ahead of my men were mowed down by machinegun fire as the hill was located directly next to the main road, and had but a line of bushes across a 10-meter stretch from the top where my men were peeping from for cover. So, things were going to be hard. Aside from the main road, there was another road in the west that we could advance from, but would end up walking into a rice paddy and still run into nasty machinegun fire. My MG squad, located to the east, decided to take the forest across the main road to try to get the drop on the MG nest. It worked all too well.

 

But that wasn't all. Beyond the rice paddy, there were a squad of soldiers now firing on my MG squad's position. So my other squad went along with the sniper, waded across the paddy, and found a nice cluster of rocks to hide behind while we laid down suppressive fire. I decided to take the cocky route and ran an SMG Marine close to their little dug-up ditch and managed to skewer them all with one grenade. Checkmate.

 

The next panned cinematic revealed that there was a defended control point ahead (it's what you use to get MP, which allows you to call in reinforcements like extra men, vehicles, etc) guarded by yet another MG nest and a small group of 4 soldiers at the control point. This one, due to the wide open ground and my acquisition of the high ground where the MG nest was at, made this objective all too easy as everyone fell to my sniper. My squads found their way to the empty control point and easily took it over.

 

And yet another panned cinematic revealed that further up the road, there lay a heavily-defended checkpoint sitting on top of a hill, with all the nice amenities such as barded wire, bunkers, and sandbags. The AI then took the opportunity to deploy lots of men on this one and threw themselves en masse at the main gate. My men got within a reasonable distance of the entrance and took cover behind, well, more rocks. They took potshots at the MG nest, and as they drew it's attention, my sniper took the liberty of putting a bullet between the gunner's head. They tried several attempts to get back to the gun but were handily stopped by my sniper.

 

The next 10 minutes were pretty much a stalemate as our men exchanged fire with each other, the Japanese putting up too much fire to advance through, and likewise with us when they advanced. Then the Japanese brought out a new toy: a tank. Thankfully, the AI was prepared for this with an AT gun already sighted a little further down the road from where my men were already hunkered down at, and were able to disable the tank before it could do any real damage (this will be further expanded upon later).

 

There really wasn't much to go on with this checkpoint. The western side of it was a large hilled area, but extremely exposed, and would mulch my men if they tried advance that way (not to mention that they already had men in the bunkers en route to the hill). The other side, however, revealed a single destroyed gap in the fencing, and I immediately deployed my Marines to storm it. There were some problems as the defenders weren't really keen to let us in, but a grenade quickly flushed them out. Following that, we captured their AT cannon and took position behind the safety of the concreted wall. We flushed them out of the control point and took it over after a heavy firefight.

 

Lo and behold, what was next was the actual base of deployment where the Japanese were coming from. This is where everything started going downhill. They had AT and mortars situated on the hills next to the base and had deployed multiple tanks; men were coming out by the dozens. I called in some more reinforcements, but the time delay meant that only an extra squad of Marines and a mortar squad could bolster us.

 

But, DAMN! The hill next to the checkpoint came crawling out with men. My extra squad of Marines had been stationed there and could easily fend off the flanking attack, but the checkpoint didn't fare so well. When my men captured the AT cannon, it was already out of commission, so we couldn't use it. They managed to destroy one tank by using smokes to get in close to it and pop an AT grenade, but the other 2 were not so easy. They sat in the middle of the road, halfway between the checkpoint and the base, raining down hell on my men. We couldn't make any advances as they had 2 MG nests set up to cover the tank, and the sniper couldn't get into position to hit the MG nests otherwise he'd get blown apart by the tank. Things were grim, indeed. And the Japanese soldiers kept pouring out from the base.

 

Then they decided to advance, and hell really broke loose. My men were being blown to bits left and right, and what few medics I had on station were also taking hits as well. After the first initial massacre by the Japanese, all I had left was my mortar team, my sniper, my freshly-brought-in AT gun, and a few half-dead Marines who lost their weapons (and their helmets. Yes, they can also drop their weapons, either due to explosions or dying, and likewise, pick up other weapons).

 

Having taken a beating, we pulled down to the previous control point where the AI had the line of defense locked down tighter than a drill sergeant's ass and consolidated our forces again. I saved and quit. I'll be back again soon.