Ok I have played 6 objectives so far.
Overall. No-Go.
If a friend did not give me his game, I would not suggest buying it.
The main objective of this game is squad tactics. I like the idea of being able to command small infantry units. You place your troops and tell them to either suppress the enemy so you can maneuver to a flanking position to neutralize them or tell your troops to frontal assault.
The AI both American and German is very well done.
Your troop are smart enough to find good cover and smart enough to move to better cover and move up for better firing positions as you try to get to a good kill position, they cover you real well.
That being said, the enemy is just as smart, and if not totally pinned down, they will try to maneuver to a better position for themselves also.
When confronted with the enemy they have as a group red circles over there position, as your troop lay suppressing fire the circle grows grey, once all grey, they are pinned and no longer able to return fire.
This allows you to maneuver to a flank or rear position to kill the enemy.
This is the WHOLE premise of the game in a nut shell. Pin them down, find an alternative avenue of approach and kill them. The avenues get harder to find as the game progresses.
You start out as a single solider taking orders.
Later you get one guy (who drops the F bomb like every third word hehehe) to boss around, still further on you get three total to boss.
I'm at the point now I have 3 troop and a tank in my command.
Pluses:
. Gorgeous graphics.
. Language (not for the kiddies) but they talk and act and bitch like real troops.
. Can smoke tanks by climbing on them and dropping grenades in them ... POP
. Cool ass gods-eye view for planning the attacks. Press V and action freezes, you can move thru the friendly and enemy positions and kind-of fly the local battle area to plan your attack.
Bitches:
. Sometimes you can pick up enemy weapons and sometimes you can not.
Same is true for your dead team mates, try as you might, you just can not exchange your pistol for the pile of Thompson at your feet.
. No health or healing.
. No user save points, you have to make it to certain objectives before the game creates a save point for you.
. Buildings, Germans come out but you can't go in.
. Barns, there is a 5 bay barn, you can enter #1,2 and 4 stall but not 3 and 5 once inside you can move freely.
. Mission orders, listen close, because there is no menu to recall what you have to do. If you blow the objective your compass just spins around a center point while your standing where you should end the mission, no way to see if you got them all, or what you missed.
. M3 Stewart tank is comically small, Yugo car sized with the fire power of a King Tiger.
. Weapon aiming is the worst I have ever played. They never lock up in zoom mode, like you have the caffeine jitters, unless your 3 feet away from the target you only hit them by sheer luck.
. M1 Garand should not be able to reload before it pops it's enblock clip, but the game lets you reload the M1 any time.
. Some of the missions are tedious. Like clearing the fields of beanpoles for the gliders. You have to find the poles (10-15 of them) and plant your expack on them. Your inventory does not show any expacks, but when you get close you suddenly can press F to plant explosives.
But get to a AA gun and press F you have no Expacks, back to the field, new pole, press F there they are again....
. When your "doing something" planting Expacks, manning a machine gun, some thing the character needs to perform an action on - the view changes from 1st person to a strange almost top down from the rear view. You can not shoot or move for 3 seconds, while the AI is still kicking your ass.
. No prone, only up right and crouch.
. No fast movement, sprint or run.
. No matter how many times they die, the next objective you have the same troops, so you can safely sacrifice them in the ends of missions and they will be back next map.
. Cheat codes are necessary to complete some maps. All ammo or kill all. With no health, no ammo resupply and not being able to pick up your dead team mates or German weapons, you just run out of ammo before the objective is completed. This has happened on 2 maps so far.