I’m someone who’s very interested in WW2 and consider myself as a fan of the many WW2-games. Especially the first person shooters get my attention, but a while ago I discovered the demo of Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps, a strategy game set during World War 2. I’ve played it until I couldn’t see a computer anymore and thus I was extremely pleased to find a preview version in my mail.

I immediately started with the tutorial to get the hang of the game. Next to that you’ve got “Story Mode” (which follows a storyline), “Campaign where you play random levels and you can also test your skills online with multiplayer. Sadly that last part wasn’t available yet in my previewcopy.

During the tutorial I was playing the Axis and lead by a woman in her “Kubelwagen”. I’m sad that there’s no German and only English spoken with a Kraut accent. Some words like “Oberstleutnant” are German, but to make it perfect they should also put the mission goals in the same language and lots of people would probably no longer understand what is requested. So, stop nagging and play on.
It was one of the best tutorials I’ve ever seen. There are many games where you get a seemingly never-ending tutorial while you still don’t know what to do afterwards, but this one was short without too many text and well-explained. I immediately knew what the possibilities are and after a short battle to practice I was on my way to “Story Mode” !

What immediately grabbed my attention was the huge amount of text. First you have a letter that you write, then some sort of diary, the letter of your mission and finally the mission targets. These are all extra’s for if you would want to know the whole story but the impantient amongst us can just skip to reading their targets and start while still knowing perfectly what they need to do.
At the beginning of a mission you always have to form an army from the available tanks and infantry. You’ve got a certain amount of MP (MissionPoints) and a normal guy costs for instance 1 MP while a tank will set you back 12.
The missions are preluded by a movie which nicely transfers to the mission itself (much like with Generals – ed.)

Those used to heavy Command&Conquer action while really have to adjust to this game. No resource gathering, no creating men or tanks… just start with an army and that’s all you’ll get. The missions (those that I played) are very varied. Not all the time “Go to camp and destroy it” but you’ll have some like protection a convoy or repairing tanks. What is very central in DRvs.AK is the “Pause”-button. A push on the space bar freezes everything and gives you the possibility to give orders in a relaxed way. Pushing space bar again and your units will immediately follow your orders. Sometimes irritating can be showing its ugly face because your units drive/walk so slow but for that there’s a button to speed things up. Bring things up to 8x normal speed and you’ll see them swirling around the screen like busy ants !

There are a lot of special things to do. You can dig in a tank for defense (but without having anymore movement) of aim at the cockpit of a tank to make sure it can’t fire anymore. You’ve also got special units like a medic who heals people, a sapper that defuses mines and a car that repairs tanks.

Things are very detailed, really every part of a vehicle can move seperately. The animations are also very well-done and blood just gutters around! You’ve always got a leader for your army and it’s necessary that he survives each mission. When he dies a camera will turn around him in slow-motion while he himself will fall down in true Matrix-style; Game Over.
The tanks leave realistic marks and the sound is also perfect as you’ll really believe you’re in the middle of a battlefield. Especially when 20 tanks and 100 men are moving around your screen ! However, a pretty heavy pc is necessary at such times.

Is this a completely bugfree and super perfect previewcopy ?

No, not at all. In many RTS games units can walk/drive through each other. Not in this game though which is normally very good (it would be strange if such things could happen in real life) but here, two tanks can be standing next to each other and if they want to move at the same time, you’ll often see they’ll block each other. Also selecting a separate unit isn’t always as easy; it often happens you click a unit but you won’t have selected it. Best to always make a square around the unit you want as that’s faster.
The most bothering of all: my pc crashed when I wanted to continue after mission 5. I’ve tried several times, re-installed the game & my pc but nothing worked…

I’ve really enjoyed what I was able to play and this game really promises to become a big hit. The different missions deliver some nice hours of single player fun and I was very sad to see that I was only able to do 5 Axis missions and none of the Allies. I haven’t been able to play multiplayer yet and don’t know what to think of it. At one side it seems great to play huge battles with hundreds of units but on the other side I wonder whether the not too fast action may keep it interesting.
For the lovers this is definitely something to suggest, you’ll certainly have fun with it.