Generals was the sweet spot for competitive RTS multiplayer in my group, and despite some shoddy network code, we spent the best part of a year playing solidly, waging war with an increasingly devious array of tactics that stemmed from the intentionally limited unit variety and the choice of only three armies. Trying to ape that game’s accessibility and quick-thinking tactical decisions is no bad move in the current RTS climate.
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Beginning the demo, it’s clear that Act of Aggression has upped the unit count considerably over its EA-developed inspiration (to well over 100), but the similarities in gameplay are striking. There are three factions to deal with here: the US Army, the Chimere (a sort of UN-based hybrid army of world military units), and the Cartel, a shadowy organisation hellbent on making the most of financial and resource unrest in the 2020 setting. Everybody is fighting for what little is left of the world, and as long as you ignore that depressing premise, they’re doing so in a manner that suggests the rock-paper-scissor unit balance of yesteryear.
Resources, as ever, are key. Deposits of Aluminum, oil and other substances are distributed randomly across the map at the start of each game, with the developer keen to place an emphasis on the necessity of exploration. Players will need to scout out their surrounding terrain carefully before placing down a refinery near to those precious deposits, and once the trucks are loaded with their precious cargo, they’ll need to make safe progress to a (hopefully) nearby base, of which players will likely want to build more than just one.
The reason for that is pretty simple. Refined resources in Act of Aggression are physically represented on the map at all times, and need to be present in whichever quantities you need to pump out units or buildings. Lose a base and you lose its corresponding hoard of processed goods, so placing all your eggs in one huge, sprawling basket is likely to be a foolish errand. Losses will be keenly felt. Supply lines need to be guarded at all times.
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| Milton Keynes, 2024 |
And yet, maybe a single well-armed military metropolis is an option after all? The bases themselves are hugely customisable, as Le Dressay demonstrates by bolting on all sorts of different structures to the side of his core storage space. Each of the buildings adheres to a sort of blueprint layout on the ground, showing you exactly where you can place buildings, which amount of space they’ll take up and the associated benefits. It’s a sort of Sims-esque visual design tool that goes some way towards organising the traditional chaos of base-building. Things look almost *too* neat.
“We want players to build beautiful base layouts, to be proud of what they achieve”, he states. “And then you know what? We want the opposition to take absolute joy in smashing those structures to pieces”.
To do so they’ll need to attack with their blend of fully upgradeable units, taking the landscape into account. The fog of war is in full effect here, with units blending into the landscape if not in immediate view of the enemy, and infantry posting themselves into buildings without so much as a coloured flag to tell you where they’ve gone. Everything is destructible. Buildings crumble realistically as tank shells blast their walls, fences and trees shatter beneath the thundering treads as they pass overhead.
To prove a point about visibility, the developer spawns a few fighter jets into the sky and zooms the map out to its widest view (which impressively happens in real time, with a smooth scroll). The angle is incredibly wide, highlighting each sweeping orb of vision as the fighter jets arc their way across the Mexican desert. Zooming back in, a group of units are now fully visible and camped in front of our group of ground units, and another ten tanks are spawned for good measure.
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The resultant battle played out pretty much as you’d expect, with the three-way rock-paper-scissors system and series of upgrades determining which faction came away with the upper hand. The visuals were a cacophony of explosions, smoke and debris filling the screen, and although much of Aggression’s art is currently under review (it’s perhaps a little too clinical at present), the engine and animation looked to provide the sort of convincing and smooth movement that does the genre proud.
In terms of tactics, micro-management during that brief encounter looked to be limited. Although each faction has access to a number of special skills and heat-of-the-moment powers to sway the battle, the emphasis is very much on squads and groups rather than individual units. Personally, I’m fine with that sort of balance.
And then, as quickly as it started, the demo was over. There’s still much to learn about Act of Aggression’s suite of singleplayer and multiplayer offerings, but the Ruse developer looks to be on track to represent the sort of experience I once craved nightly from Generals. There’s more to it than that though, and the additional layer of supply-line and resource complexity should enable Act of Aggression to carve its own space on release next year. For now, this is certainly a promising start.
