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| So beautiful, so peaceful, you barely notice the tank... | You must prepare to eradicate the terrorist threat... |
Alliance: Future Combat removes all that resource management and seeks to give you a 'real' war experience. You fight, you win, you loose, you live, you die, whatever you do, you're unlikely to be tabulating rows of numbers, and you're more likely to be picking shrapnel out of your wounds than trying to get a splinter out of your finger.
That's the first thing you should know about Alliance: Future Combat. The second is this, it comes with voice activated commands, so that you can experience issuing orders in the heat of battle. These two factors work together to make for what looks to be one of the most realistic strategy experiences this year.
The combat takes place in the future, but has a very modern day feel to it probably due to the fact that it is set all of two years into the future. Things have changed, but not too much, as you will find yourself rather familiarly attempting to "put an end to this terrorist threat." Essentially you can ignore the modern politics, but still experience the thrill of killing terrorists, if thats your bag, baby.
In the year 2008, which is depressingly a little too close, much of the Middle East has united under a strangely silly name and called themselves the Democratic Republic of North Djombystan. Apparently democracy has not changed their terrorist ways, and even though the government has given permission for the United States to build a secret subterranean base, once the Djombystanian terrorists hear of it, they immediately attack it with great numbers, and the United States now must send the much cooler sounding AEGIS rapid response team.
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| There goes the neighbourhood... | The high ground may not save you... |
You can play single player mode as either AEGIS or as the Djombystanians. From what I saw in the preview version, the Djombystanians are pretty kitted out. There are no goat throwers here, instead they have some serious hardware that could really blow your house down.
There is a wide range of weaponry available, as well as a vast range of terrains for you to play through as you seek to make things right. You have access to the sort of units you'd expect today, but with tweaks and changes that make them futuristic and much more deadly. It's not just the United States which has this type of weaponry either, it seems the North Djombystanians are well funded from somewhere, either that or they have been very hard at work creating their own deadly efficient war machine.
There are also a wide range of environments to play in. From the jungle, to the mountains, to the valleys, to the cities... you get my drift. The camera controls allow for fast and easy viewing of the map, so you're less likely to loose troops somewhere and not be entirely sure how to get them back.
With relatively sparse documentation, you kind of have to make your own way through the demo version, but game play appears to mostly involve issuing orders to various units and having them carry out objectives. Graphically there are some nice touches, with pop up information from troops stationed elsewhere being accompanied by realistic, suitably cool looking officers. The terrorists seem to be buying into that beret fetish that terrorists apparently have, and the AEGIS troops wear awesome sunglasses. Turns out you can rid the world of a terrorist threat and look cool with no trouble at all. I guess that's the result of just being a rough tough war machine. The music is suitably warlike also, and definitely gets you in the mood to go get some terrorists, or infidels, depending on which way you swing.
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| Nor the protection of the city... | We fight them here, we fight them there, we'll fight those terrorists anywhere... |
The preview version of Alliance: Future Combat definitely warrants further interest, the full version holds great promise. The only game play options that appear to have been included thus far are campaign and single player, fingers crossed there is some multiplayer action to come.
