No Man's Land Review

The saga of young America from the time of the Spaniards through the 1880s in an era rich in history and drama. Ambitious men moved through the Americas in search of fortune, fame and land, and cared little how these things were obtained. The latest offering from CDV, No Man's Land, allows players to relive this era in a RTS game that is fun and easy to play, yet visually a delight.

The game system is very similar to the award winning Age Of Empires, single units represent workers, settlers, fighting forces and various heroes and villains that take part in the various campaigns that cover over 4 centuries of American history. That is not to say this is just another knock off of that system, CDV adds many nice features to their game, and make it different enough so that is doesn't seem to be a copy of other games with a new setting.

Game play is based around the gathering of resources, wood, food, and gold, in order to construct buildings, research new technologies, and build and maintain fighting units. The game can be played multi-player in free form games with a large variety of maps, including a random map generator, as well as single player in this mode. But the real strength of this game is the six campaigns, one for each of the unique civilizations included, each of which has it's own units, music, and building styles.

The campaigns are small vignettes of life in early America, and they include a small two scenario learning campaign using the woodland Indians. The following campaigns, which are the heart of the game, begin with Spain, and the plight of a small, fictional settlement called Santa Minetta, currently being harassed by both the natives and Sir Francis Drake. You arrive as an Imperial envoy, represented in game by a hero unit, sent by Spain to get the gold flowing to Spain by any means necessary. You must first repair your damaged base, then build warships to confront Drake's fleet, by Drake's men will continue to raid, and your resources are finite.If you can defeat Drake, your next mission is to find out why the Indians have become hostile, and free the captured Spanish forces from the Woodland Indians. In this, you will get some soldiers, but only your hero can heal himself in this early campaign, so you must use your forces carefully, letting your hero take the brunt of attacks, but if he's lost, you lose. One you defeat the Indian Shamen, you must, in the next scenario, meet a brave Spanish missionary, and with him, re-establish a small mining colony, while again defeating strong Indian forces. This scenario, and indeed, much of this game, includes breath taking terrain, fabulous in it's beauty and detail. The units aren't quite as good, but I have seen far worse. Getting back to the campaign, once you defeat the Indians, they tell you they only fight because the English have stolen their women, so they must fight or they will die. In all of the campaigns, both before and after each scenario, you get animated dialog between the heroes and the players, and it is very entertaining to follow the unfolding story. An Indian hero will lead you to a place to establish a safe base in the next Scenario, which introduces horses to the game. The horse and rider and considered separate units in this system, and you can dismount horses at any time, as well as kill riders and take the horse for yourself! Once you have your base, you must destroy an English fort, and you get another new unit, artillery, to accomplish this. If you succeed, your next mission is a sort of commando operation, your hero and the Indian steal onto Drake's island at night, and you must free the women from the English, but beware, the English are to strong to fight, so you will have to be sneaky. Another tidbit comes into play here, heroes can swim, so they can go where others can't follow, and the Indian hero can move through impassable forests. If you get this far, your ready for the last two part scenario, a landing force must break through the heart of Drake's base to link with you, build a fortress, an army, and the English must then be defeated. This campaign is very detailed, and the look and feel is excellent, and when you win, a movie will show the Spanish victors returning in triumph to Spain.

The next campaign involves the two types of Indians, woodland and plains. The Woodland Indian campaign is first. In the first scenario, you and your brother witness the destruction of several Indian villages at the hands of the English, and you both swear revenge, but you have different ideas of what to do. Your hero wants to regain strength, your brother wants to attack now, so he calls you coward and refuses your authority. This scenario features dark night and snowfall, a strangely surene setting for such violent actions. After building your forces, you must destroy the English outposts. Once this is done, the tribe need a new leader, so the elders give you a test to pass. You must journey by canoe to the hidden island and escape the spirts of the Forrest animals and the dead to prove your worthiness to lead. Your brother however, sends his men to kill you, so you must fight, evade, and make your way to the spirt mound, a beautiful totem that has blue, green and purple energy bands. Once done, your selected as tribal chief. But your brother and his followers leave, refusing your authority. As the next scenario opens, you and your war party must rush to his encampment, as the English are attacking, but you come to late. Your brother dies and must be avenged, so you build your forces and go to destroy the English fort, and when done, the campaign ends.

The time frame jumps ahead to the plains Indians in the old west, circa 1880 or so. Your instructed to hunt the buffalo, and get enough beef before white hunters kill 20 of them. The Plains Indians can pack their tents and move them, so you have great mobility. Once done, your father is captured by the villain of the campaign, a boss named Starr, whom is also the villian in the Settlers campaign. You travel to the town of the whiteman by night, and defeat groups of Cowboys and the sherif, to free your father. But after you free him, Starr appears with a renegade tribal chief, who kills your father at Starr's command. Your next mission is to unite the Plains Indians and destroy the traitor's village. If you do, the traitor escapes, and in the next scenario, a two-partner, you must first clear the white men from the gold pits in Souix territory, then follow the train tracts and destroy the storage depots of the white man. The final two-part scenario opens with you having to hunt down and wipe out the traitor and his tribe, and once done, take on Starr's railroad company once and for all. As you burn down the last of the defender's buildings, Starr escapes, but you finally kill the traitor.

The last campaigns is in three parts, involving the final three "races" in the game as the family history of the Sanders clan of England. In the first campaign, you are Jerrimiah Sanders, a trapper washed ashore in the Caribbean with a reverend and some settlers, and your only escape is to destroy the two docks that make up the Spanish port of Santa Marta. At first, the reverend is your great friend and is a big help, but things will change as the campaign moves along. Once you manage to take out the docks, your aboard the "Mayflower" ( a little bad history here, but more on this later) trying to make your way North America, through the Spanish controlled Islands. You lead a small party ashore at night, and must sneak about in the darkness, blowing up store houses. One done, you land in the new world, on a snow covered shore, you must make camp. There is a problem though, the Woodland Indians are hostile, but if the reverend gets near their totem, they will believe in the white man's god and support you. One tribe never will, but you must convince two of the other three. The reverend goes a little crazy at this point, as scenario three opens, he orders the death of the Indians whom refuse to give their winter stores to the English, even as you protest this action, you watch the Indians being cut down. Now, to survive the winter, you must gather 10,000 food, but the Indians are everywhere, and you have few forces. If you can, you make it to the final scenario in this group, Sanders leads some settlers to the Indian's camp, and promises to fight the now evil reverend and the English. Building a camp, you must race against time to protect the few remaining tribes, then take on the fortified fortress of the reverend, but if you do, the Indians kill him, and this cycle ends, bringing on part two of this campaign, the Patriots.

The Patriots opens with another Sanders descendent, as a hero patriot, getting married as the English attack your village. With few forces, you must fall back to a tiny town in the northeast, build some militia, and counterattack. Sanders is a big help, because his special hero ability is to blow up buildings and ships in one shot. In the next scenario, you meet a French advisor, and he and Sanders must lead what's left of the Patriots through hostile Indian lands to safety of a Iroquois tribe. Once there, Sanders learns that the English, through the Puritans, holds the Mohawks in thrall, so Sanders must form men to kill the Pilgrims, and if he can, the Mohawks join his forces. After this is done, Sanders must destroy the townhall in the fortified English town to complete the scenario. Next, Sanders and his French ally lead a daring night raid in the English port, and Sanders must sink the three warships at anchor. The forth scenario is probably the most challenging in the entire series, you have a continental fort at night, and your sweetheart, who is a spy in the English Lord's camp (this is shown between scenarios as a little movie) tells you Lord Dunsmore is coming with a giant army to wipe you out! You have to man the defenses, repair the walls, raise new troops, heal the wounded, all the while the English appear in greater strength outside, their cannon ripping apart your defenses. If you can survive, Dunsmore's attack, a french trapper appears, and if you kill him, the scenario ends in triumph. The final scenario finds Sanders, his French advisor and his Indian allies making ready the final assault on Dunsmore. Your mission is to bring the Patriot flag bearer into the heart of the British fort, but the fort is ringed by walls and towers, and the Brits have scads of troops. If you manage it, you marry your bride and the final campaign, the Settlers one, begins.

The last scenario opens with Billy Sanders arriving outwest to take over his dead uncle's interests. Here we again meet Starr, the villain of the Plains Indian Campaign, who secretly had Billy's uncle murdered. Billy must ride to his uncle's ranch, and kill the outlaws that have taken the place over. Once done, his next mission is to travel to a fort and enlist the army's help in dealing with Indian attacks on his railroad company. Once Billy does this, he must then build tracks to a cut off mining town, and he has to fight off Indians all the way. In the final scenario, Starr and Billy's rail companys have a compition to see who can lay railroad tracks the quickest. Here, you have to get the Indian's help, and sabotage that rat Starr's efforts, but if you do, his plot unravels and the Indians finally kill him.

The units of each of the races in these campaigns are far different. The Native Indians for example, can heal themselves, while the Spanish and English have churches and priests for this, and both have warships. The Patriots must rely on the surgeon, as so are the slowest healers. but their regulars are extremely powerful. The Settlers have an army camp that restores health, and have the most powerful infantry in the game. The English and Patriots can even buy dogs, a cheap attack unit to augment forces. Each race also has unique music, and all units have sounds, but there is a major problem here. The units of the English, Patriots and Settlers have horrible voice tracts, almost like comic book character comments, and this greatly detracts from what they do. The sound for them can be disabled, but CDV did a horrible job here, some of the Cowboy comments are actually offensive, as well as annoying.

The unit animations are good, the shooting units reload, and most of the races have formations they can be arranged in, and they can be commanded to patrol, stand watch and fight. The units themselves, while not bad, are probably the weakest part of the visuals, but the terrain is so good you hardly notice. The map is fully three dimensional, and you can zoom in and out from any angle.

The free form games suffers from some bugs, and a rather simple minded AI, which builds large forces once, makes a rush, and then never really attacks again. On islands, they don't attack at all, they just build armies that loiter about.