Download Full PC Games - Direct Links: Historic Real-Time Strategy

Showing posts with label Historic Real-Time Strategy. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Shogun : Total War

Download
File Rar 50MB/Part
part1 part2 part3 part4

password : john1980

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, the first PC installment of Electronic Arts' WWII-themed shooter series, is superb. However, if the realistic setting has led you to expect a serious combat simulation along the lines of Ghost Recon or Operation Flashpoint, you're going to be surprised and perhaps disappointed. Medal of Honor is first and foremost a run-and-gun shooter--a really, really excellent run-and-gun shooter. A lot of clever scripting and precisely orchestrated mayhem lend it a sustained intensity that more open-ended tactical shooters often lack. Relatively short but very dense, it's like one-half game and one-half amusement park ride.

Medal of Honor ISN is not very heavy in history. Instead, the game is divided into six more or less disconnected mission distributed in over 30 different levels. Instead focus on creating memorable characters and surprising plot movements, developers in 2015 have certainly had a way to introduce more effective memorable ever-Coin Set new and surprising elements of the game. As in Half-Life, see any real person's point of view of their nature. All Cutscene is perfectly integrated in the course of events. The control is never far from you. As in Half-Life, this technique is very effective in creating a sense of urgency and commitment to the environment Thursday It is a mystery why the developers did not use this viewpoint, 'performance more frequently.

the past two years, 10 - 15 hours seems to have become the standard length for a single player Shooters. Medal of Honor is not to break this trend and should have a little over 10 hours to complete the level of difficulty. But many packages in these hours. You've never won not force the user through the entire match. This is mainly because of the wide range of things interesting and unexpected incidents that occur on a regular basis. It seems as if the developers have tried to inject at all levels, some completely new challenge or a new combination of elements of previous levels. It is a testament to this diversity that provides many examples of destroying surprise.

Omaha Beach landing is that one memorable games scenes.Even well, at least one concrete example is in order, just to give an idea of how the participation of the Medal of Honor for missions could be. To begin the first level, riding on the back of a truck with four members of his group. The chief Brigadier inform everyone that you are trying to infiltrate a Nazi-occupied village. You can see another truck, running behind you. The two vehicles stop at a checkpoint, a guard and German approaches behind the truck and start talking to the driver. When the call is long, his team more and more agitated. Finally, the truck driver rear, fired a gun and shoot the guard when the alarms sound, all the gunfire erupted around him, and the rear truck explodes in a fireball. His model jump from his truck, and you follow. With the leader barking orders, each of you move through the village gates, finally making his way to a court. You are required to check a door. As it does, the German soldiers appear above the roofs and balconies that surround the small courtyard. You are trapped and chaos occurs, as bullets and grenades rain down on their employees. Ultimately, an open door is blown and was ordered to enter a building, now the second floor, and command a cannon mounted that will be used against him. When you do, and turn their arms against the Nazis, joins an ally and tells you that you are going to cover a window while the head at the other end of the court. As soon as you do, all the rest of the team is dead, and that is bound to continue to the next level alone.

Game Info.
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: 2015
Genre: Historic First-Person Shooter
Release Date: Jan 20, 2002 (more)
ESRB: TEEN

Minimum System Requirements
System: PII 450 or equivalent
RAM: 128 MB
Video Memory: 16 MB
Hard Drive Space: 1229 MB

Recommended System Requirements
System: PIII 700 or equivalent
Video Memory: 32 MB

Screen Shot

Friday, June 13, 2008

Age of Empires III The Asian Dynasties [ReUpload]

Download

1.http://www.filefactory.com/file/b5985e

2.http://www.filefactory.com/file/c8eafb

3.http://www.filefactory.com/file/723789

4.http://www.filefactory.com/file/fdb4b4

5.http://www.filefactory.com/file/77323c

6.http://www.filefactory.com/file/e0198b

7.http://www.filefactory.com/file/72efdd

8.http://www.filefactory.com/file/054ea4

9.http://www.filefactory.com/file/6de6c4

10.http://www.filefactory.com/file/05a36f

11.http://www.filefactory.com/file/62a458

12.http://www.filefactory.com/file/c6a97f

13.http://www.filefactory.com/file/5b2682

pass:http://gamefreefordownload.blogspot.com

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Age Of Empires III: Asian Dynasties

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Big Huge Games
Genre: Historic Real-Time Strategy
Release Date: Oct 23, 2007 (more)
ESRB: TEEN
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, Violence

Online Modes: Competitive

Number of Players: 1 Player

Number of Online Players: 8 Online

DirectX Version: v9.0c

Since Age of Empires debuted in 1997, the series has grown to become one of the pillars of real-time strategy gaming. Its success is in part due to the way the series has shifted historical periods. The first game covers antiquity, from the Stone Age to the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, Age of Empires II focuses on the medieval era. And 2005's Age of Empires III is about the era of European exploration and colonization. This brings us to Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties, the second expansion pack and the first game in the franchise not created by Ensemble Studios. Big Huge Games, creator of Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends, is responsible for The Asian Dynasties, and the company ably delivers a solid expansion.

What the expansion brings to the table are three new Asian civilizations--Japan, China, and India--as well as three campaigns built around them. The Japanese campaign deals with the Warring States period of rival Shogun; the Chinese campaign actually covers a naval expedition to the New World; and the Indian campaign is about throwing off the oppressive yoke of the East India Trading Company. The campaigns have their twists and turns, with a fair amount of betrayal going on, though the characters are drawn in such obviously black-and-white textures that it's not too hard to see the plot developments coming. For instance, most of the bad guys in the game speak with haughty, arrogant voices, while the good guys tend to be humbler and wiser.

Minimum System Requirements
System: 1.4 GHz processor or equivalent
RAM: 256 MB
Video Memory: 64 MB
Hard Drive Space: 2000 MB

Screen Shots

Download

part1,part2,part3,part4,part5,part6
part7,part8,part9,part10,part11,part12

Credit By guy_kid

password : http://www.itemxp.net/

serial: KDJMG-PF9JB-BYQ3V-H697Q-CWGHC

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Sudden Strike - Resource War

Publisher: cdv Software
Developer: Fireglow
Genre: Historic Real-Time Strategy
Release Date: Nov 9, 2004
ESRB: TEEN
ESRB Descriptors: Violence, Animated Blood
Connectivity: Local Area Network
Offline Modes: Competitive
Online Modes: Competitive
Number of Players: 1-4

The Sudden Strike series of Real Time Strategies have been about now for several years, and I have to say I’ve been a fan of them. Now there is another addition to the ranks, Sudden Strike: Resource War, using the same engine as Sudden Strike 2, is this a title too far? Or is the addition of the resource angle enough to grab a victory from defeat.

If you have played any of the previous versions of Sudden Strike you will immediately feel at home with Resource War, the game engine is identical and as the menu system goes that isn’t so bad, since there was nothing really wrong with any of the previous versions. Controls are also the same, using the keyboard shortcuts for the unit orders is still the best way to keep units under control. The major changes aren’t all that visible, to be honest, the additions to Resource War are not cosmetic.

The resource side of this Sudden Strike: Resource War is where things get interesting, occupying certain buildings will supply added units and troops plus more emphasis is placed upon fuel supply and depots etc. throughout the game. This does add an interesting twist to the usual RTS theme. Another plus is that you aren’t in charge of the whole picture, there are units outside of your control, you are only a small cog in the war machine and that will take time to grasp.

There are also some additional units for the game, plus some added abilities for the older ones. This added dimension for the Sudden Strike series though doesn’t do much to hide the improvement in graphics in the gaming world, indeed just in the RTS area. One aspect of the Sudden Strike series is the recon side, the difficulty in finding the enemy without just blundering into them.

The use of binoculars to increase range was a clever addition along the way, but the enemy seems to have better vision then your troops and you will find yourself losing more then a few troops finding them.The graphics aren’t bad, but with CDV’s other RTS titles out now it does make you wonder why they are still following up the Sudden Strike series without totally overhauling the engine. Perhaps the total number of units onscreen at any one time is the answer here, although here is another stumbling block, since most people with higher end graphics cards will find some vehicles zipping around screen rather faster then they should.

Sounds are as you would expect from the genre, although vehicle effects aren’t as individual as in other RTS’. Weapons fire makes up the bulk of any sounds available and are good, as in all the other Sudden Strike’s.

All told Sudden Strike: Resource War is a solid Real Time Strategy title from the masters of the genre, CDV. But if this is a title for you is another question, the fact that it plays well on slower systems is probably a plus to some. It must be said though that there are much better RTS’ out there, many from the same publisher and some thought should be given before digging into your pocket. One for the Sudden Strike fans is probably the best statement to make; I’ll stick to Blitzkrieg and Codename Panzers.

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

- P2 333 MHz

- 64 MB of RAM

- 8 MB of VRAM

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

- P3 500 MHz or higher

- at least 128 MB of RAM

- at least 16 MB of VRAM

Screen Shots

Download

part1

part2

part3

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Dragon Throne : The Battle of the Red Cliffs

Publisher: Strategy First
Developer: Object
Genre: Historic Real-Time Strategy
Release Date: Mar 26, 2002
ESRB: TEEN
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, Violence
Number of Players: 1-8

Object Software's Dragon Throne: Battle of Red Cliffs is the sequel to Fate of the Dragon. Both are real-time strategy games that take place during the legendary Three Kingdoms era in ancient China. Like Fate of the Dragon before it, Dragon Throne is a strategy game that uses somewhat simple 2D graphics and has full speech in Chinese. And like Fate of the Dragon, Dragon Throne is a decent enough game, but there are better real-time strategy games that you can spend your time and money on.

As you might have already guessed, Dragon Throne also sounds pretty much the same as Fate of the Dragon. The original Fate of the Dragon had two language options for audio speech: English and Chinese. Dragon Throne has only Chinese speech, though you can choose English subtitles. The game's voice acting is quite good, but unless you're fluent in Chinese (or attempting to learn the language), you'll probably end up ignoring it entirely. As with Fate of the Dragon, Dragon Throne's synth-instrumental soundtracks combine traditional Chinese folk music with more upbeat rhythms. The music is well suited to the game, though it isn't particularly memorable.

Does Dragon Throne also play the same as Fate of the Dragon? Yes, it does. In both games, as with most other real-time strategy games, you must recruit peasants to build a base of operations, then create an army to crush your enemies. And Dragon Throne more or less has the same base building and combat as the previous game. You recruit peasants to build houses to increase your population limit, farms to grow food, barracks to create soldiers, and mechanical workshops to build siege engines--it's all quite similar to other real-time strategy games you may have played. As in Fate of the Dragon, your infantry comes from training peasants at a barracks. The one interesting new feature that the sequel has is that soldiers can revert back to peasants in times of peace. In other words, instead of having soldiers standing about idly in times of peace, you can assign them peasant work. This occasionally comes in handy during longer campaigns, in which your armies have to travel long distances to fight and will gradually run low on strength (provided by food and wine, which your peasants can produce or carry in slow-moving supply wagons). So, the new feature simply allows you to build a new base of operations so you don't have to walk all the way back home to replenish your strength.

Minimum System Requirements
System: PII 266 or equivalent
RAM: 64 MB
Video Memory: 8 MB
Hard Drive Space: 240 MB

Recommended System Requirements
System: PIII 800 or equivalent
RAM: 128 MB
Video Memory: 32 MB
Hard Drive Space: 300 MB

Screen Shots

Download
part1,part2,part3,part4,part5
part6,part7,part8,part9,part10

Monday, August 20, 2007

Rush for Berlin Gold

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Stormregion
Genre: Historic Real-Time Strategy
Release Date: Jun 12, 2006
ESRB: TEEN
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, Violence

Online Modes: Competitive, Cooperative, Team Oriented
Number of Players: 1 Player
Number of Online Players: 6 Online

Getting into a World War II real-time strategy game is a challenge these days. So many have shown up on our doorstep the past couple of years that newcomers can only get the Nazi-weary public's attention by doing one thing wildly differently or everything incredibly well. You can put Rush for Berlin in the latter category. While this by-the-books effort from Codename: Panzers developer Stormregion is a rehash of WWII RTS conventions, the entire game is so well designed that you don't much care that you've seen it all before. If you can stand to liberate Stalingrad in a computer game one more time, you should sign up for a tour of duty here.

Just don't expect anything new. All of the standard WWII RTS conventions are respected so much here that you won't need to even glance at the manual to get the lay of the land. Four separate campaigns that begin with the final push into Germany let you wage war as the Western Allies (which only seems to comprise the US and UK--sorry, Canada), Russians, Germans, and French. A total of 25 solo missions (figure on 25 to 30 hours of play) take you through well-worn WWII hotspots such as Bastogne, Stalingrad, and bombed-out downtown Berlin.

Game structure in Rush for Berlin follows the usual recipe, too. Units include golden oldies such as GIs, mortar teams, medics, Sherman tanks, Panzer tanks, recon vehicles, supply trucks, and so on. As with most other WWII RTS games, Rush for Berlin's focus is firmly on tactics. There is no base building or resource collection, although you are often required to capture enemy factories or headquarters to use for such things as tank and troop production, as well as resupply.

Stormregion does do a pretty admirable job of livening up these familiar surroundings. Missions take place on huge maps that are packed with detail. The 3D engine does a fantastic job of rendering all sorts of little touches that add atmosphere to every setting, and almost every building, tree, and bunker can be blown up, knocked down, or rolled over with an armor column. At times, though, too much detail is crammed onto the screen. Muddy trenches, blocks of ravaged apartments, and weather effects such as heavy snowflakes always look great, but they can cause serious slowdown when accompanied by a lot of moving units. Larger-scale battles, particularly in the Western campaign, really get bogged down at times. Thankfully, outstanding sound effects during these massive battles make up for the occasional visual issues. Every shot, explosion, and round fired by a Panzer booms out of the speakers so forcefully that it feels like you're playing a Medal of Honor-style WWII shooter, not an RTS.

Scenario design is geared to put you into the boots of the soldiers on the ground. Objectives move freely between big military goals such as conquering Nazi headquarter buildings and blowing up German 88s to squad-level maneuvers such as chasing down and killing a tank commander hopping from one Panzer to another, stopping German engineers from wrecking Russian foundries, and even using a control panel to solve a puzzle presented by moving walkways. You won't mistake this game for something like Commandos or Silent Storm, but the inclusion of these hands-on sequences does give Rush for Berlin a more varied personality than the usual cataclysmic, big-picture RTS.

Also, there are a lot of glimpses of real history to give the game historical heft. The Bastogne mission, for example, takes place in the middle of a blinding snowstorm, which conveys how alone the real American troops must have felt on that New Year's Eve in 1944. The Russian seizure of the Brandenburg Gate is set in the cratered landscape of Berlin, emphasizing the utter ruin that Hitler's war brought upon Germany. Even the German campaign, which moves the game into an alternate history where Hitler died in the Stauffenberg bomb plot of 1944 and his successors fought to achieve a more noble peace (with high-tech weapons such as the Me-262 jet fighter, no less), rings true because it is a credible look at what might have been.
Officer hero units also add historical flavor. While they unfortunately aren't given individual names, they do have specialties that adeptly evoke some of their national character. The Russians, for instance, feature a political officer with the special ability to dole out double rations of vodka to fire up troops for limited periods of time and attack troops with explosive-placing dogs, while the Allies boast the likes of an SAS officer who can call in paratroopers.

Artificial intelligence is generally up to the challenge of bringing WWII battlefields to life. Troops in Rush for Berlin are quite smart in certain situations when it comes to attacking and defending, so you don't have to do any micromanagement. Infantry troops, for instance, know enough to automatically approach enemy tanks and then wipe them out with magnetic mines. Fully computer-controlled allies aren't as bright, however, a fact that gets somewhat aggravating when playing missions where you have to support them. One Allied mission that centered on repairing computer-controlled tanks was particularly frustrating, because these tanks frequently refused to attack the enemy in a sensible and prompt fashion. Pathfinding is another problem, especially when dealing with armor and mobile guns on maps with a lot of city streets. These units will frequently get jumbled up, bump into one another, and end up taking the long way to destinations.

Enemy forces are more astute than your buddies, too. This provides a fair bit of challenge in most missions (meaning that you need to make frequent use of the save anywhere feature), as the enemy seems to always focus fire on your most vulnerable or most useful units. Still, there are times when the computer's ability to readily target and take out your finest troops seems like a cheat. One moment you're marching along nicely with a sizable army, the next you're reaching for the reload button because unseen snipers in the trees have just taken out your invaluable medics with a couple of shots or curiously perfectly placed guns in a bombed-out courtyard have turned your tanks into scrap metal. Levels feel like deathtrap puzzles a bit too often.

Multiplayer introduces two new modes of play to the usual deathmatch and domination games. RUSH (Relentlessly Utilized Score Hunt) and RISK (Race-Intensive Strategic Kombat) aren't quite as memorable as games as they are for their names, though. The former is sort of neat in that players are given between one and three random tasks to accomplish, although they involve nothing but old-school victory conditions such as destroying all enemy units on the map, defeating an enemy team, or collecting supplies. But the latter is pretty much the same style of game as that in the solo campaigns, albeit with two or more players rushing to seize the same objectives. At any rate, multiplayer is a bit moot at present. Few people are playing online, at least with the full retail version of the game. Only demo matches seem to be up and running on a regular basis, but they aren't compatible with the out-of-the-box game.
Basically, Rush for Berlin is a very good representation of the WWII RTS formula by pros who really know their way around the Battle of the Bulge. If any game is capable of convincing genre veterans of shivering their way through the Battle of the Bulge one more time, it's this one.

By Brett Todd, GameSpot

Minimum System Requirements
System: Pentium 4 1.7 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 512 MB
Video Memory: 32 MB
Hard Drive Space: 4000 MB
Other: DirectX 9.0c compatible 3D graphics card

Recommended System Requirements
System: Pentium 4 2.7 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 1024 MB
Video Memory: 128 MB
Hard Drive Space: 4000 MB
Other: DirectX 9.0c compatible 3D graphics card

Screen Shots

Download

Part1,Part2,Part3,Part4,Part5,Part6,Part7

Part8,Part9,Part10,Part11,Part12,Part13

Part14,Part15,Part16,Part17,Part18,Part19

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Age Of Empires

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Ensemble Studios
Genre: Historic Real-Time Strategy
Release Date: Oct 26, 1997
ESRB Descriptors: Animated Violence, Animated Blood
Number of Players: 1-8

When you first play Age of Empires, a warm feeling develops in your gut. Warcraft meets Civilization! Real-time empire-building! And does it ever look sharp and feel right.
But an uneasy feeling builds as you get deeper into it, a sense that all is not quite right. This is not quite the game you hoped for. Even worse, it has some definite problems. The pitfall when you review a game as anticipated and debated as this one is to make sure you criticize it for what it is, not for what you wish it was. I wish that Age of Empires was what it claimed to be - Civilization with a Warcraft twist. Instead, it is Warcraft with a hint of Civilization. That's all well and good, but it places it firmly in the action-oriented real-time combat camp, rather than in the high-minded empire-building of Civilization. The result is Warcraft in togas, with slightly more depth but a familiar feel.

Age of Empires places you on a map in an unexplored world, provides a few starting units, and lets you begin building an empire. Each game unfolds the same way. You begin with a town center and some villagers. The villagers are the basic laborers, and the town center enables you to build more of them and expand your settlement. The villagers are central to AOE: they gather resources, build structures, and repair units and buildings. Resources come in four forms: wood, food, stone, and gold. A certain amount of each is consumed to build various units and buildings, research new technology, and advance a civ to the next age.

There is no complex resource management or intricate economic model at work here. What you have is the same old real-time resource-gathering in period garb, with four resources instead of one or two. As your civ advances, you develop greater needs for these resources, but the way in which they are gathered and used becomes only marginally more complex (certain research can cause faster harvesting or more production). It appears on the surface to be a complex evocation of the way early civs gathered and used materials, but beneath the hood is the same old "mine tiberium, buy more stuff than the other guys" model. It is the first hint that AOE is a simple combat game rather than a glorious empire-builder.

There's no denying the thrill the first time a villager chucks a spear at an antelope and spends several minutes hacking meat from its flank with a stone tool. This is the level of detail that brings an empire-building game to life. If only those villagers would grow and develop over the course of the game, it would make it so much more interesting. If only they would trade in their loincloths for some britches and maybe some orange camouflage, and switch from spears to arrows and rifles. Yes, that's another game, but it could easily have been done in AOE, and why it wasn't is a mystery.

The overall impression of AOE dips further with the prickly issue of unit control and AI. As you expand your city with new and improved buildings, you develop the ability to produce new and better military units. These fall into several categories: Infantry (Clubman, Axeman, Short Swordsman, Broad Swordsman, Long Swordsman, Legion, Hoplite, Phalanx, and Centurion), Archers (Bowman, Improved Bowman, Composite Bowman, Chariot Archer, Elephant Archer, Horse Archer, and Heavy Horse Archer), Cavalry (Scout, Chariot, Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, Cataphract, and War Elephant), and Siege Weapons (Stone Thrower, Catapult, Heavy Catapult, Ballista, and Helepolis). With the completion of a temple, a priest becomes available that can heal friendly units and convert enemy units. Naval units come in the form of fishing, trade, transport, and war.

The problem is that while enemy AI is savvy and aggressive (it can afford to be since it appears to cheat with resources), your units are bone-stupid. Path-finding is appallingly botched, with units easily getting lost or stuck. There is a waypoint system, but that hardly makes up for the fact that your units have trouble moving from point A to point B if you don't utilize it. Military units will stand idly by while someone a millimeter away is hacked to pieces. They respond not at all to enemy incursion in a village and wander aimlessly in the midst of battle. Was this deliberate so that the gamer needed to spend more time in unit management? If so, it was a poor idea, since there is simply too much going on midgame to worry about whether your military is allowing itself to be butchered in one corner of the map while you are aggressively tending to a battle in another portion. There is no excusing this flaw, and it seriously diminishes AOE's enjoyability. Finally, there is the fifty unit limit that is irritating many players, but in light of the game's already troublesome play balance, it was a solid decision to force users to build units more selectively.

AOE obviously is sticking close to an early-empire motif, and there's nothing at all wrong with that. Stone, Tool, Bronze, and Iron are the four ages, and with each come new structures and military units. You don't earn these advanced ages - you buy them with resources. Advancement is a simple matter of hoarding and spending food and gold. The overall welfare of your state is irrelevant as long as it survives: happiness is not measured, trade is barely modeled, and the state exists merely to produce a military machine to crush everyone else on the map. Naval power has a woefully unbalancing effect upon gameplay, with a strong navy able to shred the competition at the expense of reality.

Micromanagement is the name of the game in AOE. There is no unit queue, and to build five villagers, you need to build one, wait, build another, and so on. With units acting so stupidly, you should be able to set their level of aggression and the manner in which they attack (a la Dark Reign), but that is also not an option. Diplomacy is relegated to tribute and nothing more, and alliances are hard to form. You can be allied, neutral, or at war with other civs, but if the radio button is still set to "allied" when an opponent starts firing on your units, your units will not fire back, defend themselves, or even flee. They will just be destroyed. Cues as to exactly what's happening on the map are obscure; the duty has been relegated to unrelated sound effects. Does that bugle call mean my building is finished being built, or my units are under attack? How about some help, people? Victory conditions can also be irritating. There are several campaigns that require that specific goals be met, and these quickly grow tiresome. Thankfully, there is an excellent custom generator that lets you set map size, starting tech, resources, and other features. This is the saving grace of AOE, and what kept me coming back again and again. The main reason is that it let me change some of the insane default victory requirements, such as when the victor is the first to build a "wonder" (through another massive consumption of resources) that stands for 2000 years. These 2000 years can pass in about twenty minutes of game time. That means that as soon as an opponent builds a wonder, you create a whacking huge navy to go over and blow it up. Not a very subtle way to maintain an empire. In fact, there is no strategic nuance: It is merely a brawny muscle contest. For all its historical trappings and pretensions to recreate the early progress of civilization, in the final analysis it does not even have the depth of a pure combat game like Dark Reign or Total Annihilation.

If all these judgments seem harsh, it is only because Age of Empires looked, and pretends, to be so very much more. It still has tons of potential and a fundamental gameplay that remains entertaining enough to overcome the flaws and merit a fair rating. The system can go very far with some fine-tuning, but as it stands it seems downright schizo. Is it a simplified Civilization or a modestly beefed up Warcraft? It's almost as if the designers started out to create one game and ended up with another. With such beautiful production and the fundamentals of a vastly entertaining game, it's sad that it fell short of the mark. The disappointment is not merely with what AOE is, but with what it failed to be.

By T. Liam McDonald, GameSpot

Minimum System Requirements
System: Pentium-90 or equivalent
RAM: 16 MB
Video Memory: 1 MB
Hard Drive Space: 130 MB

Screen Shots

Download

Faces of War

Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Best Way
Genre: Historic Real-Time Strategy
Release Date: Sep 12, 2006 (more)
ESRB: MATURE

Offline Modes: Competitive, Cooperative, Team Oriented
Online Modes: Competitive, Cooperative, Team Oriented
Number of Players: 1 Player
Number of Online Players: 16 Online

It's surprising that developers are still finding ways to screw up World War II real-time strategy games. Games like the fantastic Company of Heroes should be the rule by this point, not the exception, seeing as developers have stacks of games to pick apart to see what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately, as Faces of War proves, this isn't the case. Many RTS versions of the noble crusade remain packed with flaws, including dull, derivative missions and control problems, and this game is no exception. Even though developer Best Way has already produced the well-regarded Soldiers: Heroes of WWII, here the company has made a primer on how not to make a WWII RTS. Faces of War hits all of the potholes that have wrecked similar games in the recent past, and it's driven into a few new ones.

By now, you probably know the drill when it comes to World War II-themed strategy games. The solo part of the game features the usual three campaigns (there is no skirmish option), so once more you get to tear up Europe with the Germans, Allies, and Soviets. There are no surprises here, although the developer has thrown something of a curveball by picking up the war after the midway point of 1944. You come on board for the final stages of the conflict, so, for a change, there isn't a focus on the standard WWII-game headline battles like D-Day (which is represented in a bonus mission outside of the formal Allied campaign) and Stalingrad (which isn't featured here at all). Chances are that you've liberated Omaha Beach and blasted that infamous Russian city to rubble a few dozen times in other games already, though, so the (partial) absence of these engagements is refreshing.

That's about all that is refreshing about Faces of War, though. Everything else has been scooped out of the big bag of WWII RTS game clichés with both hands. Gameplay is something of a cross between Commandos and a typical larger-scale WWII RTS. You take charge of a small squad of troops and don't have to deal with resource management or even minor management tasks such as ordering up reinforcements, but you do have to deal with large numbers of enemies. Overall, the designers have sort of hit the sweet spot between solving level puzzles and blowing the hell out of everything that moves.

Still, missions all deal with tired, bog-standard objectives like blowing up radio stations, rescuing generals, detonating bridges, and stealing secret plans. There are lots of vehicles, gun emplacements, and tanks to hop into, plus loads of buildings to enter and use to set up shooting positions, but the end goals are still very, very familiar. You can choose to play assignments by either tactics or arcade rules, but both feel like a Sgt. Rock comic brought to life, with your squad going up against insane odds and stacking bodies like cordwood. Best Way seems to have compensated for the lack of unique settings by swamping every level with foes. Combat is fast and busy in such a never-let-up style that the incessant action soon begins to wear on you.

Levels have also been overdeveloped to the point where you have no real freedom. They aren't as rigid or as puzzle-heavy as those you would find in one of the Commandos games, although there is typically just one way to complete objectives and usually just a single way to get there. You need to do everything in perfect order to activate a trigger spawning backups (like a column of tank reinforcements) or setting up the condition needed to take out the battalion of enemies that attack you at the end of each mission. A lot of levels feature extremely dissatisfying endgames that you don't control, where the cavalry shows up out of the blue like a deus ex machina, for example, or you suddenly win the day just because you managed to stay alive against withering enemy fire for a long-enough period of time. Often, these victory conditions aren't spelled out, so you're left mindlessly killing enemies in the hope that the level will eventually end.

Also, if you don't follow the moves "suggested" in midmission officer voiceovers to the letter, you have no hope of winning battles. You don't even have a choice when it comes to taking on secondary objectives, as you always have to complete them ASAP or get shredded by hidden mortars, blown away by a King Tiger tank, or overwhelmed by enemies who often pour out of buildings like clowns out of a funny car. This is one extremely linear game in which everything feels scripted.

Minimum System Requirements
System: Pentium IV 2.0 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 512 MB
Video Memory: 64 MB
Hard Drive Space: 2500 MB

Recommended System Requirements
System: Pentium IV 3.0 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 1024 MB
Video Memory: 128 MB

Screen Shots

Download

Part1,Part2,Part3,Part4,Part5,Part6,Part7,Part8

Friday, August 17, 2007

Company of Heroes

Publisher: THQ
Developer: Relic
Genre: Historic Real-Time Strategy
Release Date: Sep 13, 2006 (more)
ESRB: MATURE

Offline Modes: Competitive, Team Oriented
Online Modes: Competitive, Team Oriented
Number of Players: 1-8
Number of Online Players: 8 Online

Company of Heroes is a visually stunning real-time strategy game that depicts all the violent chaos of World War II with uncommon intensity. Set during the invasion of Normandy toward the end of the war, Company of Heroes takes its cues from Saving Private Ryan, by portraying both the sheer brutality of the war as well as the humanity of its combatants. Many other recent WWII games have also drawn influence from Steven Spielberg's landmark film, but Company of Heroes is even more graphic. This and the game's highly authentic-looking presentation are its distinguishing features, and it boasts some frantic, well-designed strategic and tactical combat to match. Company of Heroes trades a wide breadth of content for an extremely detailed look at WWII-era ground combat, and its action is so fast paced that it's best suited for the reflexes of an experienced RTS player. So if you're unfazed by any of that, you'll find that this latest real-time strategy game from the developers of Homeworld and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is one of the best, most dramatic and exciting examples in years.

Provided you have a powerful-enough system and graphics card to fully appreciate the visuals in Company of Heroes, you'll quickly be struck by the level of detail depicted in the game. Infantry move in teams, darting from cover to cover. They may be ordered to occupy any building on the map, and you'll see them shutter the doors and take aim out the windows. Vehicles are shown to scale, so tanks and other armored vehicles look big and imposing, and, indeed, they are. Infantry seem almost helpless against tanks, and you'll hear the men screaming as tank shells explode around them, sending bodies flying, while lucky survivors dive out of the way. Yet by attacking a tank's vulnerable sides and rear armor with explosives, it's possible to turn the tables on these lumbering threats...turning one of the most basic confrontations in Company of Heroes into a thrilling cat-and-mouse game, much more than a typical clash between a couple of RTS units. What's more, the battlefields themselves have at least as much character to them as the various infantry squads and vehicles as your disposal. The quaint French towns that are the set pieces of many of the game's skirmishes truly look as if a war was waged there once the battle is done, since buildings will catch fire and collapse, telephone lines will topple, blackened craters will appear in the wake of artillery blasts, and more. These changes aren't just cosmetic, either. Those blast craters provide cover for your infantry, while the ruined husks of blown-up tanks might interfere with a machine gunner's line of fire.

The game focuses on the Allies' invasion of German-occupied Normandy in 1944, specifically on close-quarters skirmishes between infantry and armor. Company of Heroes presents a number of novel twists to real-time strategy conventions, but at heart this game works like other RTS games do, by putting you in charge of base construction, resource gathering, and tactical command of various military forces in an effort to defeat the opposition. The game includes a good-sized single-player campaign spanning more than a dozen missions, in which Able Company lands on Omaha Beach on D-Day, liberates a number of key towns and strategic points, disrupts German supply lines and secret weapons, and finally helps crush the remnants of the Nazi war machine in France. It's an exciting campaign, tied together with cutscenes and mission briefings coming from a variety of voices, which creates a few threads that help tie the missions together. In addition to the campaign, you can play skirmish matches with up to seven computer-controlled players on a series of different maps, and you can also jump online into the proprietary Relic Online service to challenge other players in ranked and unranked matches. The Relic Online service is a cut above most similar offerings, and lets you easily find a ranked match against players of similar skill or host a match with your own custom settings.

Because of its limited scope of the Second World War, Company of Heroes has only the two playable factions, which it calls the Allies and the Axis--but really they're the Americans and the Germans. In the campaign, you always play as forces from Able Company and you're always fighting the Germans. There isn't a separate campaign from the German perspective, though the Axis faction is fully playable in skirmish matches and online, and turns out to be fairly different from the Allies despite the basic similarities between the two sides' weaponry. In fact, in a strange departure from similar games, Company of Heroes always forces you to play Allies versus Axis, even in multiplayer matches. Matches with more than two players are always team-based, with one side as the Allies and the other as the Axis, and so forth. While the game's units and battlefields are unusually detailed, it's hard not to wish for additional playable factions and a greater variety of settings, especially given how well Company of Heroes handles the American and German sides.

The gameplay in Company of Heroes is all about frontline combat, and forces you to quickly explore the map. You typically start out with a headquarters and a squad of engineers, who can build structures and setup defenses. Maps are divided up into territories that all have a resource point in them, and the resources you'll need are manpower, munitions, and fuel. Infantry may capture neutral or enemy resource points, causing them to indefinitely contribute a flow of the given resource to your military efforts while also increasing the total number of units you can have in your army. However, all your territories must be connected for the resource flow to continue unabated; if an enemy takes a key territory, this may cut off your supply lines. All resources are used for building more-advanced structures and vehicles, but you only need manpower for basic infantry, who may use special abilities like hand grenades or armor-piercing machine gun rounds for a one-time cost of munitions. Munitions may also be spent to upgrade individual squads with special weapons, like recoilless rifles useful against enemy armor, or Browning automatic rifles that can suppress opposing squads. Your infantry squads are highly resourceful, acting as single units that can be effective down to the last man. They'll last much longer when attacking from behind cover, such as a row of sandbags or the bell tower of an abandoned church.

If you've played Relic's last real-time strategy game, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, you'll note that many of these conventions were derived and extended from that game. However, Company of Heroes still plays quite differently from Dawn of War because of the nature of its densely packed battlefields and its even greater focus on unit tactics. You have some very interesting options to consider, such as how, when faced with an antitank gun manned by a squad of three, you may attempt to destroy the thing altogether with heavy weapons, or flank the gun and kill its squad, taking the artillery piece for your own. Heavy machine guns and other special weapons work much the same way. One of the great things about Company of Heroes is that, in spite of its somewhat glamorized portrayal of World War II, the game looks and behaves realistically, in how the sorts of tactical maneuvers that are central to the gameplay feel intuitive in practice. For example, you'll naturally want to avoid making your infantry rush a machine gun nest head-on, especially since the withering fire from a German MG42 will force your squad to drop prone, pinned down.

Minimum System Requirements
System: 2.0GHz Intel Pentium IV or equivalent
RAM: 512 MB
Video Memory: 64 MB
Hard Drive Space: 6500 MB

Recommended System Requirements
System: 3.0GHz Intel Pentium or equivalent
RAM: 1024 MB
Video Memory: 256 MB
Hard Drive Space: 6500 MB

Screen Shots

Download

Part1,Part2,Part3,Part4,Part5,Part6

Part7,Part8,Part9,Part10,Part11,Part12

Part13,Part14,Part15,Part16

Download Full PC Games - Direct Links

Pages

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Empire Total War

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Shogun : Total War

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Medal of Honor Allied Assault

Friday, June 13, 2008

Age of Empires III The Asian Dynasties [ReUpload]

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Age Of Empires III: Asian Dynasties

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Sudden Strike - Resource War

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Dragon Throne : The Battle of the Red Cliffs

Monday, August 20, 2007

Rush for Berlin Gold

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Age Of Empires

Faces of War

Friday, August 17, 2007

Company of Heroes