Rush for Berlin is yet another game featuring the WW2. This time, the game will focus on the fall of Germany and Berlin. The game allows you to play with the most important factions: the russians, allies, germans and a bonus campaign with the french. Durin 1944-1945 your only goal is to reach the German capital before all others. As you get closer to the capital, the germans will pose you problems ans will fight fiersly to defend their country.Produced by Stormregion and published by Paradox Interactive/Deep Silver, the game features a "what if" campaign model. They will try to present you true and possible scenarios that could turn the fate of the war. Another important thing is that clock it not your ally and will decide who will reach the German capital first.
If you want to test the tutorial, for those who are not familiar with the RTS genre, you will learn all about this game, the units available, the abilities that the units and their officers have.
Your first available campaign is the one with the russian because as you know, the russians had a lot of manpower and a strong industry to back up the losses in the battlefield. This makes the russian campaign to have a medium difficulty and will give you a chance to better understand the game. At the beginning of each mission you will be given the opportunity to choose the troops you will use in hte mission. There are green slots and red slots. Each green slot filled will take bonus time while if you choose to take additional units and complete your army you will receive time penalty. You can make up a time handicap by completing the mission fast. All this will create a race between you and the other competitors.
Each mission will present you a couple of different challenges. From conquering a certain point on the map to silencing the enemy artillery, from capturing bridges, enemy officers and their valuable information, you will have to choose the way you will play the mission. You will have to speed up or slow down the pace of the mission in order to complete the main objectives, option or even secret ones.
The time factor is very important in Rush for Berlin. Each mission has a certain time allocated and according to how you progress in your mission, the slider will move to the green area (you are ahead of the time planned) or on the red area. The quicker you finish your missions the more troops you will be able to take on the next mission or to gain an advantage over your competitors.
Regarding the multiplayer, Rush for Berlin has a few mods available for you. Too bad that it doesn't has human opponents too because it seems that they avoided the game and you will hardly find online opponents to test your skills against. The first mode is Rush Mode where the players are in a time trial mode to win certain objectives. For each objective completed you receive points and at the end the one with the most points wins. You can also run out of time and you will lose. The second mode is RISK. This mode is more interesting but boring at the same time. Each player receives three objectives, not known to the other players. As you try to ccomplete your objectives, a broadcasting system will inform the other players what you are doing and this will allow them to either hint at your objectives and try to stop you or will dizzle them even more allowing you to create diversions.
The units present in the game are gaining experience and will be more valuable to the player as they become more accurate and more deadlier. The same goes for your officers which gain additional abilities as they gain experience and raise in the ranks.
Let's also see what is wrong with the game. First, the AI is so stupid that most of the times you will quicksave and quickload to solve a simple task. Your tanks will rush into the enemy not paying attention that they have bazooka units and their artillery is prepared for you, the mens follow the same routine and will gladly kill themselves for nothing. Well, will make you lose your hair, but that's OK. Second, I somehow dislike the way they decided to implement the troops. The units are so small, no details, all looking almost the same, even if they are germans, allies or russians.
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Gameplay: 75
The game has potential to be a good game but it is plagued by several features which bring the gameplay down. The missions require a lot of time because you must save and load the game to make sure you don't lose your troops which are very precious. Why do I say that? Because most of the time the enemy will have a starting advantage over you by having more troops and better starting positions. This way sometimes you will struggle to complete a mission even if it is simple. On the other hand, when you have the luck to create a diversion and the enemy bite it, the game begins to become smooth as you kick enemy's ass. But overall I have a bad taste in my mouth when I think of the game's gameplay. The campaigns are long enough and can keep you playing for a long time. There is almost no replayability unless you want to make you life harder.
Graphics: 78
The game looks good if we were in 2003. But the units are looking almost the same, no matter which side they are, the environment is the only which rises to its potential and it looks beautiful. On my system the average FPS exceeded 50 frames so the game runs smooth with all the graphic details set to the maximum.
Sound: 72
Pretty boring at a certain point but I can't say that it's bad. You can hear the troops responses, the fire fight but it doesn't have the power to put you into the rright atmosphere.
Multiplayer: 70
Unfortunately, each time I tried to test the multiplayer I either found no opponent or the multiplayer just stucked.
Hardware: 85
No high demands and the game runs pretty smooth on the required system. It has a lot of bugged features like AI so a patch it's a must for the game to become playable as it should.