Eric Young's Squad Assault: West Front

With a little more work on reforming the look of the title, tightening up movement orders in the 3D environment, and finding an easier on the eye way of presenting all of the information they manage to do at one time, Squad Assault could develop into an impressive franchise.

Squad Assault is a real time strategy game at heart and if you’re familiar with the genre, you’ll get used to the game pretty quickly. The overall controls haven’t changed much over the years.

It’s long, and it’s deep with ample replay potential for those of you that enjoy such games. Otherwise, it’s very hard to recommend to someone new to the genre. Once you get the hang of it, SAW is very well researched and quite challenging.

What really hurts Squad Assault the most is a combination of the other surface elements, such as the lackluster maps, glitchy sounds, and a gameplay structure that could still use some smoothing out. However, I cannot deny that the menu and command interfaces are some of the most intuitively employable I’ve ever come across in a squad-based tactical game.

An engaging wargame that has an interface amenable to the masses. The camera may not be smooth and there may be some quirks but this title enables casual gamers to become armchair generals.