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.

The quick-paced gameplay also means that you'll have to make even more snap decisions when engaging against a human opponent and this will result in some heated matches.

An engaging, realistic tactical wargame, but it also doesn't stray far from the Close Combat formula. While there's nothing wrong with that, there is a definite sense that we've played this game before.

For you WWII strategy fans, this is a fun title (even with some issues) and will provide some good enjoyment, fun, and replayability. For fans of games like … you guessed it … "G.I. Combat," you should enjoy this title as well.

If you can get past some of the awkwardness and confusion of the game's format and interface, there's an enjoyable game to be found.

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.

It may not be much to look at, but at least the sounds are authentic.

If you can put up with the visual inconsistencies, then Squad Assault is an okay choice but if not, then you should dig back through your desk drawer and grab one of those "Close Combat" discs for your battle-realistic, WWII RTS fix.

When troops become mentally broken and stop obeying orders they often get themselves killed and there’s nothing that you can do about it, and this becomes quite annoying and frustrating.

Your troops waste their limited ammunition like they're in a John Woo movie. [Mar 2004, p.91]