Tactics game, not half bad but repetitive
Within Maelstrom you are going to control a few squads, at the most, of future soldiers. Your options are the classic ones, that have to do with positioning your units, waiting for the right moment to intervene, and trying to use the scenery to gain an advantage over your adversary. There is also a lot of fiddling if you want to, but if you don't play the higher difficulty levels, you can play straightforwardly, rushing the enemy in most scenarios. The problem is thus that the difficulty is not the organic kind, where your enemy becomes smarter, nope, it's the kind where you are given enemies that simply become strong as a numerical increase in their stats. And this kind of breaks the game for those that want at least a fair simulation. At any rate, if you opt to play the game on easy/medium, you will get to experience a few nice games. The graphics are more than ok for the period the game came out, and they look and feel ok today as well. Sure there are a lot of unimpressive scenarios, with lots of grey and other bad looking colors, but ultimately, the game won't impress you too much with anything too special. Give it a try if you love tactical, squad based games a lot.
