Behind enemy lines
Similar in scope and nature to Faces of War, Soldiers and Blitzkrieg, Silent Heroes is a cheap and cheerful WWII real time strategy that is too lacking in polish to make it easily recommendable. It's got some decent ideas but is let down by poor execution, dodgy AI, and a frustrating difficulty level which means the average gamer is going to be happy to walk on by. You take control of six Russian saboteurs who are thrown behind German lines and charged with completing a series of increasingly challenging missions. The main focus here is on a ten mission story campaign, where you'll need to blow up radar stations, kidnap enemy officers and seek out and destroy heavy armor. Each mission usually has a couple of primary and secondary objectives, while features such as the ability to scavenge weapons and gear in the field also crop up, and weapons and units are fairly authentic feeling, being based on their real world counterparts. Silent Heroes is certainly far from a must play, and if you walk past this one, you're not really missing much that hasn't been done better elsewhere. There's nothing overly original about the game and instead it makes itself stand out via its extremely challenging nature, which makes it frustrating rather than enjoyable. The levels too are rather poorly designed, feeling quite limited and restrictive, while the interface is also quite clunky and awkward. The AI for your heroes is also less than perfect, so when you take all these factors into consideration, you're best off skipping this.
