Come on, lads!
The Sudden Strike series is a pretty decent set of real time strategy experiences set in World War II and which play out in similar fashion to Blitzkrieg. This anthology is a great way to get into the series if you are curious, as it contains the first two games, Sudden Strike and Sudden Strike 2, plus the Forever expansion pack. In terms of concept and gameplay, the three games are quite similar, being very detailed, tactics-driven strategy experiences that you give you a number of missions over an extensive campaign and which require you to command squads of varying sizes and composition, taking the fight to the enemy. There's a wide range of units, including vehicles of many types, and everything is historically accurate, making this a good choice for history buffs. Much of the environment can be destroyed, while the missions require some pretty serious thinking and application of tactics if you want to win. The Forever pack adds in heaps of new content, including extra seasons, units, maps and a mission editor while the sequel basically adds everything together to create a big version of everything that's gone before. There's certainly a good amount of content here and fortunately, it's all pretty entertaining. There's a lot to get your teeth into, thanks to the sheer range of missions and units, and the challenging difficulty level on offer. The visuals are straightforward but do their job well enough, thanks to a clean uncluttered interface, and the requirement for serious thinking means you'll be playing for some time. Overall, a good package.
