It's a large remove from rapid clicking FPSs and real time map based strategy games, focusing on the narrative and information processing and comprehension. I have to admit, this hasn't been my choice of games in the past, although I dipped into Orwell recently, and am intrigued by the concept. This decision can be critical in how things pan out, and again, gives a branching flow to the game. Along the way you're given the option of supporting the initial squad with additional troops. The intro mission involved a simple 'hearts and minds' chatting with the locals, and then investigating a Viet Cong camp. A mistake I made all too dreadfully at a critical point.

Be extremely careful when directing air support or artillery not to fire on a location where your troops may be. It gets very dangerous too when you are navigating a unit towards another when they report each other as contacts.

You can add and remove tokens from the map, and move them around, but it's you moving them, and the game couldn't give a damn where you move them to, and if you move them to the wrong place then that's on you, not the game. It's a nice taste of the responsibility and requirements of command, to pay attention and keep track of things manually. It swiftly becomes clear that you have to regularly ping your units for their position or you will quickly lose track of where they are and what they're doing. This does get a little weird after a while, especially when people are under fire and screaming, which then segues into calm recitation of coordinates, so it does fall down a little in the execution.

I think over time I might get a bit tired of 'This is Papa Bear, what is your position? Over.' but I guess I'll just have to live with that. The responses are inevitably sampled dialogue stitched together to form coherent responses, which could get old, but the military nature does fit with this, so it doesn't sound too out of place. Almost everything can be done with the mouse, but there are shortcuts which can be employed to deploy the radio commands, which boil down to selecting the unit to contact, whether to request info or deliver orders, and then which orders and what info you want to get. There are nice period touches, map colours, jargon, and obviously storyline.Īt first glance there's a lot of UI to deal with, map, radio, transcript of radio chatter, HQ orders (nicely portrayed as teletype paper) and tutorial window in the intro mission, but once you get the basic idea it's reasonably intuitive. The UI is nicely done, which is not surprising, as the development could be focused on the feel of the game rather than a real time 3D engine. The game is set during the Vietnam war, so there's American voice acting, with some banter included in the radio chatter. That said, it's not a completely new idea, plenty of games use the 'fog of war' approach, showing only enemy units that can be seen by your own players, but that's still an immediate effect, allowing response as quickly as the player can click the mouse button. Interpreting the lay of the land at arms length, rather than the now more common real time mapping. Without the omnipotent maps showing enemy units, Radio Commander makes the player rely on radio reports and giving orders in the same way. this is an 'innovative' approach to the RTS. Reviews // 18th Dec 2019 - 3 years ago // By Benedict Daniels Radio Commander Reviewĭeveloped by Serious Sim, and published by Games Operators, PlayWay S.A.

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