There is one very good reason as to why most Real Time Strategy games often focus their efforts on waging small scale digital warfare, and it's simply because fighting a war on anything larger can be massively difficult, particularly when it involves modern weapons such as tanks and aircraft. Balancing out those legions of troops and their multitude of weaponry, worrying about how effective certain tanks are against certain opposition, the constant trouble of deciding when and where the use of artillery and air support is needed, attempting to sift through each of the strengths and weaknesses of these units out of combat can be hard enough, when you're thrown up against an enemy who not only matches you in strength but often outnumbers you as well, it can be a nightmare. The irony of Order of War is that for the huge size of the battlefields it has you fighting through, for the amount of control it unceremoniously dumps at your feet, the game can still be a little too easy.

Unless this is your first taste of strategic gaming, there will be no surprises about how this particular war plays out. It's world war 2, and just like every single WWII strategy game ever made, you are a commander fighting through important real world battles of the period. There are two campaigns to play through, one as the Americans as you forcibly push your way through the beaches of Omaha and the surrounding French countryside in a bid to push back the occupying German defenders, and the second on the opposite side of the fence as the Germans as they try desperately to halt the advancing armies of the Russians and Americans as both fight their way towards your homeland.

It's predictable enough, but where Order of War is hoping to stand out from the countless other strategy games based around the same conflict is with the scale of the fighting it has you engaged in, doing away with smaller infantry based skirmishes and instead giving you the command of a vast array of units that can on occasions number in their hundreds. Whilst war on this scale is hardly a new concept when it comes to the RTS genre (see the Total War series for how well it can be done) very rarely has it been applied to the WWII theatre, largely because of the aforementioned difficulties with trying to balance the technically fiddly requirements of modern day weapons.

There are armour stat's to worry about, the effectiveness of tanks can vary depending on the targets they've been assigned, anti-tank infantry pose a massive problem for your armour while machine gun nests and garrisoned troops can decimate your infantry, and at any minute a barrage of long range artillery fire or a bomber strike could cut a huge trail of death and destruction through your squads before you've time to react. Order of War enjoy's throwing all of this at you with very little warning, rather casually handing out mission objectives left right and centre that you often find yourself thrown right in the middle of as the advancing enemy armies pounce and attack before you've even a chance to assess the situation.

Large battles are fought right from the beginning, there's no gentle introduction to the game, rather a swift but firm push on your back as you find yourself launched right into the middle of the melee. And my god, does this game like to throw impossible odds your way. It's incredible just the amount of casualties you can amass in one single battle, the enemy are relentless in their attempts to destroy you, and no matter how many you kill, no matter if the odds are stacked in your favour they just keep coming. It can all look impressive, just the chaos of everything going on as tank columns march across the open countryside to be met with a wall of fire as they are are attacked, watching as quaint little European villages are turned to dust as large armies march, fight and decimate their way through, and I haven't even mentioned the awesome sight of a group of fighter bombers swooping down for the kill, launching a volley of machine gun fire and rockets that turns their targets to dust.

Seeing this war take place is never boring, but for those searching for a challenging strategic experience are going to find themselves a little disappointed. Order of War operates on a First Person Shooter mentality, tanks appear around a corner and you blow them up, there's very little in the way of any tactical depth offered in completing the numerous objectives. The steady stream of enemy units that continually attack you are matched only by your ability to use resource points to call on your own reinforcements, these are so generously handed to you that amassing large groups of tanks is simple, keeping them alive however is a little trickier.

Although this is far from a difficult game, where most battles can be won by either sitting in wait for the enemy to attack you or sending a large force to destroy them, the size of the battles can often become overwhelming. So much so that any attempt to try and form any kind of connection with the men you lead quickly gets shoved to one side as they fall almost as soon as you send them off into battle. It can feel a little clinical at times as the never ending conveyor belt of tanks churns on until you've conquered that final objective, the men you lead tend not to feel like men at all and instead feel exactly what they are, little pixels who's only purpose is to crash against the enemy like a wave until they've finally been defeated.

It can be hugely fun though, the sheer number of units on screen at any one time means that the battles always descend into anarchy with you right in the middle trying desperately to punch your way out in a blaze of debris and bodies. At the same time this disorganised chaos can also become quite tiresome, especially on some of the later levels where the action is so heavy that you essentially fight the enemy from one end of the map to other almost none stop. With little variety offered beyond charge and attack tactics these later levels can become quite exhausting.

The game does at least manage to ensure that the action itself never gets boring, the fire support menu will likely become the favourite part of the game for anyone who plays it for long periods of time, offering up everything from bomber strikes to long range artillery support, using these not only softens up entrenched enemy positions, it also does it in a spectacular display of pyrotechnics. But, as good as this game can look, it's far from approaching the ludicrous levels of detail of some of the best of the genre.

Up close unit detail can be impressive, particularly on the vehicles which posses the most care and attention, but when it comes to muzzle fire, explosions and smoke effects things tend to look a bit sub par. It's not something you can chalk up to being one of those things that could just be easily ignored either, explosions occupy most of the game and with such a reliance on fancy effects you'd have hoped that more of a focus on these effects may have allowed the visuals to look their absolute best. Still, with some battles slowing the game to crawl given the densely packed battlefields, an increase in detail may have caused more problems than it would have solved.

The audio does fare better, and the thundering sounds of the countless bombs and guns going off do a good job of creating that sense of war, although some of the overly enthusiastic voice over work for the American campaign can be off putting, it's bit difficult to believe that these men are in mortal danger when they sound like they're about to high five you for giving them an order.

How much fun you'll derive from Order of War entirely depends what you are looking for in a strategy game. The hard-core searching for difficult challenges to overcome and healthy does of varied missions will likely not find much entertainment beyond the first few missions, but for the casual RTS gamer, for those who just like to watch things explode in as many ways as possible, this is a tough, occasionally quite tricky but fairly easy game that doesn't demand too much forward thinking yet rewards your efforts with a dizzying display of mindless destruction.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).