War Mongrels is an isometric real-time tactics game that takes place on the eastern front of World War II. Its story-driven campaign takes inspiration in the grim events that actually took place and the real stories that arose from them.
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Played after the release of the "polished edition" that came out on September 19th.
A real time strategy game in the same kind of genre as Commandos, Desperados, Shadow Tactics, and a bit more so like Partisans 1941 as they both allow for a more combat heavy approach to things and take place primarily on the eastern front of WWII. Focused around a German soldier that deserts with a friend after refusing to kill civilians and escape their penal unit during a Soviet attack. The two end up working with Polish resistance groups, attempting to bring information about concentration camps to London, briefly working with the French resistance with one mission based somewhat on The Dirty Dozen, and taking part in the Warsaw Uprising.
Good production value with varied good looking atmospheric levels and cutscene visuals. Allows for slow motion plan assignments where you can assign everyone an action at a walk or run speed. Fairly well designed levels with certain character abilities working well together. Most of the games in this style almost entirely rely on stealth. Partisans 1941 was somewhat of a different story allowing you to level up characters to unlock abilities that made them better with guns when engaged in a more traditional real time strategy combat system or to give them abilities to kill enemies in an area a certain number of time that could wipe out a good portion of enemy combatants. War Mongrels takes things a bit further, allowing you to choose your weapon as a skill to shoot it and access to a couple less impressive multiple enemy takedowns but you can also hit the C key to go into a more zoomed in combat mode that replaces prone with a more defensive crouch and gives you an instant kill rechargeable melee attack with right mouse click (even the three characters that don't have melee kill skills). When you are in this mode you can move the character with WASD and shoot at whatever you aim your mouse at and with how accurate, far, and fast your characters can shoot in those mode and if you use cover and take advantage of height and enemy AI you can easily wipe out the map doing this most of the time if you are on the normal difficulty or lower. Somewhat entertaining for the genre, though takes away from the main stealth and character skill based gameplay if you do it too much.
Reloads can occasionally cause errors with nearby enemies alert status, sometimes multiple reloads will fix it and put them in a normal condition. Some issues with enemy AI not behaving correctly. Mixture of decent and terrible writing with in mission banter, but a poor story with little details to flesh out events and situations beyond some newspaper clippings you can view as they are unlocked between missions. Don't believe Doug Cockle voicing one of the German character was the best choice as he seems to have one voice and constantly hearing Geralt was a bit distracting. No fast forward button is always an unfortunate loss in games like this after playing Desperados 3. Some character equipment is strange and fairly useless or too similar to others character options, though the missions that separate them does give you a reason for why they have that design. Some serious problems with interacting with some fallen equipment and picking up enemy bodies.
Some decent levels and use of its mechanics but not well handled story, AI and occasional interaction issues, and some poor level sections and poor abilities keep it in the average to slightly above average territory.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1574997778987905024
Video: https://youtu.be/w0DT43ryHcw
A real time strategy game in the same kind of genre as Commandos, Desperados, Shadow Tactics, and a bit more so like Partisans 1941 as they both allow for a more combat heavy approach to things and take place primarily on the eastern front of WWII. Focused around a German soldier that deserts with a friend after refusing to kill civilians and escape their penal unit during a Soviet attack. The two end up working with Polish resistance groups, attempting to bring information about concentration camps to London, briefly working with the French resistance with one mission based somewhat on The Dirty Dozen, and taking part in the Warsaw Uprising.
Good production value with varied good looking atmospheric levels and cutscene visuals. Allows for slow motion plan assignments where you can assign everyone an action at a walk or run speed. Fairly well designed levels with certain character abilities working well together. Most of the games in this style almost entirely rely on stealth. Partisans 1941 was somewhat of a different story allowing you to level up characters to unlock abilities that made them better with guns when engaged in a more traditional real time strategy combat system or to give them abilities to kill enemies in an area a certain number of time that could wipe out a good portion of enemy combatants. War Mongrels takes things a bit further, allowing you to choose your weapon as a skill to shoot it and access to a couple less impressive multiple enemy takedowns but you can also hit the C key to go into a more zoomed in combat mode that replaces prone with a more defensive crouch and gives you an instant kill rechargeable melee attack with right mouse click (even the three characters that don't have melee kill skills). When you are in this mode you can move the character with WASD and shoot at whatever you aim your mouse at and with how accurate, far, and fast your characters can shoot in those mode and if you use cover and take advantage of height and enemy AI you can easily wipe out the map doing this most of the time if you are on the normal difficulty or lower. Somewhat entertaining for the genre, though takes away from the main stealth and character skill based gameplay if you do it too much.
Reloads can occasionally cause errors with nearby enemies alert status, sometimes multiple reloads will fix it and put them in a normal condition. Some issues with enemy AI not behaving correctly. Mixture of decent and terrible writing with in mission banter, but a poor story with little details to flesh out events and situations beyond some newspaper clippings you can view as they are unlocked between missions. Don't believe Doug Cockle voicing one of the German character was the best choice as he seems to have one voice and constantly hearing Geralt was a bit distracting. No fast forward button is always an unfortunate loss in games like this after playing Desperados 3. Some character equipment is strange and fairly useless or too similar to others character options, though the missions that separate them does give you a reason for why they have that design. Some serious problems with interacting with some fallen equipment and picking up enemy bodies.
Some decent levels and use of its mechanics but not well handled story, AI and occasional interaction issues, and some poor level sections and poor abilities keep it in the average to slightly above average territory.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1574997778987905024
Video: https://youtu.be/w0DT43ryHcw