Sloe Times

So today, Atari partially lifted the NDA for the Axis & Allies RTS game that is being developed. Yay, that means I can blab about it which I've been dieing to do since I started testing it. First things first, if you don't like real time strategy games, there's no help for you no matter how much you might like the Axis & Allies franchise. I think beyond using the name, and the countries likeness for units and designation, there's nothing here related to the board game.

If you've played Warcraft, AOE, C&C, etc then the game play will be familiar to you. You build your army of infantry, mechanized, and armored units by constructing corps buildings that let you recruit various types of units. There are technologies to research that allow you to improve units defense, attack, and speed capabilities as well as modified units like adding a flamethrower infantry regiment or flame tanks.

It's not clear how much more development there is to go yet, but hopefully the AI gets some work done to it. So far I haven't found it very challenging because there seems to be an optimum strategy for beating the computer. That being said, I've found that in order to play effectively you have to use a combination of units and abilities to overcome your live opponents.

The gameplay is pretty smooth but some of the things like unit pathing and some terrain effects with shadows still need to be resolved. Like many types of these games I expect that there will be a lot of tweaking in terms of game mechanics so I am looking forward to seeing the game evolve into what will become the final product.