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American Conquest: Fight Back review
Posted:
28/8/03 by Stuart "fp" Goodwin
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(65)
 American Conquest: Fight Back
The world of gaming is a vast and diverse habitat, a home to all manner of weird and wonderful creatures. The large and docile herds of vehicle simulations stare vacantly over a watering hole: Train Simulators drinking peacefully alongside the venerable Flight Simulators. They have a quiet life, with their languid gameplay and distinct consumer demographic assuring them a reliable, if unspectacular, share of the marketplace. Over their heads fly a squawking flock of platform games, their repetitive electronic music shattering the calm and sending some of the more nervous role-playing games (the ones with an amnesiac 16 year old protagonist with a dark secret) running for cover amongst the undergrowth.
Inhabiting the plains are enormous herds of grazers such as the powerful yet toothless sports games that reproduce so reliably in time for Christmas each year. Camouflaged management sims, cunningly disguised to look exactly like one another in order to confuse unwary consumers, keep a watchful eye out for the ravening packs of First Person Shooters that stalk through the long grass in search of prey. The kings of the PC gaming jungle, however, are the three main branches of Real Time Strategy, comprising the Blizzard, Ensemble and Westwood families who have vied for supremacy of their ecosystem for many years. This triumvirate has a distant cousin, though, a strange scion of their line that thrives in a habitat of it’s own that is practically a genre unto itself: the German Real Time Strategy Game.
American Conquest: Fight Back is one such game, coming as it does from CDV Software who are also the publishers of the Cossacks series. Although ostensibly an expansion pack to the original American Conquest, AC:FB actually works as a stand-alone game. The price reflects the rather unusual status of this game; it's cheaper than a full sequel and a little more than you would usually expect to pay for an expansion pack. Fans of the series will forgive that, however, if the improvements and added features are worth the extra cost, and on paper they would certainly seem to be. There are more additions here than the average expansion pack. The dozen nations from the original game are boosted to 17 with the inclusion of Germany, Russia, Portugal, Netherlands and Haida (which this reviewer confesses to have never heard of before). The existing nations haven’t been neglected, however, and receive their share of the total of 40 new buildings and 50 new units.
Those who have beaten the original game will be glad to hear that 25 new missions spread across eight campaigns are included in AC:FB. The theatres involved are extremely varied, from the trek through the jungle in search of El Dorado to the conquest of Alaska, which go further than just providing some different scenery to look at and give each a distinct atmosphere that can only add to the game’s longevity. There is a commendable variety of mission types, with the standard RTS format of “build up your base and attack” complemented by some more interesting variations, such as the mission where you are given an army and must capture gold and peasants from the natives. The briefings before each mission are very much a mixed bag - on the one hand they are very historically informative and, if you like that sort of thing, will no doubt be interesting. However, they are also extremely long and take ages to read, with the small display area and the slow scroll rate (which as usual assumes that the reader is a dyslexic chimpanzee) not helping.
As if this was not all enough there is an entirely new game mode to play with. The Battlefield missions enhance the single-player experience that free you from the distraction and responsibility of base building and let you focus exclusively on the strategy and tactics of combat.
Presentation
AC:FB has large, colourful and detailed sprites, but it is a sign of the times that the graphics look a little dated due to the lack of a third dimension. This 2D isometric view seems to be a staple of the German RTS market and it is difficult to criticise the developers for sticking with it when it serves the purpose perfectly well. The tacking on of a 3D engine is no guarantee for good visuals or commercial success, despite what many publishers seem to think, and by following the old adage of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” the developers have avoided the risk of alienating the fans. My biggest gripe with the graphics engine, however, is that the units often seem to overlap each other and bunch together far too much, which can make areas of the screen extremely busy – a major problem when you’re trying to micromanage a battle. The one area where the graphics really stand out is in the animation, with the units moving very smoothly. A definite thumbs up on that score.
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