"Don’t get me wrong I believe that voice control is a good idea, I just don’t think that it’s been done very well here"

Don’t get me wrong I believe that voice control is a good idea and will play quite a part in tomorrow’s games. I just don’t think that it’s been done very well here. Full credit to GMX for trying to come up with a game that can be completely controlled by voice: it’s just the type of game made for that. But aside from the harrowing list of commands that you need to learn before you can become even a remotely competent voice-commander, the recognition aspect of things isn’t that good anyway.

At first I tried to use my surround sound speakers and the desktop microphone I use for video conferencing. I soon gave up though because you have to have very little background noise for the controls to work. What a fool I felt sitting there saying “Rifleman.. rifleman.. rifleman.. Goddamn it!” before selecting the unit with my mouse anyway. It turns out that the ambient sound in the room and the sounds emanating from my speakers were just enough to throw off the games ability to understand my voice. So I was relegated to using the headset, which meant I was also relegated to listening to the games audio through a pair of poxy earpieces – not the most exhilarating experience ever.

In keeping with WoS’s realistic nature, it takes only a few hits for many of the units in the game to be killed and so you do pay more attention to their wellbeing than you may in other similar titles. Or at least you try to but you cannot see as far into the fog of war as your troops or the enemy can, so you end up shooting at and being shot at but unknown amounts of forces. This has the effect of making you scared to advance without more troops than is necessary, forcing you to crack a nut with a sledgehammer so to speak.

Two areas WoS does stand out from the crowd are in the graphics and sound. Although nothing to write home about, I will say that I was impressed here. Using the impressive Perun engine, WoS features a dynamic sun system giving changeable lighting conditions throughout the day. Unit animation is good and individual units are well animated, but the same old same old game environments become a little monotonous (except the games urban locations). But hey, the game is set in the desert after all so what was I to expect? The lighting effects are great too. Tracers offer a subtle bit of realism, whereas the impressive flash from a tank and the resulting explosion and smoke is brilliant!

The music fits the game and the voiceovers are pretty good. Sound FX are nice and realistic too. The bassy throb of an explosion is impressive; oh except you’re listening to the game through the tinny little headset and the effect is lost.

"Do you really want to have to learn three pages of voice commands just so that you can sit in front of the computer and sound stupid?"

So if you’re going to like this game then you need to have a specific interest in the genre, to the point where you’re willing to sit and learn three pages of voice commands just so that you can sit in front of the computer and sound stupid. Will of Steel fails even to provide a multiplayer option – a crime these days. So you’re going to have to be a hardcore RTS fan with a willingness to learn loads of commands, and who has no friends. There must be a few gamers out there who fit the bill. But how many of them are going to be willing to part with their hard earned cash to do battle with a game done so much better by so many other games? Not me.