When you think of the RTS genre, a huge amount of amazing games come to mind.  Warcraft/Starcraft, Command & Conquer, Supreme Commander, and several other top notch games represent this loaded genre. With that said, one game is flying under the radar hoping to take the RTS world by storm. Wargame: European Escalation is game designed with a true tactician in mind.  If war generals could command their forces through a video game like program, this would be a preview on what they would use. Wargame: European Escalation will please any RTS fan and keep them entertained for hours and hours with this deep game. Not only is the game itself deep, it includes achievements, player progression, and stat tracking that will please all of the glory hounds.

Gameplay

In Wargame: European Escalation, the emphasis is on a modern war tactical layout.  This means flanking, garrisoning buildings, placing units in cover, recon, and resupplying. All of these elements join together along with the standard "build more units than your opponent" gameplay. You get a standard loadout of infantry, supply & command, tanks, artillery, anti-air batteries, and helicopters to fill out your army. As you complete objectives, you earn stars to unlock not only better units but upgraded, multi-role versions of your standard units. These lead to a lot of mixing and matching of your army to do your best to overwhelm or hard counter your opponent.

With all of that said, the RTS element is strong. Move a group of units to a certain spot to attack or counter the opponent’s army, this is the foundation of Wargame. However, in order to be successful, you must use so many other strategies and roles to keep your army a well-oiled machine. First and foremost, you must use recon units to their full advantage. These are your eyes to the battlefield and if you lose your eyes, you are driving around blind and more than likely will lose quite handily. Now recon is crucial but not nearly as much as command units. Command units allow you capture points on the map. However, the most important role of the command unit is keeping control of your insertion point so you can reinforce your army. Once you lose your command unit or insertion point, you are completely crippled in the reinforcement department. This leads to your units running out of gas and ammo or not being able get more recon units to see what is going on.

Supply units are also extremely important to keep your army rolling. Each unit, at any given time, needs fuel, repairs, or ammo refills.  Everything from tanks, helicopters, and infantry need these supplies so if you spend all of your money on attacking units, you will quickly run out of firepower and fuel. One big caveat is your supply units will also run out of supplies which means you have to go to a FOB (forward operating base) resupply and head out to resupply your army again. While this sounds tedious and slow paced, with so many things going on throughout your army, you will constantly be making moves. This makes for a fairly authentic modern battlefield since real life troops will always need supplies, recon, and command units.