Call of War

 
By Bixyl Shuftan

One of the games I see advertised numerous times online is "Call of War," also known as "Call of War: World War II" or "Call of War: 1942."  The game is a free-to-play browser-based World War Two style strategy game developed by Bytro Labs. The company also made "Supremacy 1914" and "Conflict of Nations: World War III," which play much the same.

After playing it a number of times, my conclusion is it's enjoyable, but be prepared to spend plenty of gold currency if you want to achieve victory in this Pay to Win game.

To play the game, make a new account, and after reading the rules go to "new games" and select a scenario. There are several from "Europe - Clash of Nations" in which 22 people can play to "World at War" in which a whopping 100 players can take part. games will list how many openings remain, so obviously the more who are already taking part the fewer nations that are left to play. In "American Homefront," some of the nations are really states or provinces in this "alternate history scenario." Once in, you pick one of the available nations. All start with a roughly equal number of cities and resources and a small number of units.

 All cities and provinces have build menus, though cities have larger ones. In cities, you can construct buildings, such as barracks, ports, air bases, factories, etc. Barracks allow you to produce infantry units. Ports allow you to make ships. Aircraft factories will allow you to make planes. Tank factories allow you to make tanks. Ordinance factories allow you to manufacture artillery and similar guns. Secret factories will allow you to make rockets, and eventually atomic weapons. In provinces, you can build infrastructure aka roads, that allow units to move faster, air bases that aircraft can fly missions from or stop to refuel on trips, local industry to increase local resources, and a few more.

But in order to make units, you need two things. You'll need to have researched the particular kind of unit, and you'll need the required resources. Provinces produce a small amount of manpower and money, which are needed for all units and all buildings need money. Cities produce much more of them, in addition to producing one of several resources: food, goods, metal, oil, and rare materials. Most units need some of most of these, though some more than others such as infantry needing more food, tanks ships and planes needing metal and oil, artillery needing goods. If you're short on one or more goods or have more of one or more than you need, you can buy and sell goods on the stock market. And once a unit is produced, that isn't the end. Each needs a small amount of manpower and resources to be maintained.

Research will make new units available. At first, you'll only be able to research a few units and the earliest tiers of, such as level one infantry and level one destroyers. But most of these only need a few resources and not much time. As time goes on, more are unlocked. But further ones available cost more units and take more time. You can research two kinds of units at once, and they are in several categories, such as infantry, tanks, naval, etc. Nuclear weapons are not available until late in the game. The highest tier units need blueprints that cannot be researched but found on the map via airdrops. When a new tier of unit is researched, you can upgrade old units, but that takes resources and time.

Each province has different terrain that various units can use to their advantage. Infantry are strongest in the city, and get smaller bonuses in hilly and wooded terrain. Tanks are strongest in open fields. If there are fortifications, defenders in the owner's province get a defensive bonus when attacked.

One new feature is Doctrine. Each of the nations subscribes to one of four doctrines, each with it's advantages and disadvantages. Countries with the Axis doctrine have more hitpoints and can deal more damage, but cost more to make. Pan-Asian countries move faster, can see further away, and get greater terrain bonuses, but have fewer hit points. Allied countries can produce units faster and can research and upgrade faster. Comintern countries can produce and maintain units using less resources, but they deal less damage.

In order to attack another country, there needs to be a declaration of war, either you on it, or it on you. Early in the game, it's unlikely a computer-controlled country will attack you. As the game goes on, there is that chance of it happening. Player-controlled countries can attack you at any time. When a territory is conquered, it delivers a fraction of the resources to the new owner as it did the original. It's morale also goes down to the point a successful rebellion is possible. Raising it will mean keeping a couple units there for a while. Capturing one of a country's core cities will mean a big loss of the production of one of it's resources, in addition to one less place they can raise units. The loss of two or three will mean the country's in serious trouble and defeat is near without intervention.

The score in games is determined by Victory Points. In most games, conquering cities will get you those, with capital cities delivering the most. But it's how many you have at the end of the game that determine who wins, so taking the lead in the middle of the game won't help if you lose it.

Diplomacy is a part of the game. You can message other players and make deals. You're free to honor them, or surprise and backstab. However, they're free to do the same. You can also join a collation of states, or form one of your own and try to attract members.

And then there are different maps. There's an European map in which players can take charge of a major country (or a faction of a broken-up major country). Or you could play on a world map, one with a moderate number of players, or one with a whopping 100 players. More recent maps include American Homefront in which the US and Canada are split apart, and Antarctica.

One interesting detail is the newspaper. There you can read about who's at war with who. Players can also write their own articles. Some write "news" stories describing why such a country was attacked. But gamers being gamers, there can be charges of certain players being cheaters, backstabbers, or "wallet warriors."

So how can such a detailed game be free to play? This is where Premium Accounts and gold come in. You have the option of paying to get a premium account, which means a few more options. And then there's buying gold. So why buy gold? With gold, you can get money and resources on the stock exchange, you can hurry up the construction of a building, hurry up the construction of a unit, hurry up the research of a technology, heal a unit completely, or raise the morale of a province to maximum. While you can get some gold by accomplishing achievements, such as destroying so many of a particular kind of enemy unit, the easiest way you can get it is to spend real-world money to buy it. So this puts the game in the category of "Pay to Win."

Another problem can be the real-time progress of the game. While someone is sleeping, working, or doing anything else, others are free to attack his country and units. So someone could easily go to bed in the middle of a campaign, and wake up to find his country attacked where his units aren't and the enemy already having marched over much territory and cities. This causes some players to walk away out of frustration, or not willing to play a losing campaign as they don't have the time to spend to make it a winning one.

Call of War isn't a bad game. It can be an enjoyable challenge to come up with the right combination of units for a successful military campaign, and if you have the time to spare, even better. But if you don't have a lot of time due to being a full-time worker (or working two jobs), playing other games, or other activities, then you're going to have trouble winning games unless you're a member of a league, and they may get unhappy if they think you're not playing very often. So some gamers are better off with playing "Hearts of Iron" or some other strategy game they can play whenever they have the time.

I rate the game a medium at three stars out of five. While I can't recommend this game, I won't call it not recommended either. For more information, check the wiki here.

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When launching an attack on a country, leave a few units to help cover other parts of your lands to keep from leaving your backside completely exposed. You also might want to invest in infrastructure to speed up the movement of units from one part of your lands to another.

Different units have different strengths and weaknesses in different terrains. Infantry is vulnerable to armor in plains. But is stronger against it in woods, and moreso in cities.

Don't completely neglect artillery, especially when mobile artillery is available. A stack of units can defend itself from air attacks with an anti-aircraft unit or two. But there's no defense against an artillery bombardment, especially a bombardment from multiple artillery units, except to retreat out of range or attack. A computer controlled stack of units when under artillery bombardment will sometimes try to attack it, either splitting or sending everything. So be prepared.

Keep in mind the higher tier of a unit, the longer it takes to produce. So you may want to delay research for a while until you upgrade your barracks, tank factories, shipyards, etc.

If you have a coastline, watch out for the possibility of an invasion by sea. Make a navy when you can, and build battleships when you can (and don't forget to give them escorts). Seaplanes and artillery can help defend against bombardment by ships. Land units are vulnerable when being transported by water, and take time to disembark, where they can be attacked by land units or bombarded by artillery or bombers.

If you're a free player, save your gold for emergencies. If someone attacks you where you're wide open, you can use it to build units and buy resources for them, in a hurry.

A single game can last for many weeks. If a game isn't fun anymore, or if all of a sudden your real life demands a lot more time than you can spare from your game, don't be ashamed to walk away (after messaging any allies of yours). You can always start a new game later.

Bixyl Shuftan

Reader Submitted: Game Review - World of Tanks

By Rita Mariner

I first got introduced to on line video gaming, with World of Tanks.  I have always loved tanks, ever since I was a cub. So here was a game made to order for me.  I downloaded the game, which you can play for free.  Ran through the tutorials and then proceeded to play my first tier one tanks..

Now the tanks are divided into various nations and then into various tiers, from I to X. Each tier getting more and more powerful, and expensive, in XP and credits needed to get it.  Each nation is usually divided into subgroups as well.  Light Tanks, Medium Tanks, Heavy Tanks, Tank Destroyers and Self-Propelled Guns (artillery).

Teams are made up a mixture of these tanks that total 15 tanks/SPGs to a side.  Object is to kill all enemy tanks or capture the enemy base.  There are a few different variations of this scenario, but they usually end up the same way,  players usually don't play as they should.

Wargaming has put in many patches to World of Tanks.  Many of which are in my opinion, stupid.  They have buffed already hard to kill tanks to the point, that unless you are willing to actually dip into your pocket and BUY Gold ammo, you will not be able to damage some enemy tanks, meanwhile they have no problem, blowing the turret off of you.

My biggest issue with Wargaming was when they bent to pressure and nerfed the SPGs to death.  They took away our penetration, damage, they said they gave us stun damage, which means nothing, reduced our reload time 10%.  Our reloads are so long now a couple seconds is nothing. Improved our accuracy.  Not by me, I hit less now.   I had one battle I fired at one tank five times, didn't hit it once.  In another battle, I hit a tank seven times and only knocked it's Hit Points down 40%.  If I had not been nerfed, two hits and the tank would have been scrap.  The real kick in the teeth after this was they kept the cost in XP and silver the same to buy the SPGs, which were, at best , 40% of what they use to be.

Now they keep adding new tanks and nations to the game, which was a nice touch, until you start to play them and find the lower tier tanks of the  tree, aren't all that great and it is a pain to play them.  Play them you must, to grind your way through, to earn enough XP and credits to unlock all the modules and finally the next tank in the tier.  Only then do you find, it too is a piece of c**p!  You repeat the process again and again, until you reach a high enough tier, that the tanks no longer sucks too badly.

When I first started the game, the only real issue I had were the Russian Tanks and their Stalinium armor.  They seemed immune to hits.  Which for a real Russian tank was impossible, they were junk, until you realize, the game was designed and is headquartered, in RUSSIA! Do'uh!  Once I got that bit of trivia through my head, I just got down to trying to kill whatever got in front of me, or die trying.

So for the next four years I played constantly, all day long, happily pouring real money into the game, to speed along my advancement and to buy the occasional premium tank.  It was the after they destroyed my artillery and added so many new, nearly impossible to kill new tanks into the game.  Almost making it a Pay to Play/Win game, I lost interest.  I still occasionally will fire up the game and play a couple hours, here and there.  Nothing like I used to play however.  Also I absolutely refuse to spend one more dime on the game, until they fix it, back to they way it was, which means probably never!  Oh well.

Rita Mariner

Editors Note:  Having played a number of Russian tanks in the game, as well as against them, it seems the easiest way to blow one up is to drive it into battle yourself.

Game Review: War Thunder

Bixyl Shuftan

Most gamers are familiar with the popular "World of Tanks" game in which players are in two teams with each operating a World War 2 tank and shooting at one another. Less well-known is War Thunder, by Gaijin Entertainment. The game is similar in that it also involves WW2 style combat, but the game is a bit more detailed. Unlike "World of Tanks," players can fly aircraft in addition to driving tanks and other combat vehicles, and there are plans for naval vessels. So the action can take place on land, sea, or air. Like "World of Tanks," the game is free to play, but there is a "Premium" level, but here it allows players to play certain vehicles basic players can't yet.

When the game first came out in 2011-2012, it was an air battle game. Players start out with pre-war fighter biplanes, three among the following nations: United States, Germany, Britain, Soviet Union, and Japan. Unlike "World of Tanks" in which players can only bring one vehicle in the battlefield during the entire battle, players can bring in another if the first is destroyed. After the destruction of all airplanes, the player can only observe or leave. Through capturing areas, destroying opponents, and destroying ground targets, players earn research points and silver lions. Research points are used toward researching both improvements on your vehicles and researching another aircraft on the tech trees of each nation. Eventually, you can get more advanced fighters, fighter-bombers and bombers, and eventually Korean-War era jets. Silver Lions are used to purchase the parts and eventually more aircraft. When you get more aircraft, you have the choice of either getting another vehicle slot or assigning it to one of your existing ones. Assigning it to one of your existing slots cost Silver Lions. Getting another vehicle slot requires Gold Lions, which are difficult to get without buying them with real world currency. Each additional vehicle slot per country is more expensive than the last. Once every 24 hours when the player logs back in, they get a random bonus for either research points or silver eagles that has to be applied within two days. If they log in every day, every five days comes a group of bonuses, or perhaps a chance to try out a premium vehicle for an hour. You can take a plane out for a test flight before buying it to see how it handles.

There are three types of multiplayer battles. The basic one or "Arcade" is the easiest with players able to respawn, using a different plane in your slots. "Realistic" is more difficult as the plane will be a little more difficult to control, such as being easier to stall, and you cannot respawn once shot down. In "Arcade," when your plane runs out of ammunition or bombs, you just need to wait an amount of time before you reload. In "Realistic," you have to go back to your airfield and land to reload. There is also the "Simulator," which I haven't gotten into much. On any level, making tight turns can sometimes cause your vision to black out due to the G-forces on your pilot's brain. Both "Arcade" and "Realistic" have a small"radar" window in the upper right that keeps track of where your teammates and opponents are, as well as the bombing targets. On the upper left is your speed, altitude, engine temperature, and how many bombs how have left. the lower left shows how many small ground targets are left, and when your plane starts to take damage, a small picture of your plane will appear, showing what's been hit and how badly.

 What battle a player is matched into depends on the level of the planes he has in his slots, so one doesn't end up hopelessly outclassed or in a plane that outclasses everyone else. If your plane has one or more gunners in addition to the pilot, the computer will automatically control his firing, unless the player chooses to take control of the gunner himself. Planes do not have hit points the same way tanks in "World of Tanks" or ships in "World of Warships" do. Instead, the engine, wings, body, stabilizers, etc. take damage separately. If a major part is destroyed, the plane is going down.

Each battle has a different kind of mission. Airspace domination battles are simple as it means the planes of one side keep the air space marked clear of the other side's planes. Airfield domination battles are trickier as they involve capturing one to three airfields, doing so by landing one's plane on them and holding it for a minute. Unfortunately for the pilot, the landing and capturing makes them vulnerable to a strafing run by opposing fighters. In bombing missions, you have to take out three enemy factories, and then the enemy airfield. Some missions will have AA guns and convoys of ground vehicles. fighters can, with difficulty, take out the latter and the unarmored ones of the former. Bombers can take both out if the bombs hit close enough. Carrying larger bombs means fewer drops, but each will have an easier time taking out AA guns and vehicles, and cause more damage to factories and airfields. In some missions, there are also enemy ships to contend with. They can be dispatched with bombs, or a torpedo if you have a torpedo bomber. On the top of the screen, a bar with one side red and one blue keeps track of which side is winning, both sides getting shorter depending on the progress in the game. If the line is mostly red, your side is losing.

After the battle, your score and your place on your team's side is displayed, followed by any parts and vehicles you've finished researching. You can choose new priorities of research and purchase researched parts. You also get a number of crew skill points on your aircraft, depending on how well they did (planes that didn't take part get no bonus). These points can be applied to piloting skill, gunnery skill, skill of any other gunners, pilot's G-tolerances, etc.

Different planes have different tactics. The Mistubishi "Zero" fighters are highly manuverable and are best in a circling dogfight. The American "Thunderbolt" in contrast is less so, but can handle steep dives and can climb well. And don't forget to keep an eye out for what's around you. Pilots concentrating on trying to shoot down the plane in front of them can easily not be aware of the guy sneaking up from behind, until it's too late. Bombs can also be given a time delay, which can help a bomber escape a blast when making a low-altitude run, or give an enemy fighter close on their tail a nasty surprise during a chase at treetop level.

In 2014, War Thunder introduced tank combat, starting with Russian and German tanks, and later on adding American and British tanks with Japanese ones currently available only to premium players. The vehicles look more detailed than their "World of Tanks" counter parts, and those with more than one cannon such as the American Lee And Russian T-35 can fire multiples of them. When your gunsight is in front of a friendly, it will turn blue. When targeted on an enemy tank in a spot it has a decent chance of penetrating, it will turn green. When the chances are iffy, it is yellow. And when it's red, the shot has a poor chance of doing damage. The results of hits show in a pop-up display in the upper right.To help players get around, a minimap of the area is in the lower right. The lower left will show if your engine or gun is damaged, and the number of uninjured crewmen. When you score a hit on someone, a brief display appears in the upper right, showing where you hit and if it damaged anything.

With the hills and drops, it's possible for a vehicle to end up upside down. The player can call for assistance for a teammate to try to pull him upright. Hits on a tank can injure crewmen or damage equipment, the former meaning the tank can't shoot or drive until another crewman takes their place, and the latter meaning the tank has to either stop for repairs right away, or move slower and shoot slower and less accurately until the player stops and enacts repairs. Once the number of uninjured crewmen falls to one or zero, the tank is out of action. The tank can also be blown up by a hit to the ammo supply or fuel tank. After three tanks are used up, the player can no longer respawn, even if there's a fourth tank in the country's spaces.

There are also self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, which spit out high rate of fire, but have little chance of stopping all but the most thin of armor of enemy vehicles, such as other anti-aircraft or some tank destroyers. Many tanks also have machine guns. While AA guns and machine guns can't destroy a thickly-armored tank, they do count as making a hit, so if another player destroys the tank later, they get credit as having made an assisted kill. But one other difference from "World of Tanks" is that crew members are clearly visible in  AA vehicles and certain tank destroyers. This means a machine gun attack, or a high explosive round, into an exposed area can really hurt.

At several points in tank battles, players will get the chance to switch to an airplane for a few minutes, either a fighter-bomber which can damage or destroy tanks, or a fighter which can take out opposing planes. Anti-aircraft guns and machine guns that can aim into the air can fire at them when they get close enough. It takes several AA and machinegun hits to destroy a plane, though if it crashes the player who damaged it gets credit for the kill. Taking out a plane with a tank round would be a difficult feat of marksmanship, but most likely end up taking it down. Tank missions, at least in arcade mode, are just one variety, to occupy one or more designated points.

Like the planes, different ground vehicles call for different tactics. Light tanks are built for speed, but not going toe to toe with heavier armor. Heavy tanks are built to take and give punishment, but as the saying goes "there's always someone stronger" and a lucky shot to the turret ring will still hurt, if not take your tank out. Medium tanks can handle both roles. Tank destroyers are best when on the defensive, and when outflanked are vulnerable to blows from the side. Anti-aircraft vehicles are great for taking down enemy planes, and can  damage or knock out enemy vehicles with thinner armor or open areas if they get a lucky shot from behind, but are not built to take much punishment. Both tank destroyers and AA vehicles are at a disadvantage from tanks in city combat. And if a shell hits armor at an angle instead of head on, it's less likely to penetrate.

For certain accomplishments, such as getting a streak of three or more opponents before getting clobbered, blowing up the guy who got you earlier, or capturing an area, you get extra silver eagles and possibly more research points. For destroying a certain number of opponents during the course of your virtual campaign, you will be awarded insignia and artwork, which can be affixed to your vehicle as labels. You can do a little mix and matching with the artwork. It is possible to put a decal meant for an Axis aircraft on an Allied tank.

Naval combat is currently under development, and for now available only to Premium players. But these are not the battleships and cruisers of "World of Warships." All that's available now are small ocean craft, such as American PT boats and German E-Boats.

Although War Thunder is a multiplayer game, and you can fight alongside friends, I've personally found it more difficult to team up with my Second Life friends there. So when we feel like a round of tanks together, we usually hit World of Tanks. This to me is War Thunder's greatest flaw. But once a group of players gets in and can communicate by voice to coordinate their actions, that makes a clear difference in gameplay

It's also notable that War Thunder pulls something every April Fools. Last year, it was a pirate ship battle. Probably their most memorable prank was the "My Little Pony" air battles on April1, 2013, with flying colorful ponies with jets and rockets strapped to them, firing rainbow lasers.

Aside from a lucky picture from when I took a test drive of a T-35, I never could get screenshots of the game. So most of the pictures here are from films on warthunder.com.

Still, if you feel like a good round of air combat, or want a round of tank combat that's a different style than "World of Tanks," War Thunder is certainly worth a try.

Bixyl Shuftan

Game Review: Sniper Elite V2

By Nydia Tungsten & Brandi Tungsten

   I was told about this game being free on Steam for the day by several people, so I got it, as did my son, Kody. We sat down and played for a few hours and between the two of us, we had beat the game.

     It is a basic first person shooter taking place during WWII while the game designers took some liberty with the historical facts to create better missions. First thing I notice about the game is how the tutorial is buggy, so don’t worry if you can’t get all the way through it. While irritating, it is not game breaking, so go as far as you can then go to the missions. In this game, you can play with others in either co-op or PvP. Kody and I tried co-op.

   Another annoying aspect about this game is when we hit Continue, it threw us back into the lobby. So, we had to go through the list of missions to get to the next one. In my opinion, the developers of this game did not do a very thorough beta testing with this game. It has just too many things going wrong, nothing game crashing, but just annoying.

     Would I shell out money for it? No, so I cannot recommend it unless it comes up free again, but until then, I’d say leave it alone.

They have started pushing Sniper Elite III, but with the problems I am having with V 2, I don’t think I could trust it’s sequel enough not to have problems. I cannot stress enough that if they have a game that originally has problems, and then they release a sequel to it, leave that one alone. It is the only way we can get the message to the developers we will not stand for “close enough” games being thrown at us. Remember, we have the power to get our message across by not giving them money for unfinished games and Sniper Elite, while fun, was lacking in many ways. Not having enough missions is the biggest flaw. If someone can finish and beat the game in just a few short hours in co-op mode and have one of the players not even take the tutorial and just jump in means there isn’t enough content in my eyes.

And another thing is given that it never told us where to aim to destroy tanks. It took us a bit to figure that out as well and we STILL beat it quickly.

   So, save your money and wait for it to come out on another free day to get it, that is the only way I can recommend getting it. If you already have it, let me know how YOU like it and let me know if you think I am wrong.

And as always, GOOD GAMING TO YOU!

Editor's Note: At times when making a sniper shot, the view changes to show a slow-motion of the bullet traveling towards it's target. Just before reaching the target, the screen changes to an "X-ray" view which shows the bullet shattering bones, or if the shot's at the target's gonads, disintegrating testicles. Not exactly something for the squeamish. 

Nydia Tungsten