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Atari and TimeGate Studios team up to update the board game to a PC near you. TimeGate Studios recently developed Kohan II: Kings of War and that game was scored very well here. Axis & Allies is from the same developer, and though the game uses the excellent Kohan II engine, it doesn’t have the same charm to propel it from being simply average.
The game includes a number of different gameplay modes. Although the primary mode is the World War II mode, a skirmish mode is present, as it a campaign mode. As expected, the game also fully supports online multiplayer. In World War II mode, you’ll need to pick one of five countries (USA, Great Britain, Russia, Japan or Germany) and you’ll need to be successful enough to take control of another two capitals. The campaign mode is compromised of two different campaigns – one for the Allies (which includes memorable battles in the war) and another for the Axis (which allows you to live out what would happen if the Axis would have won some decisive battles – but there isn’t much of a story going on since the missions are told in chronological order and don’t particularly make much sense on their own. The Skirmish mode is the simplest as you can simply pick a map and go it, or participate in a scenario.
As I mentioned in the introduction, the game uses the Kohan II engine and the resource gathering and military-building aspects are similar to that game. In Axis and Allies, you don’t need to collect resources since you’ll have three resources – ammo, oil, and money – you will have a negative or positive flow of the first two, which you can increase by building structures that effectively gather these for you. Money allows you to build units or buildings, but also research new things. Should you not have any, you’ll notice that the troops lose health. Similarly, the military is handled in as comparable fashion to Kohan II. You don’t actually control individual units but rather companies of them, which are attached to a headquarter. Overall, it is an effective system and is employed wonderfully and removes a lot of the micromanaging usually found in the genre.
The game includes three types of units – army, infantry, and mechanized – and they all move one space at a time, a time-consuming process when you want to get far. Battles can be simulated, although it is generally better to fight them out in the RTS engine since you’ll be able to win for the most part if you have more units, despite the opposition having a better theoretical strategy. By and large, the AI isn’t very smart and won’t put up a very good fight due to dumb decisions on the battlefield and general strategies in managing their resources. They will often spend too much time and money building units they don’t need, and the same applies to technologies. Nonetheless, there are some neat features included in the game like the ability to use the atom bomb, but combat is never something described as “fun.”
Thankfully, because the underlying engine is so solid, multiplayer is a blast to play. Humans will typically not use questionable tactics and will generally attempt to destroy you. This means effectively using the forces and making sure units don’t flee or making better use of money and general power than the AI is even close to.
The game’s graphics don’t do anything to push it either. They are standard, with reasonably detailed, plausibly well-modeled units and buildings, but nothing out of the ordinary. The occasional explosions look quite convincing and are truly the visual highlight.
The audio is less remarkable. The sound effects are insipid, and don’t particularly demonstrate the action well, especially when it comes to explosions. On the other hand, the music is fitting, and the sound effect is respectable if a touch compulsory
Axis & Allies isn’t a bad game. If you’re going to spend all of your time online, you’ll have a blast as the game’s underlying engine is extremely well-built and will provide much fun. However, the single-player modes are marred by questionable AI which removes much of the intensity and in effect, fun, of playing the game. -- Jake Wilson, PGNx Media
---- Nov 24, 2004
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