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After looking at any of these screenshots you’re probably thinking “Oh, gee, another WWII RTS.” And, you’re right, that’s exactly what this is. What was once an interesting concept a few years ago is now as tired as a vintage combat boot with a hole in the toe. However, while its novelty has worn out, all that practice has led to developers figuring out what works and what doesn’t in this type of game. Rush for Berlin is the product of dozens of other mediocre WWII RTS titles and as such it plays far better than most, but still feels too familiar.

The Race is On

Rush for Berlin takes place toward the latter stages of the war, when Russia to the East and the Allies on the West were converging on Germany, making the last push to Berlin. In real life the Russians would ultimately win that contest, and if you play as the Russians here you can ensure they do so again. However, the game gives you the opportunity to change a little history, playing as the Allies on the Western front and trying to charge ahead, or even commanding a Hitler-less Nazi force and repelling the invaders.

There are a total of four campaigns, one for each of the three mentioned above, plus a French revolutionary campaign that’s fully opened only after you complete the other three. All jokes about French Revolutions aside, this campaign is rather unlike the others, relying on conservation and optimization of forces to do a lot with very limited resources. None of the campaigns are particularly long, but the individual missions are challenging and are actually strung together quite well.

Fully-Loaded or Bare-Bones

Each mission is preceded by a short video that, while not especially attractive nor well acted, does a good job of setting the stage of the oncoming battle. Then, in the pre-mission planning, you’re given a briefing of the objectives for the mission, including a view of the map with animated arrows depicting objectives and paths. Each mission is littered with optional objectives, making them feel more dynamic than your typical RTS campaign.

Before you set off into combat you have to select your forces. You’re given a number of slots based on the difficulty of the mission and are free to drop in officers, troops, or vehicles to fill them. Each added unit decreases the amount of time given to complete the mission, meaning you can go in with a skeleton crew and take the time to finesse your way to victory, or instead try a little blitzkrieg action.

Predictably (and thankfully) the focus here is on battle tactics rather than resource harvesting. The units themselves are carried over from one mission to the next, gaining experience all the while. You’ll be granted new units to fill the ranks between missions, but as your grenadiers or snipers or others turn more and more battle-hardened they become much more efficient killers, making any loss in battle rather painful. Officers, who act like the sort of heroes found in other RTS games, also gain experience and abilities, meaning you’ll want to keep them safe too.

Each faction has a variety of officers and special unit types, from vodka-dealing Commissars who raise the morale of Russian troops to German Luftwaffe officers who can summon interceptors to shoot down enemy aircraft. There is also a huge assortment of historically accurate tanks, vehicles, and military units to order about across the land, sea, and air, each looking and acting quite authentically.

Like Being There

While the above may sound rather typical, it’s this game’s sense of immersion that really sets it apart from the competition. You may think it’s difficult to feel too close to the action when you’re hovering overhead, but the game skillfully uses sound, solid graphics, subtle fogging, and great explosion effects to really create an authentic looking battleground. At least as authentic as we’ve been trained to expect from movies like Saving Private Ryan, anyway.

It’s a serious game, but it’s still fun to play. A lot of RTS games fall too far on the side of realism, calling on you to spend too much time fiddling with individual unit position and behavior during battle. Meanwhile other games lean too far on the other side, delivering fast-paced battles waged with exo-skeletons and Tesla coils. Rush delivers realistic looking and behaving units that you can meticulously position and order around if you wish, but who can also take care of themselves for the most part. This leaves you free to worry about the bigger picture and enjoy the game’s screen-shaking battles.

Things aren’t perfect, however. As mentioned above the voice acting is more mediocre than good while the music has a tendency to sound derivative and boring. But the explosion and weapon sound effects, which are really what count, are top-notch here. Likewise the graphics are very good, not polished and bump-mapped and precision shaded, rather gritty and realistic, providing decent frame-rates while enabling you to zoom far enough out to get a usable view of the action.

Hooked on a Feeling

Overall Rush for Berlin just feels a lot better than most of the other RTS games out there. It’s a great blend between realism and fast-paced gameplay wrapped in a solid package that RTS fans will love. They’ll love it, that is, if they can get over this being yet another themed WWII game in a sea of olive drab releases.

Review By: Tim Stevens
Video Produced By: Paul Bonanno