War Mongrels is an isometric real-time tactics game that borrows heavily from the classics like Commandos and Desperados, while borrowing some of the newer mechanics from Shadow Tactics and the recently released Desperados 3.
War Mongrels doesn't only borrow mechanics from other games they also added a nifty new feature that makes the game a bit more action oriented, "Combat Mode" , more on that later. War Mongrels plays out like the Commandos games of old, in an isometric view with a mouse and keyboard, except this time you are placed in the shoes of two german army deserters from the eastern front, on their way to a work camp when it gets attacked by the soviets. The prison transport gets thrown off the road and crashes. This is were you take control of Manfred Raufer a disillusioned German Nationalist who after seeing the truth compared to the Nazi propaganda, refused to execute innocent villagers, and Ewald Fuber, a polish draftee that has always been a troublemaker and who finally exhausted his superiors patience when he refused to execute innocent villagers. You will eventually have control over 7 characters and each has their unique abilities and talents to tackle the myriad problems you'll face on this journey.
The game teaches you the basics here, how to stealth, distract, use abilities and kill. All of this will feel very similar to veterans of the previously mentioned games in this genre, with hotkeys being the same in many cases. The main difference to the old games, is that this game is in full 3D, the camera can be rotated 90 degrees to get a better view of the area and enemies patrol route. In almost all other aspects the game plays like Commandos. You sneak around keeping your squad out of view, looking for an opening to take out some guards and work towards your objective. War Mongrels borrows a mechanic from Shadow Tactics, which I personally love since it really opens up your tactical options.
It goes like this: Hit the 'Tab' key to slow time down to a crawl, now pick a character and give him a single command, pick the next character and give him a single command as well and so on until all characters have a single command, then hit 'Enter' key to confirm the commands and resumes normal time. Now all your characters will execute their commands in unison, allowing you to perform some magnificent squad manoeuvrers without alarming too many enemies. As far as I remember I have only seen this mechanic in Shadow Tactics though it could have been in Desperados 3 but I've not played that one yet to confirm it. Now if you manage to get spotted and alarm all the enemies in the area you have an option that I have not seen in other games in this genre: Combat Mode. Combat Mode changes the game into a twin stick shooter basically, where you move the character with WASD and aim with the mouse. I thought this was a pretty fun addition to the genre which gives you a fighting chance when all hell breaks loose. The graphics are quite nice, nothing revolutionary but still very good at immersing you in the story and surroundings. The sound design is pretty good, with believable nature sounds and the Nazi soldier chatter that you can overhear when hiding near them. Speaking of the chatter, the voice acting is very good as well and helps in making the story interesting. Your characters will often banter and talk when near each other to comment on what is going on in the story. These dialogues can be skipped by simply moving them from each other and is by no means necessary to listen to but they do supply some insight and backstory into the happenings of the game. The between chapter cinematic are animated and feel appropriate instead of cheap as often is the case with a 3D game and animated cutscenes. The game has 12 levels or Chapters as they are called. Each chapter is a pretty big map that starts with a simple objective which then evolves into more difficult objectives, and if you try to go all out stealth, could take you 1-3 hours. Each chapter has collectables that help flesh out the world. There are newspaper clippings and posters for example, and when they are examined in the collectables tab you can read more about them, and often these are real life articles or posters with some history on the item or the subject they are covering. The surroundings can get a bit boring eventually as they seem to be all pretty much the same Eastern front villages, train yards and military camps but in all fairness, that is pretty much all there was there on the Eastern front.
I did read online that people were complaining about bugs and that their save files did not work with the updates. I did not experience any bugs personally and I did not notice any updates while reviewing War Mongrels and therefore cannot comment on those complaints.
So, if you like Isometric real-time tactics games, enjoyed the Commandos/Desperados series and the more recent Shadow Tactics then you cant go wrong in picking War Mongrels up. It is a solid game with at least 20 hours of game. Highly recommended.
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