Blitzkrieg 2: Fall of the Reich

Graphics

The graphics in Fall of the Reich are one of its major downfalls. It is made using the same engine which made the original Blitzkrieg 2 and, thus, is already a year out of date. When you consider that the graphics were already less than impressive at the time of the release of the original, it proves to be a very visually underwhelming game.

Textures are bland, animations can be disjointed and awkward and even the artwork on main menu looks very amateur. This does, however, mean that it will run happily on the most modest of machines. Nevertheless, there are some nice visual effects: for example, the destructible environment means that telephone pylons, trees and burnt out vehicles can be reduced to rubble by a moving vehicle. This gives the environment a sense of realism despite its simplicity.

If your rig isn’t up to the task of running this humble game there isn’t a great deal of scope for tweaking with only five settings to adjust graphical looks: Texture quality, Image quality, Anisotropic filtering, '32-bit' on or off and Silhouettes on or off. However, there is a relatively wide range of available resolutions from 640 x 480 to 2048 x 1536 with widescreen capabilities as well. Here you can see how these settings on their lowest change an unattractive game into a monstrosity:

As you can see, a great deal of the detail in the environment is lost with the removal of a majority of the game’s flora, the textures no longer blend in and instead look unsightly and out-of-place, the infantry become coloured blobs and, in general, the game becomes completely lifeless. Then again, this shouldn’t be much of a deterrent to the majority of gamers, since the minimum specs are only a 1GHz processor and GeForce 3-class video card.

Sound

The aural pleasure that Fall of the Reich dispenses is appropriately described as ‘nothing to write home about’. The sound effects are the most valuable of all the aspects of the audio, artillery hailing down, planes flying over head, tank tracks rumbling along the dirt and barrages of gunfire all sound authentic without really providing a completely immersive experience.

The dialogue from the units during the game, or rather the quirks they come out with when they acknowledge orders, is effective and adds to the realism due to the fact that each nation speaks in their native language and not some poor German or Russian impersonator speaking in English. The background music, however, is dreadful and highly inappropriate, sounding like a science-fiction score that Nobuo Uematsu had composed for one of the many Final Fantasy universes. At times I felt like my infantry should be swapping their MP40s for swords and spells.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I really wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone unless they are a fan of the original Blitzkrieg 2 or of the World War II RTS genre, as it is too difficult for newcomers and just feels so lame in comparison to other games of a similar ilk such as the sublime Company of Heroes.

Play.com offers it at the price of £14.99, but you will struggle to justify spending even that on such a decidedly mediocre title.