Joint Task Force

Sound

Good war games need good sounds, and in terms of battle noises JTF doesn't dissapoint. Tanks rumble around, explosions sound pretty decent and gunfire is realistic. What I have to take issue with, and it seems like I say this about every single game, is the voice acting. The voice acting in JTF is rubbish which in many ways, brings down the rest of the game.

It really baffles me where these voice actors come from? For instance the sexy looking news reporter's voice that I expected to sound like a fox coated in silk, sounds disconnected and robotic rather than alluring. The militaristic, all american main character, who you would expect to be a booming, charismatic leading male is instead a monotone drone that made me wince. Why oh why can developers never seem to get voice acting correct in games?

These problems aren't limited to the cutscenes (which suffer from a lack of lip synchronisation that makes the good story far less respectable). I fail to see why developers insist on making the characters repeat the same lines over and over again after you issue them with a command. There's only so many times I want to listen to an extra from Navy Seals XVIII shout "Yes Sir!" through my headphones. I understand there is a problem in communicating to the gamer that the computer has acknowledged your order, but if there is no way to design round this problem then please allow us the option of turning off friendly AI voice responses. Almost as bad as the bots in Counter-strike...

Conclusions

The ultimate question with all games reviews is whether this is worth your hard earned cash. Regretably, we weren't able to get the multiplayer portion of the game to work correctly and were not able to review that segment of the game. However, I feel there was still enough in this game to warrant a purchase from fans of the genre even without the multiplayer aspect.

At £26.99 it isn't the cheapest PC game on the market (price from Play.com). The biggest question facing you, is whether it is worth getting this, or the upcoming, widely anticipated Company of Heroes? In truth, if RTS is your favourite type of game then you will probably want to invest in both - as this certainly offers enough unique features to make the game refreshing and enjoyable. However, if you're someone who is stuck for cash and looking only to make one RTS purchase, then I have to advise that you hold on and wait a couple of weeks and see how CoH is received. Overall this is a solid game, with few flaws, but lacking that 'special ingredient' to make it stand out from the crowd.