Windows

World War II: Frontline Command

After installation the game insists that the computer is restarted before it will run. The first time the game the game profiles the player's machine for the selected resolution

Profiling takes a minute or so as the game runs through a script and determines whether the machine can run at a suitable frame rate

First time through, after profiling, the player must enter the game's CD key. Then the introduction sequence plays. It's a series of animated battle maps and old war time footage

Finally, the start of the game

New player id names allows spaces to be used but are limited to eight characters.

The main menu

From the main menu the 'Options' option gives the player access to controls that tweak the video, the sound, the controller and show the videos and the developer credits

The Tutorials option from the main menu gives the player four exercises. Tutorial 1 teaches troop movement, 2 teaches Combat, 3 teaches Support and 4 teaches moving the camera around

Tutorial 1 - Mission briefing

All missions, even the tutorials, take a short while to load

Troops are selected by dragging the mouse pointer over them. Both the troops and the battlefield are nicely detailed.

When troops are on the move the game shows a dotted line between then and their destination. The route also shows in the mini map in the bottom right corner

The river is grey, so is the land that lies outside the troops line of sight and this can be confusing. Troops can cross rivers where the water is shallow - indicated here by the rocks

This is taken from the Combat tutorial. It shows how one unit, the tank, can fire at something it cannot see if another unit can see the target. A nice touch.

Another nice touch. Troops can take over a building and can be given command to ambush any enemy passing by. The bright segment of the yellow circle shows the direction they watch

The missions must be played in order. The first three missions are prior to D-Day and are clearing the way for the invasion

The briefing screen for Mission One : Radar Raid

The mission begins with planes flying in and dropping troops into the game. The 'Tips' screen is optional and can be disabled

The icons in the top right of the screen change the player's point of view. Targets / Objectives are numbered because some missions have more than one

Each star represents a unit. That may be a single engineer, or a squad of riflemen. Here the path they were going to take is guarded by German troops inside a building

This is not how it was supposed to end

That's more like it

At the end of each mission the player gets to see their score

From the main menu the scores for each mission can be reviewed. Scores 2 to 8 are default scores

The briefing for Mission 2 : Bridge Control

Mission 2. The red spots on the mini map show planes coming in to drop troops

Mission 2 showing multiple objectives and twelve different squads of troops

This shows the problem with some troops being stuck under the bridge.