Reviewed by: DNM
Developer: Wargaming.net
Publisher: GMXMedia

Turn-based strategy has always had a 'beardy' stigma against it, with the lack of immediacy perhaps being the main bone of contention. After all, if you wanted to waste time waiting for your opponent to have their turn you'd surely play chess! Enter 'Massive Assault', looking to freshen up the whole TBS genre with huge firepower at your disposal, lush graphics and a dash of humour thrown in for good measure.

The idea behind the game is simple; conquer or be conquered! Okay, that applies to just about a zillion other games. What is immediately apparent when first playing the game is the simplicity of it all. There is no resource management, except for what vehicle unit you're going to spend your cash surplus on. Nope, Massive Assault just drops you neatly into the hot seat and let's you get on with waging war. And what a war! The term 'massive' hasn't been used lightly, with sheer amount of decision making thrown at you becoming bewildering at times.

The game features a healthy set of missions to get stuck into, including five tutorials that introduce you to the game mechanics perfectly without any unnecessary waffle. Additionally, twenty-four standard missions, six World War mission sets and four campaigns, should see you immersed for a good while! There is no difficulty setting rather the game rates the individual missions on their own difficulty .. and it's rarely wrong! Some of the missions are immense fun, one of which has you starting with no money left, a tiny group of units and the enemy about to trample on you .. I still haven't won that one even now! Grr!! All standard, World War and campaigns can be played in any order, ensuring that if you're finding it all too easy, you can skip to the harder stuff!

Gameplay consists of a set of phases, after which you sit back and allow the computer to take its turn. You play as the 'Free Nations Union', fighting against the 'Phantom League' for control over some resource rich planets. Play usually starts with a 'Disclose' phase, where you choose which of your occupied territories to disclose to the enemy. The game then moves onto the 'Combat' phase, where you move your units and choose whom they are to fire upon. Finally you reach the 'Recruitment' phase, the point at which you can buy new units depending on your cash resources earnt as each round elapses. You cannot use new units until the next turn though! Bah!

The Combat phase is naturally where it all happens, and each unit have their own different attributes to consider. The cheapest unit is the 'LAV' costing one dollar, and provide a good first line of defence though they only have an armour rating of four, can only do one point of damage, and only have a tiny radius of targets it can aim at. The more expensive 'Heavy Bots' however are death on legs with the ability to fire on the enemy over a much larger radius, are armoured to the hilt and can traverse much larger areas of ground. Naturally you have to decide whether to wait another round to accrue more money to buy more heavy-duty units, or rely on strength in numbers with the cheaper ones.

You will quickly realise that the computer's decision making is practically faultless, and unless you are frugal with your unit choice can wind up dead and buried in very swift time. Where you begin and the loyalty of your neighbouring countries is entirely random, which also affects to a large degree the outcome of a war. On the downside, however, the computers decision making process can take a yawnsome amount of time to complete, particularly on the larger more densely populated maps. This in mind, you have to expect that some of the time luck is the only thing that's going to get you through. I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, as it does provide the gamer with widely varied scenarios on the same maps.

Massive Assault is very pleasing to the eye, with fractal-like landscapes scrolling smoothly even at resolutions above 1024x768. On the very odd occasion, and usually during the pre-mission briefings, the game will almost lag to a complete halt and then carry on at a rate of knots to play catch-up! All twenty-six different units look the part with nice animations and colourful explosions, particularly impressive are the Naval Battleships hurling their triple barrelled rockets of death! I do feel the sound could've been a lot 'beefier' though, with so much carnage on show the audio doesn't quite match the visual action. The music lacks variety too, but what there is suits the mood well.

Massive Assault is good fun to play, and certainly in the later levels will challenge even the most hardened of strategists. The simplistic approach of the game may not sit well with the purists, but for someone wanting quick and easy combat with no fussy resource management, it is ideal.

Presentation	7
Neat unit animations and colourful landscapes. Audio lacking somewhat.
Gameplay	7
Excellent tutorials. Ability to dive straight in makes for quick learning curve. Computer decision making tediously long at times.
Value	7
Nice variety in mission settings and units. Internet play could make this even better value, but not tested for review.
Benchmark	7
I consider the game to be a step forward, taking the 'Beard' out of TBS!
Score	7
Not quite the grand battlefield I had hoped for, but certainly close enough to be worth checking out.