Aggression, Destruction and De-TERMINATION; Desert Rats Vs. Afrika Korps blasts onto the PC

by Louis Bedigian

“…We’ve paid special attention to ensuring the game is playable, winnable, and accessible (and fun)…”

Attack!  Attack!

We must move in!

We'll get them back!

We'll get even!

Their attacks, so fierce

They outnumbered our clan

Their eyes we'll pierce

We will rule this land

They have a strong group

But we have more

We'd sacrifice troops

To settle this score

Nothing can stop me

No, not a thing!

When I get revenge

This coming spring…

Everyone loves a good virtual war.  The action, the suspense, and oftentimes the music create an experience unlike any other.

Looking for such thrills, the GameZone crew hopped into a cramped SUV and drove deep into the jungle.  (Which jungle?  We aren’t sure.  The sign outside said, “The Jungle,” and that was all we needed to know at the time.)

Inside we found a group of individuals working hard on a game that could provide the thrills we’re seeking: Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps.  A real-time strategy game with a kick, Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps offers two campaigns and 20 missions.

Starved and nearly out of gas, we thought it was time to head back to the office…but not before interviewing Pascal Hery, producer of this intriguing RTS.

Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps has a turn-based element that allows players to plan up to three moves ahead. How does this work, and what does it add to the overall gameplay experience?

Pascal Hery: The player can pause the game at any time, and give orders to his units while the game is paused. The commands are executed as soon as the game resumes. The player can give ‘chain commands’ during pause or the normal game mode by pressing the Shift button while giving the command. These commands get stacked into the unit’s command queue. The units’ command queue is three orders deep, the units execute the orders in a ‘first in, first out’ order. The pause feature (which can be disabled in multiplayer mode) allows the player to have the advantages of a turn-based gameplay, i.e. being able to take the time to think out a suitable strategy for as long as he wishes, while keeping all the intensity of action that characterizes real-time strategy.

Tell us about the Blitzkrieg mode.

PH: Missions usually start out with a management phase where the player selects units from a pool. Each unit has a cost and the player has a budget of mission-points (MPs) he can spend for the mission. In Blitzkrieg mode the player moves directly on to the next mission with the units he had left at the end of the previous mission. This allows players to keep up the momentum they have been building and to capitalize on their success.

This game includes two campaigns and 20 missions. How are they dispersed? What is the average length of each mission?

PH: There is one introduction mission (tutorial), six missions in the Allied Campaign, eight missions of the Axis Campaign, and three missions in Blitzkrieg mode. Moreover there are two specific missions that start and end the Story mode. The average length of a mission for is two hours.

That’s what happens when you don’t pay attention.  You lose a tank.

What can you tell us about the unit and vehicle types featured in the game?

PH: There are eight different infantry types (rifleman, machine gunner, scout, sapper, grenadier, medic, flamethrower, sniper) in “Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps”, each with different Mission Point costs and complementary skills. The vehicles are divided into seven groups (tank, recon, transport, anti-tank artillery, artillery, anti air artillery and air support). There is a total of over 70 different units in the game, including the famous Tiger, the Flak-88, the Churchill, the Sherman and many more…

How many units (ally or enemy) can engage in a single battle?

PH: Just to give an example, the last two missions of the allied campaign each have about one hundred and fifty units on the battlefield. These are both allied, enemy or neutral. Neutral units are present through out the game, they are tanks with no infantry units mounted in them, and can be taken over by either side. Moreover, destroying only the turret of an enemy tank will cause the crew to abandon the vehicle, allowing the player to mount a crew in, repair the vehicle and gain a new unit.

With so many units available, how will players manage them and lead them to victory?

PH: That’s where the pause feature comes in. Having so many units on the battlefield means the player will be fighting on multiple fronts and having to coordinate the assaults of tanks, planes and other vehicles located throughout the playing field. The pause feature allows the player to give the various tanks squad complex orders at any moment in the game and respond to the rapidly evolving situation on the battlefield. 

Everyone knows that a strategy game's controls involve a lot of pointing and clicking, but how does this game differ from the crowd? What unique control aspects will players find in the game?

PH: Pointing and clicking is all very well when all you want to do is to move and attack, but in Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps the player will have a lot more to do. For example, because the tanks have different amour plating on the front, back and sides, positioning a tank correctly can mean the difference between defeat and victory. Or you can dig a tank in, which means that you’re better protected, but less mobile. When you’re firing at an enemy tank, you can choose to target the turret or the caterpillar – which is more risky, but if you succeed you’ll be able to crew the enemy tank and change the balance of power. This means that the player can go a lot further than just the basic point-and-click gameplay, although we’ve paid special attention to ensuring the game is playable, winnable and accessible (and fun) without going into the depth of control that is available though the keyboard shortcuts. 

That’s only a small amount of the blood you can expect to spill in this game.

Missions range from recon operations and escort missions to large-scale sieges of desert fortresses. Could you go into greater detail about those or perhaps another type of mission featured in the game?

PH: Just to give a few examples, the player will lead a strike on a command post deep behind enemy lines in the middle of a sand storm, protect a general retreat in the face of superior forces, smash though heavily fortified defense line with mines, trenches, sand-bags bunkers, AT-guns etc., protect a beach-landing, fight urban battles with a hidden enemy, be pestered by air raids, protect a convoy through hostile territory, and the list goes on….

Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps is said to have a very flexible camera system. Tell us about it, and why it makes the game play better.

PH: This camera system helps the player to view the battlefield from any perspective from bird’s eye view to close range (zoom ranging from 15-120 meters of altitude), and has 360° rotation.

This means you can view the tactical situation from various angles and attack the problem from a new perspective.

What is the graphic style being used – real-time or pre-rendered backgrounds? What kind of cool graphic effects will players see?

PH: Everything in the game is real-time – the terrain, the units’ physics, the explosions, the destruction of buildings. In fact, almost any element on the map can be destroyed : trees, buildings, sand-bags, vehicles… And you can pause the game in the middle of an explosion to admire it, zoom in, pan the camera round, etc. The vehicles have a very realistic physics animation system, for examples trucks bank slightly to the side when they are turning at speed, tanks turrets oscillate slightly from the inertia when the tank stops suddenly, etc. The game also features real-time shadows for all elements (buildings, vehicles, trees) on the map.

How important is the story? Are real-time or CG movie sequences used to tell it?

PH: The story of “Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps” is built around five characters who play an important part in the events of the North-African conflict in World War II. Two of these characters have major roles: Erich von Hartmann, a German officer, and Gregory Sinclair, a British joke. The aim of the story is to give an insight into the historical context of the conflict and the mindset of the warring parties, and therefore of the stakes of each mission. In the game there are both real-time sequences that open all mission (and close some too), and CG-sequences interspersed between missions.

Is there anything you can share with us regarding the multiplayer mode?

PH: Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps’s Multiplayer supports up to 4 players battling it out simultaneously on one map and has 3 different game modes: The classic DeathMatch mode, where the player(s) who eliminates his opponent(s) wins; Conquer Mode in which the victory conditions depend on the options chosen: seizing all flags on the map, seizing the most flags when the timer gets to zero, eliminating all enemy units or seizing a set number of flags with no time restraint; and Tobruk-To-El-Alamein. Tobruk-To-El-Alamein is a unique Multiplayer Mode specific to “Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps”. One of the camps start as attacker, the other as defender, and both must hold a small town on the opposing edges of the map. The attacker must try and vanquish the defender, but after a certain time period the defenders receive reinforcements and the roles are reversed. At this time, the attackers have to fall back to defend their HQ and hold tight till the next wave of reinforcements, when the roles are reversed once again. The game ends when one player takes the other player’s flag.

Thank you for your time.