America: No Peace Beyond the Line Review

It's sometimes hard to believe that we're actually in the 21st century. Why? - You may ask? Well, probably because of old-fashioned games like Data Becker's real-time strategy 'America'. The game is set in the post Civil War period and most of the North American continent is still in turmoil. Four major interest groups fight to control the main resources in a new land, rich with gold supplies. For starters, this presents quite a weak foundation for a background story. On the other hand, the game does have a few interesting mission concepts in the Native American campaign.

The history of American nations had an interesting course throughout the eighteen hundreds. Unfortunately, you cannot choose which nation you'd like to play first; you'll have to complete each campaign in the given order. There are altogether 30 missions, which are divided into four campaigns. The mission scenarios are mostly linear, which unfortunately doesn't decrease their difficulty. Objectives will often vary, covering many historic events and battles. Resource collecting, unit handling, and destroying the enemy are the essences of 'America' (now where have are heard that before? Oh well, never mind).

You start off with the Indian campaign, and I must say that it was the only campaign I've enjoyed playing. The Redskins have many useful features that allow you to carry out interesting maneuvers in battle. While they do not have any advanced technologies or heavy weaponry, abilities like swimming and camouflage are their most appealing characteristics. They use their knowledge of the terrain with other skills they possess to prevail against a technically far more advanced enemy. Swimming is a feature that wasn't used in RTS games since Pyro's Commandos, and certain missions simply cannot be completed without its practice. For a moment, I found the Outlaw campaign and the way they gather food supplies amusing. By building distilleries your gang can drink all the liquor they want, provided of course that they chop down enough wood (which is the key prerequisite for liquor making). This feature reduces the amount of micromanaging and relieves the player of his main concern - food supply.

Each nation has its own characteristics and features, which largely affect gameplay. This feature, on the other hand also presents rather an annoying drawback. First, some of the skills Indians have are attributed to the Indian race exclusively, which is not logical since these skills are pretty normal actions any human being can perform. For example, it is understandable no one is a better expert in the art of camouflage than an American native, however simple walking through dense forests should be allowed for all units in the game. American infantry units, for example cannot do this. Again, I understand why the American cavalry cannot pass through forests, but why does the infantry lack this ability? This doesn't sound like a tremendous disadvantage; nonetheless it will present an extreme predicament in certain combat situations.

Also, the way some units behave in battle is really irritating. To begin with, if units are scattered they should reassemble their formations. This doesn't work quite well in the midst of a battle and no matter which nation you play your enemy will always be stronger and smarter in combat. This means that, unless you give constant attention to your troops, they will surely be wiped out cause they simply don't have the amount of intelligence needed to fight on their own. The experience of your units plays an important role, but is not easy to gain, since most of your existing units will march recklessly into death, regardless of the command they had been given. So, it all boils down to producing more and more troops; creating a large number of units is the only way that you can overpower your foe.