Joint Task Force Review

Joint Task Force, like so many other contemporary military shooters (and God knows there are dozens of them), continues the "fine" tradition of setting video games in fictitious near-future conflicts that are thematically tied to current political and military global issues.

Talk about a hot LZ.

It's one big camp fire really.

In JTF, players are taken to places like Somalia, Bosnia, Serbia, and select states of the ex Soviet Union. The story is wrapped in a gung-ho "fast food" philosophy of waging wars (the kind that does not exist in real life), which has apparently become the predominant premise in today's video games. Granted, JTF is *still* just a video game, so no one in their right mind should expect anything resembling a real dissection of the current geo-political situation in the world (except for Jack Thompson of course -Mo).

In addition to portraying the conflicts themselves, the story in Vivendi's latest military RTS tries to convey the specific role, which modern day media plays in them. Sadly for the developers, the voice acting (which is terrible), completely demystifies and simplifies the narrative. It makes it sound like a bad B movie most of the time.

On the other hand, the developers should be commended for doing a rather good job of incorporating the storyline into the missions themselves. Like Company of Heroes, JTF relies on dynamic mission objectives that will be popping up during operations in virtually real time. This is another good thing about the game.

The fact that these modern day operations are being carried out with reporters imbedded in the units has no actual effect on the gameplay, however. Going back to what I said about the voice acting, it becomes rather self-explanatory why this potentially neat gameplay addition didn't have any sort of impact on the game.

Character progression plays a big role in JTF. Just like hero units, officers will have unlockable skills that will become invaluable in the later stages of the conflict. Players will be able to select specific class officers for each of the missions. Depending on whether you want to put more focus on armored units or the footmen, you will select the appropriate class leaders from the officer pool. Certain characters will be required to participate in the missions, as their role is critical to the ongoing story. If one of these characters dies, it's "mission failed," and you'll have to reload from the last saved game.

JTF successfully incorporates all different aspects of warfare by including units from most military branches - infantry, armored troops and air units will be made available to the player. While there is no actual base building or resource management, players will be able to capture certain points (like airfield towers and such) and call in for reinforcements. These reinforcements will cost money, as Joint Task Force is a special ops unit. The funds are limited, so it's actually advisable to try and save as many troops as you can.

The game uses a solid 3D engine, which is nicely scalable and working rather well even on mid range rigs. The sound is far from the spectacular effects we've heard in Company of Heroes (CoH), however, and so are the visuals to be honest, but that's not to say that JTF can't hold its own against the competition. JTF is a good-looking game with a well-incorporated physics engine.
At the same time, some of the biggest problems with the game have to do with its technical side.

Firstly, the AI path finding is not the greatest I've ever seen. While this is nothing new for a majority of strategy games, a title like CoH set new standards, and JTF simply has no chance of measuring up to them. What's more, a large number of units will create hectic situations on the battlefield at times. This will translate into major control issues during heavy firefights.

How are we supposed to find general Arkan in this hour?

Wonder if they have a McDonald's in this place?

The second big downside to the game, are the bugs (or one nasty crash bug in particular). While I had no problems (for the most part) playing on my low-end AMD 3000+/ATI 9800XT/1GB RAM rig, my high-end machine (Intel CoreDuo E6600/2GB DDRII RAM/NVIDIA 7950GTX) would simply produce the blue screen of death whenever I'd try to do anything in the game's main menu. A huge 180MB patch is already available, so I thought my problems would be solved by installing it (bearing in mind that I have the latest NVIDIA drivers installed)--but I had no such luck. The exact same thing happened again even though the patch notes suggest the very problem I was having was fixed.

Technical issues aside, I did moderately enjoy playing through the extensive single-player campaign (as well as playing a few co-op games). The main campaign will also take quite some time to complete. When things are working as intended, and if we ignore the B movie plot and acting, JTF's core gameplay can be enjoyable. In that sense, maybe fans of the sub-genre should go out and get it. If you're not crazy about military RTS games, there is nothing in JTF that should make you get it before a couple of more patches are released and its AI and technical glitches are resolved.

In closing, JTF was an experience bordering on mediocre that only managed to rise sporadically above my overall impression of it.