Men of War: Condemned Heroes Review

By Brett Todd

Condemned Heroes pulls no punches and offers no surprises. This stand-alone expansion to the brutally challenging Men of War real-time strategy series offers more of the same as seen in the prior Vietnam and Assault Squad games. Difficulty has been scaled back a bit from that of last year's incredibly tough release set in the jungles of Vietnam, but that has in turn been offset by dreary missions put together without a lot in the way of imagination. This one struggles to live up to the Men of War standard.

You generally need to do something suicidally stupid before the generals OK the tanks and regular soldiers to move in.

The setting of Condemned Heroes takes the series back to World War II after that brief Vietnamese holiday in 2011. This time, you're doing the Russian thing, guiding squads of Soviet prisoners freed by Uncle Joe as part of the morale-raising "Not a step back" crusade that emptied gulags in a last-ditch attempt to keep Moscow schoolkids from singing "Deutschland Uber Alles" before class every morning. It's an interesting premise that does a good job of explaining the suicidal nature of the mission objectives (for once).

Your guys are the cannon fodder who undertake fun jobs like clearing trenches and buildings for the regular troops following behind with tanks, mortars, and the like. The campaign consists of about 20 missions in total that take your Russian Dirty Dozen from the desperate moments in the homeland in early 1944 through Poland and into Germany in the waning days of the war in the spring of 1945. There isn't much of a story here, though. Troops are readily replaceable, and there is no way to increase experience or level up. The atmosphere is also thin due to odd choices like the voiced mission directives being given without even the slightest pretense at a cheesy Russian accent.