Silent Storm

There's so many different way you can accomplish your mission due to this outrageously destructable enviroment. Once you calm down somewhat from the glee of having total destructive power, you also see the developers didn't gimp out on the actual game either. Underneath all the glitz and glamour of the graphical engine lies a very solid TBS game.

There are literally hundreds of weapons you can lay your hands on, from 6 shooters, to the tommy gun, even having advanced futuristic plasma weapon at the second half of the game.

Now that you all are shocked, and some totally outraged by the inclusion of laser weapon, let me post the negatives as I see them.

1) I bought the game thinking this was going to be historically accurate (to a point) game, with weapons, enemies, allies, and situation grounded in World War II era. What I got was laser weapons and mechanized suit of armor in the game. I must say, though, the inclusion of such didn't ruin the game as I have feared wnen I heard of them online.

2) unit skill bugs - this is a game killer for many people, and it's only fair you know it before you purchase it. The game has skills that increase after every use, and also has units (you can have upto 5 hirable units in your squad from 16 available to choose at HQ) you can hire. So you choose your 5, go out on couple mission, increase in skill and level. But the units you didn't hire...their skills are MUCH better then the ones you did. Until about level 6 or so, you won't notice much. But when you come back with your level 10 squad, you'll see that the level 6 (unhirable gain level depending on how far you have gone in the game) units you didn't hire has MUCH, MUCH higher skills then your own. Heck, an unhired sniper had better medical and engineering skill then my medic and engineer! And the gap only widens as the game progresses. Worst of all, since engineering and medical skill is used only rarely, they will NEVER increase to a point of usability. My level 12 medic STILL can't use a damn morphine injection kit (not exact name or description)! And my engineer? Hell, he doesn't even know how to use a wire cutter! And never once did I sucessfully unlock anything with his picklocking.

That bug puts a damper on the game, and you are forced either to ignore the super units at HQ or train (tho you can't really train medical and engineering skill due to limited supply of their items) them to usefulness. I chose the latter as I had a bit more free time then your average person.

There are other minor bugs (as with any other PC game), but if you can somehow get over that skill bug, what you have is the best TBS game out for a long time.

you can also make you'r own characters... their faces,voice,body all and all i gave this game a five out of five for great everything.

Let me start out by saying that I loved XCOM I and III and Jagged Alliance I and II. Initial impressions of Silent Storm were very similar and there were so many things to like. It ran smoothly, the commands were intuitive, the graphics were great, the game engine was great, each squad member had a personality.

I won't repeat all the good things about the game, because you can read those in the other reviews. However I started to notice AI behavior for certain (not all) enemy troops. They would find a hiding place and wait. You could sit for hours and they would not move.

If you knew where they were, you could toss in a grenade, but often they were on the map and you didn't know where. I would send my best scout crawling through the underbrush ahead of my units. The problem was that they were so well hidden, that he could not see them. He only be a few yards away when they spotted him and opened up - instant dead scout.

It is very much the same as those ships in XCom II where the aliens would wait around a corner and you knew that first man to step around it would die. As near as I can tell - there is nothing you can do about it. I don't mind losing men to bad luck or mistakes, but I hate where a game design "forces" you to lose a man to proceed.

Still a good game - just not "great."