"A Booming Storm"

Silent Storm is set in the most difficult times of World War II, the time when Stalingrad was over and the Germans and Russians were beginning some of the most grinding warfare in world history, the U.S. and UK (and other allied nations) were planning a massive assault on France.

But there were ''other'' stories.

Silent Storm tells a fictional story involving science fiction instead of historical fact. The game goes from small, elite, squads in small towns and rural areas to factories building and researching weapons of true mass destruction.

During the game you make a transition in weapons as well as scenery. You go from machine guns and knives to laser-weapons and even katanas. The game also takes you almost everywhere in Europe, from England all the way to Russia.

The gameplay itself is turn-based, meaning each side takes its turns giving out orders. While very slow, this is a game for those who are in love with tactics and squad-based control. The squads themselves can be anything you wish with the skills system that builds up the skills you use most (examples, shooting or sneak), and armed as how you want them to be. The game also has a sort of ''attribute'' system where you can alot points to certain attributes, such as ''+10 throwing when using knives'' or ''shoot in night as you shoot in day'' etc.

The game is extremely open. One map I brought along two sneaky soldiers and quietly crept throughout a house and put down all the targets without so much as a shot. On another map I brought two bazookas, two heavy machine guns, and lots of grenades; I leveled the playing field before it was all over. Either way, your guaranteed to have fun.

There's a problem in the game's mission design that you should take note of: while you do have the freedom to visit some missions in different orders, this may screw up the story; you may find clues and notes that were actually meant to be found later; not too much of a problem though. Also, even on normal difficulty your objectives are NOT told to you; in my reviewing opinion this was a gameplay mistake: how does a crack-squad not know what they're looking for when they walk onto a map?

Onto the squad make up: your squad is usually in need of a medic to heal your wounded; the wounds are usually difficult, as bleeding may start from a shot to the leg or head, and if not bandaged the squadmate will bleed to death. You can have sneaky scouts wielding shruikens and silenced pistols, or grenadiers chucking heavy explosives or soldiers laying down some suppressing fire with machine guns, or all of them. Snipers are your basic head-hunters. Your engineers are the men and women who plant explosives, defuse them, and picklock doors.

With explosives on your mind, lets get to the explosions and the games graphics. Beauty. You get bullet decals on the terrain and structures and even the furniture; you also can see blood stains your wounded. The animations are extremely smooth, crouching and crawling are very life like; everybody seems to run the same speed, which isn't that big of a problem. If you shot a guy off the top of a building you could watch him fall backwards, off the railing and crumple to the ground, old-western-movie-style.

Buildings can be deformed to your liking. If there are soldiers above you in a house, just tell your men to aim up and fire through the ceiling; it can be done. Or, if you want, you can mine the building and basically level it from the outside.

But to watch such eyegasms as these you need one hefty computer. To get a good deal from your purchase of a game with such powerhouse-graphics as this one, take the minimum-requirements and times it by three. Without a good comp, your game will have slowdowns, especially during night fire-fights when the lightning is everywhere; also huge explosions tax almost all computers cause the game's engine has to run a sequence of checks to see what supports are blown out and what areas collapse; pretty heavy work.

The sounds in this game is a love-hate situation all around. Some may be wanting blaring trumpets instead of the drum-beats that are the background music. Some hate the quirky and sometimes over-stereotyped voices that have rough translations (the whole game has trouble with this), others love the comedic voices. The sound effects are pretty good to me, but there are those ''experts'' who may say differently. A sound whoosh and maybe even exaggerated bazooka explosion get a thumbs up from me, as do the sounds of ricochets and lead chewing up the plaster from the walls.

Overall the game is pretty damn good and a must buy for turn-based lovers and a must look-at for WWII fans. If JoWood could get rid of a few quirks here and there in the add-on the game would be near perfect.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/10/04