Act of War demo released

By Tom Bramwell Published 17 January, 2005

Play one of this year's most promising RTS contenders.

Atari has released a pretty hefty demo of Eugen Systems' extremely promising real-time strategy title Act of War: Direct Action, which makes battlefields out of the likes of San Francisco, Washington, Moscow and London and sees the player fighting against terrorists funded by a consortium of petrol giants trying to destabilise the economy and profit from rocketing oil prices.

The 685MB demo features one single-player mission with five objectives, and can be downloaded from the official website right now, although you'll have to provide an email address and pick your country of origin from a drop-down list to get at it.

The full game, due out this spring, features a story crafted by best-selling author Dale Brown, looks absolutely gobsmackingly gorgeous and toys with RTS conventions like building troops in Barracks in the like, having you medevac wounded troops and imprison enemy soldiers rather than replacing and killing respectively. The full game will also feature multiplayer options and a single-player skirmish mode, and we should have more to tell you about its progress in the near future - assuming the near-future scenario invented for the game hasn't taken full effect by then...

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (22) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ChrisOTR #1 7 years ago

    This one's escaped me, but it does look cool - I'll give it a shot tonight.

  • fireclown #2 7 years ago

    !!

    I try to start the download, and AntiVir tells me it contains a Trojan by the name of TR/Spy.Banker.DI.2

    which is fun.

    Maybe it's a false positive. I'll mail them...

  • ChrisOTR #3 7 years ago

    What AV do you use? I'm using Panda Titanium, it's not showing up anything...

    Let us know if it turns out there's a real problem! :)

  • fireclown #4 7 years ago

    AntiVir. The clue was my saying 'AntiVir' in the comment above...:) (I know, it sounds generic enough it's not obvious it's a product name - it's a free but decent German product).

    Info on the trojan is at

    http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?virusid=49415

    I'll download the demo, install it on a quarantined PC and see if the symptoms described occur.

  • ChrisOTR #5 7 years ago

    Cool!

  • UncleLou #6 7 years ago

    looks absolutely gobsmackingly gorgeous

    Sorry, but the demo looks horrible. As if C&C Generals or Panzers had never existed, to name just two.

  • ChrisOTR #7 7 years ago

    Any more news about that virus possibility fireclown?

  • UncleLou #8 7 years ago

    AntiVir. The clue was my saying 'AntiVir' in the comment above...:) (I know, it sounds generic enough it's not obvious it's a product name - it's a free but decent German product).


    Hm, I am using the very same AV program, it's updated, and of course it's running in the background, but it didn't complain when I downloaded/installed the AoW demo.

    edit:

    I got it from the game's official homepage, if that's any help.
    Edited by UncleLou at 17/01/05 @ 13:51

  • UncleLou #9 7 years ago

    Well, I should have read the article, which links to the download location I've used. So, my AntiVir didn't report a problem with the demo.

  • pjmaybe #10 7 years ago

    Looks quite sweet, graphics have improved a lot since the first set of screenies I saw on here...

    Peej

  • UncleLou #11 7 years ago

    Et tu, Peej! Are you all going mad? The first screenshots looked gorgeous, the game itself looks terrible!

  • fireclown #12 7 years ago

    yarbles - I absent-mindedly restarted my router and karked the download.

    Lou, when did you last update AV? I did it last week (Wednesday?) so if you've got a more recent version it may be a tic that was ironed out of mine.

  • UncleLou #13 7 years ago

    I think I last updated it during last week, and grabbed the demo on Friday night - so I should have had the most recent version.

    Or maybe they cunningly smuggled the trojan into the demo file on the weekend. ;)

  • Royal Fool #14 7 years ago

    How come I've never heard of this game before? Why does such a promising game slip under everyone's radar?

  • Pirotic #15 7 years ago

    so it is good or not, i had got most of it but a fellow forumite said it was shite so i cancelled, and now im unsure.

  • Freek #16 7 years ago

    Well, the demo did crash my PC at what I think was the end of the first mission.
    Looked interesting so far, although the fact that you did not get to built tanks meant that you had to do almost everything with airplanes, but then again you are playing as the US, lol.
    And now the demo just crashes mid mission, nice.
    Edited by Freek at 17/01/05 @ 23:10

  • KiLlerKnight #17 7 years ago

    I looked at the screenshots, and thought this is unbelievable. Play the demo, and it WAS unbelievable. Unbelievable boring with crappy graphics that is. A poor man's C&C. And it will be published by Atari, oh my God LOL.

  • MoFo #18 7 years ago

    I thought it was alright. But then I haven't played any C&C style games for a long time so maybe I'm refreshed and invigourated for some more "select units and click on enemy" action.

  • Royal Fool #19 7 years ago

    I installed it last night, but didn't really have the time to play it for very long so I decided to wait until today. I'll get to it after school, I guess.

    The readme did mention lots of bugs with graphics cards, mostly freezing. And the demo apparently features virtually no base building. Well, it looks cool anyway. :p

  • fireclown #20 7 years ago

    Well I downloaded and briefly ran it (there's no install process, just unRARing). I don't have the Spy.Banker Trojan on my PC, and running AntiVir over the unRARed files finds nothing. Soooo overenthusiastic virus-checker, obviously - sorry.

  • urban #21 7 years ago

    looks lush....

  • magicpocket #22 7 years ago

    Looks awesome and plays a lot better than C&C.