S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster

This is not a complicated RTT game - those that seek proper challenge for their tactical skills should be advised. But it is charming for me as a non RTT player, it's simpler just enough to make it fun. Wartime humour and satire of some historical events don't overstay their welcome and stick to briefings and cutscenes and are quite funny. The gameplay is simple and intuitive. Singleplayer consists of two campaigns - swines as aggressors and rabbits as defenders. You don't have tons of different historical units, you just have a few perfectly specialized units to do their job - recon, light, heavy tanks, artillery, MLRS and so on, and you can modify them (or buy new ones) between missions with small upgrades, e.g. to armor, ammo or even mine detection, because you carry units over and they gain XP. RTT elements are simplified, but add just enough complexity - units have finite ammo and fuel so must be resupplied in the field with supply vagons that can be hauled with tractor unit, units have clear line of sight, artillery has dead zones - simple but effective. Adore the soundtrack, even though none of it plays in the missions themselves, music in menus and between missions is awesome. Two cons I have with this game, and subsequently, the Remaster. Firstly, AI is kinda dumb and reactionary. When it defends - you can literally just bomb the carrot-loving heck out of it with artillery and it won't move or react by just running towards you, when it attacks, via scripted events mind you, it just rolls onto you from a pre-defined path. Secondly - there is no skirmish mode vs AI, suspect because of what I mentioned earlier. Only singleplayer content are the campaigns, and they are nice, but it would be nice to jump right into action sometimes and fool around with AI. Overall, for the price this game is good fun and I'm happy to see it back, in full HD and with no bugs at all. Do recommend to those that would like a nice little not so challenging game for a few evenings.

The devs disabled the cheat codes. So if you were looking forward to enable them, look elsewhere. Bummer, some missions were much more fun with cheats. Well, money down the drain, back to the good old CD-version.

I have fond memories of the original S.W.I.N.E. from long ago so I'm glad it got re-released. At first glance it doesn't seem to be heavily touched upon which is not necessarily a bad thing because it still looks (especially the water effects) and plays reasonably good for being 18 years old and at least it's quite easy on the hardware of more recent times. It now has native support for higher resolutions and widescreen (I couldn't test it but multi-monitor display seems to be an option too), the multiplayer mode is back online and the pricetag is also really friendly. The game itself is pretty straightforward strategic action where the emphasis is on managing a smaller army therefore the loss of any unit has a heavier impact, even moreso because they gain experience during missions and the surviving units carry over to subsequent ones. There's no infantry, only land vehicles (and an amphibious one) with limited air support but they can be further specialized by equipping up to 3 upgrades per unit which can be swapped around between missions. There's no base building or resource gathering either, however you still need to maintain supply lines consisting of tow trucks and different trailers (fuel, ammo, repair) and you can also order airstrikes or buy new units during a mission via airdrop, Control Point (the game's currency) permitting. The comedic approach might not be everyone's cup of tea (for them I'd suggest the Codename: Panzers series from the same creators instead) but personally I really liked the cheesy one-liners and cartoony cutscenes (thankfully, the original Hungarian voice-over can be selected). This lighthearted atmosphere isn't intrusive and the gameplay is rather solid. My other favorite thing has always been the highly detailed 3D view of units on the equipment screen and how they change depending on the XP gathered, getting more beat-up all the while gaining additional armor-plates and whatnot with each new rank. Buy it and hope for a sequel!

the game can be frustrating at times, hp pools means that some units have a hilariously high time to die even when facing focus fire which only gets worse with veteran units. The manual is not in english and that's somewhat annoying, i don't like flipping around tips when i could just look it up resupply is annoying with how large the maps can be and hopping one supply type from location to location to location with only one tower is tedious but the value of having more then one recovery/supply vehicle is quite low and the enemy is brain dead stupid tending to make a b-line towards a target for as long as it it's in line of sight, this can be tedious when dislodging enemy units from fortified positions and the microing can suffer with the pathfinding and needing to keep units in los of the target. But i'm still rating it rather high because something stupid in the campaign would happen, i'd quite and an hour later i'd be back it's a game with a nice atmosphere and the customization but no too much dept, there's a pleasant old school feel that seems to be hard to describe, but i've enjoyed it despite the main frustrations. it's not a deep game but it's enjoyable, you could do better in the RTS genre but you could do much much worse