Soldiers of Anarchy takes place in a world trying to recover from a manmade virus that decimated urban centers and led to the execution of not only those who were infected, but apparently the majority of the world’s population. Having “lived” in an underground bunker for 10 years, your military squad decides to venture above ground to see whether the pandemonium – and virus – has subsided.

During the course of the game, you will strategically guide this squad through multiple environments, weather patterns and enemies using a fantastic selection of weapons and military vehicles. Fail to plan and execute your tactics in real time, and you’ll be scrambling for your last save point. Succeed, and you’ll unravel the mysteries you’ve pondered during 10 years of canned-ham dinners. Just make sure you save often. Soldiers of Anarchy is a solid game, but the apparently drunken state of some soldiers and vehicles means save-point revisits are a regular occurrence.

Gameplay
As you emerge from your underground bunker you’ll immediately be in control of four characters: a medical specialist, an explosives expert, a small-arms specialist and a well-rounded but inexperienced private. In subsequent levels, you’ll need to take advantage of these specialties when determining in real-time (rather than turn-based sequences) how you’re going to tackle your objectives using up to 12 comrades.

Giving orders to your squad is as simple as clicking on each soldier (or a group, if you group them) and selecting from a variety of popup options. These options are generally the commands you’ll use most often: attack, attack only when fired upon, defend, patrol, kneel, lie prone, scavenge the area, and heal. Switching between characters and exchanging equipment is equally intuitive, accomplished by clicking on a soldiers’ icon or dragging and dropping items from one character’s inventory to the next, respectively.

Controlling multiple characters and ordering troops to do different tasks is pulled of almost flawlessly, but it’s not without its issues. As you order soldiers to a target, some will occasionally defy orders, which can have disastrous results in a game where surviving unscathed is key and characters gain experience as you progress.

Say, for example, you command five soldiers to run behind a burned-out building to their left. In many instances, one of them may run straight ahead and loop back to his original location before catching up with the rest of the group. This is amusing in the earlier levels, and you’ll think the soldier just spent too much time breathing recirculated air in the bunker. But in the heat of battle later in the game, when every second counts (especially when soldiers take a few seconds to “process” your command), the err in their ways can be rather frustrating.

Vehicular movements, while wonderfully animated, often suffer the same fate. When you’re in a firefight and command your Humvee to the top of a hill, watching the transport zigzag around the road rather than plow across the field is equal parts hilarious and maddening. Not only will your inept driver waste precious time, he’ll likely get your platoon smoked in the process, leaving you to become best friends with your most recent save point.

Soldiers of Anarchy’s missions, however, are both well planned and designed, taking place in huge environments that give the distinct impression you’re doing battle in a desolate, post-apocalyptic world. Your objectives range from finding other signs of life to eliminating rival “gangs,” and how you choose to strategically use your squad will result in individual troops improving accordingly. Order one soldier to scout an area or snipe from a hill, and he’ll improve in that regard in later levels. And given the strategic nature of the game, you’ll definitely want to scout the terrain and plan your attacks carefully.

The post-apocalyptic feeling is augmented by the importance placed on scavenging for equipment. Make no mistake, Soldiers of Anarchy is not a fast-paced, ammo-happy game; you’ll need to sweep the area for ammunition, weapons, explosives and other equipment after defeating an enemy or encampment. Items you scavenge can also be traded with Seekers (Waterworld-esque scavengers), who may or may not have weapons or vehicles that interest you.

Graphics
In a game with such expansive landscapes, it’s to be expected that the environmental textures at times look a bit flat, even at the game’s highest graphical setting. The terrain itself, however, is frighteningly realistic, with rolling hills, divots in the road and explosion-caused potholes that look extremely believable.

The only caveat to these features is that the most intricate landscape features can suffer from a bit of draw-in, which saves one the processing power and bolsters the framerate but can be a downer for gamers with high-end graphics cards. If it gets too distracting, there’s always the ability to reduce the level of graphical detail using the options menu, but fighting through the draw-in is generally worth it.

The character models get the job done, and zooming the camera easily reveals their weapons and other individual characteristics. But as you often find in RTS games with miniscule characters, the graphical goodness isn’t as much in the models as it is in the animations. And Soldiers of Anarchy has fantastic animations.

Hopping into a vehicle, though excruciatingly slow, actually looks like miniature troops are loading into a vehicle. Kneeling, aiming, walking – even reloading weapons – also look stupendous. Vehicle animations are also impressive, and the detail in vehicular models aptly compensates for the shortcomings of the characters.

As for the controllable camera, it’s one of the few cameras that serves its function more than it gets in the way, seldom presenting an odd angle or view unless you position it that way yourself. Even maneuvering the camera over mountains doesn’t present a problem; it simply “restricts” your downward movement until you’ve passed the mountain range and can achieve your desired view without interference.

Sound
Generally in a game where your adjustable zoom takes you from 100 to 1,000 feet above the action, sound isn’t at the top of the development cycle. Soldiers of Anarchy breaks this mold with its excellent use of environmental and artillery sounds.

As you wander through the game’s expansive environments, ambient sounds range from wind rustling through the trees to birds chirping from afar, a fantastic use of sound that complements the feeling that you’re doing battle in a relatively desolate world. Naturally these sounds give way to explosions, gunfire and vehicle effects as appropriate. Given your elevated position, gunfire doesn’t echo as much as it realistically pops. Unfortunately, though, explosions lack the boom of many military-based games, and vehicular sounds generally a mix good artillery effects with rather mundane engine whines.

Voices in the game are sufficient, if not overly varied, but the voice actors themselves were well cast. Mission briefings are injected with occasional sarcasm, though, which builds upon the “we’ve been locked in a bunker together for 10 years” camaraderie you’d expect form a storyline such as this.

Replayability
With its focus on strategy and ability to achieve objectives in multiple ways, Soldiers of Anarchy could easily stand on its own as a replayable single-player game. Yet the game also features multiplayer combat via LAN and GameSpy Arcade, which is included on the disk but only accessible from the main menu, not in-game. In addition, Soldiers of Anarchy shipped with a map editor with which you can design your own maps for LAN and Internet play, which intrinsically adds some replayability.

Soldiers of Anarchy is an involving game that blurs the lines between real-time strategy and squad-based shooter. To address the soldiers' and vehicles' "drunken" pathing problems, a 37 MB patch   (login is anonymous) is now available that also adds turn-based play, enables selectable ammunition on all vehicles and weapons, improves the AI and enhances the game's multiplayer functionality. With these enhancements, Soldiers of Anarchy is sure to provide both a challenging fight and a rewarding experience for fans of RTS and squad-based games.

System Specs
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Pentium III 600 MHz (800 MHz recommended)
128 MB RAM (256 recommended)
3D Graphics Accelerator card with 16MB of RAM, compatible with DirectX
Direct X 8.1 (included on disk)
600MB hard disk space
4X CD-ROM drive
Mouse