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Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism – Review

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A wise man once said “War, What is it good for?” and over the decades, the only answer I’ve ever found is video games, with just about every genre getting the war treatment one of the most common has got to be strategy games, outsmarting the opposition and positioning troops to take control of target locations and defeat enemy units.

While many games follow in the footsteps of titles like Command & Conquer giving more real-time action, Strategic Mind is a series that sticks with turn-based strategy.

It’s worth pointing out I’ve always preferred console gaming since the early days of the N.E.S, so I’ve not played many turn-based strategies which are notoriously slower paced and more methodical, part of the reason is because not all that long ago strategy games really struggled to make the jump to home consoles and using a controller rather than mouse and keyboard.
But over the years developers have got better and better at adapting controls to suit console players which might explain why we see so many more strategy and management games on consoles now.

Strategic Mind continues the trend, with Spectre of Communism, while the first two games “The Pacific” and “Fight for Freedom” where released a few years apart on PC, they didn’t arrive on Xbox until June and September last year, so the arrival of “Spectre of Communism”, makes this the third release in less than 9 months.

If you’re new to the franchise, the Strategic Mind games cover different areas of battle within World War 2 and as you might guess, Spectre of Communism concentrates on the USSR beginning with their task to fend off the Japanese.
You’ll be afforded limited infantry, tanks and other units, to either attack or defend set locations as you strive to complete each overarching mission.

You’ll find cut-scenes at the start and between major checkpoints, but these seem distinctly last-gen with some pretty poor voice acting and lip-synching issues which make laughable kung-fu B-movies look like Oscar winning performances.

The voice acting is flat, lifeless and delivers less punch than a nerf gun, while the character models and animations definitely aren’t something you’ll be using to show-off your games consoles power or any fancy 4K TV.

Thankfully these amateur moments are reserved for the cut-scenes and in-game the overall presentation is considerably better.

As you navigate around the play-field (map), you’ll see some great little details on units and landscapes, they certainly look a little Xbox 360 when you zoom right in, but I wouldn’t recommend that, due to the control scheme which we will get to later. But at range, the world looks well detailed, realistic and really helps overcome the presentation of those cut-scenes.

As for the action, things continue to improve with gameplay, and fans of the genre will find a pretty deep, tactical experience as you’re gradually introduced to each unit, it’s strengths and weaknesses and how best to attack your chosen targets.
Some locations might need a fly-over by a bomber to soften them up before your tanks and infantry can get close enough to deal some real damage, while you’ll want to keep ranged targets firing on tanks to deal damage at a distance, while infantry move in to finish them off.
There’s a great mixture of units, and while there’s no doubt an ideal solution for any scenario, you’re generally given enough firepower to tackle each mission in your own way, rather than relying on pre-defined methods to be successful.

There’s pages and pages of manual’s to read as well as some voice-acted instructions, but if you want to get the best from Strategic Mind, you can expect to spend most of your first hour reading, which isn’t the most comfortable experience with smaller text, even on a large 4K screen.

Unfortunately, though, that’s where the praise has to go on pause, because there’s a few more, major issues we need to look at.

While the graphics and sound might remind you of gaming 20 years ago, the poor console controls cement Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism as decidedly old fashioned, in a sense it feels like the developers have never tried one of the dozens of similar games which have successfully made the jump to consoles.

Starting off with movement, you’ll find clicking your left stick will switch between mouse-like cursor control and snapped “section-by-section” control, you’d imagine this would give you greater control, but sadly it’s the exact opposite, using the cursor, you could easily select your unit, but in trying to attack another unit, the game would throw your cursor to the top right of the screen, trying to reposition it’d do it again and again and while I couldn’t find the exact cause, it seems like the majority of the area on the enemy unit’s hexagon would cause this, usually after the 3rd or 4th attempt, it’d let me highlight the unit to then press Y to attack, whereas the main A button would take me to a secondary menu (which was also accessed with the triggers or bumpers).

This confusing system continued and while it was easier to select a unit with the cursor control, I was constantly having to switch to section control in order to move units or attack nearby enemies.

Next up is Camera control this time on the right analogue stick, you’d have the option to move the camera around the play-area, however clicking the right stick would then let control the level of zoom or rotate the camera (again using that right stick), So I probably spent more time clicking on the left & right thumbsticks than anything else in the game, because you’d often need to zoom in to clearly see your units, or zoom out and move the camera to see everything else. Spectre of Communism just has a really complicated way of letting you do this.

What’s even worse with the camera is the delay, as nothing happens for close to a second, so you need to make quite a distinctive push in the desired direction and a second later, you find out if the camera is actually moving or rotating, sadly it’s all trial and error, because there’s nothing shown on screen to show which control or camera method you’re currently using, so you can expect a hundred frustrated clicks going back from one to another.

That all sounds pretty negative, because it’s going to be a deal-breaker for many, because the decades old issue of PC games porting poorly to console gamepads returns with full effect.
It’s a real shame because as a tactical strategy game, It can be quite enjoyable, with some great attention to detail and plenty of depth, but I found every mission a test of patience as I had a more rigorous battle with the control scheme than anything the Japanese could throw at me.

It’s fair to say the Xbox consoles aren’t well known for turn-based strategy games, and Strategic Minds definitely isn’t going to change that. Big fans of the genre might have a little more tolerance of the control scheme, but newcomers who manage to work through the necessary paperwork to havea clue what’s going on, will feel aggravated, when it’s finally time to put those words into action and the control scheme feels dead-against letting you do that.

Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism costs £24.99 which is certainly on the lower end of the scale, but it still feels vastly overpriced, when we’ve already had two very similar games in the last 9 months, with some awful controls, it struggles to stand out on console and is far more likely to appeal to mouse & keyboard users on PC.

Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism

Review by Lee Palmer

Gameplay
70%
Engagement
40%
Graphics
75%
Sound
60%
Value
50%

Summary

Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism costs £24.99 which is certainly on the lower end of the scale, but it still feels vastly overpriced, when we’ve already had two very similar games in the last 9 months, with some awful controls, it struggles to stand out on console and is far more likely to appeal to mouse & keyboard users on PC.

59%

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