BattleStrike: The Force of Resistance (jewel case)

For the low price, I was not expecting much, but I'm an FPS collector, so I had to have it. And holy smoke, this turns out to be a pretty well-designed game, especially since the price puts it squarely in the SUB-budget-shooter market. I'd have paid twice as much, seriously.The Chrome engine was used for this game, so it looks pretty decent, and the levels are designed quite well, making you feel like you are in actual places. It's a linear game, but you can get creative if you want, as far as approaching how enemies are defeated. The designers do try to keep you mostly on rails, but I found many areas where (usually by backtracking when the desgners didn't expect or want me to) I found better shooting positions than the ones I was supposed to use. Some may view this as a flaw, but I absolutely loved this unexpexted bit of freedom. Especially on level 3.The weapons all look and sound good, and are easy to use. Especially gratifying is the sniper rifle. Again, my favorite thing to do with the sniper rifle was try to find creative ways of dispatching enemies with it from unexpected locations. The enemy AI is spotty, but good enough for a good time. The settings are real and varied and quite nice to look at, and there are some nice ambient sounds, and the rain and thunderstorm effects I've glimpsed were pretty convincing.There are some flaws: There are several areas that are pretty blatantly linear, and I don't think that such strict linearity was required for this game to be fun. They could have easily opened it up a bit more. That said, it's a lot less linear than some more expensive games. Another flaw is that enemies are pre-placed by the designers and do not respawn (Which is a GOOD thing!), however they often will not appear until you reach a 'trigger' point, and then they will spawn exactly once. Not a big deal, really, but when you're trying to creatively clear an area, it means you'll have to 'trigger' the enemies first, then quickly backtrack and set up your sniping positions. NOTE: This last bit of advice does not apply if you're only going to play this game as a run-and-gun-straight-ahead shooter. It only applies if you like exploring the limits of what a game will let you do.Anyway, I'm only on mission 4 now, but it's taken me quite a while to get here, so there's quite a bit of gameplay value for the money. And I'm having a great deal of fun.

When I say this game is like the past come to life, I mean it seems like a game from 5 years ago in terms of technology and presentation. On the other hand, anyone interested in WWII shooters may find this game worth playing at the $10 price.The graphics are dated and it only has two screen resolution options: 1024x768 or 1280x960. It has no widescreen options and I could not find any work-arounds on the widescreengaming website. I just played the game with the image stretched. It does have a "viewing distance" adjustment, but it didn't seem to do anything. Perhaps someone would be kind enough to comment on how to remedy the widescreen aspect ratio problem.I did like the fact that it has auto-saves, manual saves, and quick saves. It has only two skill levels: Recruit and Veteran. I found the game fairly easy even on veteran, but still enjoyable.It has some unusual on-screen ques which were pretty funny. For example, to keep you on the right track, there are huge transparent green arrows pointing the direction. There are not so many of those as to be annoying, though. Also, if the game wants to warn you of a hidden enemy, it will go into a short cut scene pointing him out, so you will know to shoot him before you get shot.There is not a wide variety of weapons. A couple machine guns, rifle, shotgun, pistol, and grenades. You can also operate some mounted machine guns. There are segments where you ride in a truck and a train, but there are no vehicles you can drive.As a fan of WWII tanks, I liked the German Panzer IV and Tiger I in this game. Both were nicely rendered.Finally, I didn't have any trouble playing the game on my Vista x64 machine, but I did have to set it to play in administrator mode before it would save any of the options settings. There were apparently no available patches needed at the time I installed it (Jan 2009) so no updating was necessary.In any case, at one fifth the cost of many new games, this is probably an average bargain considering how short it is and how far behind the times it is.

The problem with product reviews involving software is that by the time people have had a chance to purchase, settle in, and use the product, said product is already obsolescent. In this matter, the game in question, I am sure, is no longer state of the art. Therefore, gamers already know this and have moved on quite a ways. If you are not on the "leading edge" and just want a good time, you might consider this game after all.

This game is pretty standard, average in the war-themed first person shooters. It offers just enough shoot 'em up, blow 'em up to be entertaining, but takes too long to load between sequences and ends rather abruptly. I got my money's worth, but I'm in no hurry to replay it again.

I bought this as a Christmas present for one of the grandsons, so I don't know yet how well he likes it, or how much fun it is for him to play. But it is the type of game he likes to play and the price was right.

I have two computers. An older one with XP and a new one with Vista. I've run every game I've bought one one or the other, but this game will not operate on either system. It will load, but it won't even begin play in XP. In Vista, it will load, but freezes in the first 10 seconds and won't unfreeze.I've done all the tricks I know, uninstall, reinstall, restart, etc. All to no avail.If somebody knows a trick around the problem, I'd appreciate a comment.

ok game graphs are so so.

If this game came out in the 90's then it would have been in its time but with the games out today this is truely out of date with code that is currently being written. Don't waste your time or money...