The town in my first match, a French village with a robust shipping and industrial neighborhood, seems completely empty. The shortest games are the one-on-one fights, which typically last only a few minutes and end with a decisive winner. In resource-capture modes, cash for troops accrues gradually, and each soldier type has a cooldown timer after recruitment. The most interesting is Assault Zones Extreme, a jumbo-sized eight-on-eight version of the standard resource-capture game mode. There are five multiplayer modes, but, true to form, the differences between their rulesets are never fully explained.

Hours of experimentation later, I decide to make the jump to multiplayer. Moments later another assault wave begins, all of my men run out of ammo, and everyone dies. At that moment, I learn that soldiers can run out of ammo and that every soldier in the game has his own inventory system full of grenades, bandages, and entrenching equipment. They've held off a counterattack, and I see one soldier has a red ammo clip over his head.

My Marines are having a hell of a time taking this unnamed island back from the Japanese-even with my assistance in the form of a dead-shot sniper squad leader in Direct Control mode.

Self-education takes time, so at this early stage I'm incompetent.

Men of war assault squad 2 ww1 mod