Shadows of War

"Shadows of War" is an ancient game from 2014. It's a whopping 11 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for the typical features of modern gaming PCs, hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on contemporary machines. The game looks and feels dated. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an old game. This seems to have be lingering on Steam with an inflated price to try profit from abandonware.

It's a very bare bones simplistic "I Can't Believe It's Not Adobe Flash" game (slapped together with Construct 2, so almost as bad). It's a soldier attack/defense game, you know the ones, an autobattler where all you do is spam out as many units as you can afford while your opponent (AI, because nobody in their right mind would play this garbage seriously) does the same. The units fight each other and whoever basically has more units wins. It's been done a million times better in browser games and mobile apps, but this 11 year old garbage is here on Steam, and the developer seriously thinks people are going to pay him money for it.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

The game features somewhat lazy, simplistic "retro" looking 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort Flash/browser games and mobile apps. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing.

The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just point and click stuff like a browser/Flash game. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.

Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the Construct 2/Construct 3 game engine/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur developers as it doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities (it's worse than GameMaker Studio!). Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

You don't have to take my word about how bad the game is, we can measure the interest in a game by how much people bothered to play it. "Shadows of War" has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game absolutely failed to capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is "Day 1 Complete", for finishing the first mission, trivial to achieve, but less than 10 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. That's a tiny, tiny proportion of gamers who even bothered with this. Ouch.

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam?

"Shadows of War" is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $2 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again. Even when it was new, this was never a triple-A game. This is the kind of game that went almost directly from the warehouse into the cheap bargain bins at the front of the shop. Now, on Steam, without any modernisation? This is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

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Its a buggy and broken mess. Playing it is nearly impossible.

Save yourself the money.

Don't buy it in full price, wait untill its really cheap and then buy it , and also its not so bad too ;)

The game is sooooo long that you need to play in accelerate mode. It is just so slow...

This game is a mess.. it's not the worst game I've ever played but it's so fucking annoying, I can't reccommend this. Only get it if you have a 90% coupon, even then it's just barely worth it.

For what the game is, I really enjoy it and I was looking forward to completing the game. With that being said, when you get to level 3, which takes about 10 minutes, you literally can not progress. There isn't even a "start mission" button to press! You just sit there and can't do anything.

This is literally a broken game that you can't play and you can't get a majority of the achievements.

As of 5/8/18, I would say STAY AWAY!

I really don't know, I purchased this game just because it was 0.74 euros. It looks pretty nice for a 2D game and it's not boring like any other 2D's for me. The game tends to be buggy, like always, for example winning a battle and then getting back on the menu won't allow you to play the next day. Furthermore, finishing achievements won't even give you the achievements and I don't know why... It is really fun but needs a lot of work. Please fix it.

This is a free game from Miniclip. Made on Flash, poorly optimized, almost unplayable. Doesn't deserve a proper review.

Don't support devs like this one, ignore this game at all costs.

This is a side scrolling war game where you can buy Infantry,Vehicles,Aircraft and Support.Graphics wise its OK with things such as Darkness and Rain adding a bit of Diffrence to the maps.In terms of Audio....Its agian DECENT.Now the gameplay itself...the only thing you actually do in this game is buy your units tell them when to start and to stop.then they go and do their thing.This really hampers the fun in the game as its more like a buy unit simulator.No strategy and from what i can tell the units themselves are really not that diffrent.You have basically 1 infantry(Diffrent models) but the others are just Improvements of the infantry same with tanks the vehicles are a bit diffrent some are better vrs Infantry some are better vrs Tanks and so on so on the Aircraft theres not much here but 2 transports a attack Heli and a Jet.I would Really like to Recommend this but i would suggest waiting to see how this game ends up if it gets better with more variety i will most likely change my recommendation as thats what kills this game the lack of variety,how mnay times can you do the same battle with the same units?

Do not recommended.

Very buggy User Interface.

Campaign progress resets randomly.
Buttons are unclickable.
Game freezes in random cases.

Pros:
- 404

Cons:
- Bad Graphics
- Bad Controls
- Boring and Long Tutorial
- Hard to Play

Buyer beware, achievements did not unlock for me.

The game is heavily broken. Menu navigation didn't work and I had to alt f4 out a few times when it locked up.

I love tug-o-war games, and the art direction of this is something I could enjoy. The execution of the design needs a lot of work. Many issues stand out that make this bad really early on.

This is what I would expect from day 1 early access... not something from 2014.

TLDR - Refunded.

This games is, at the moment, a buggy piece of trash. The campaign is 100% disfunctional, units do not function properly, and are inconsistent in behavior. The developer(s) (IDK) consistently fail to improve or patch the bugs that make this a failing game. Don't be fooled by the trailer, music, or anything else that you may find. This game is worse than even the 74 cents that it is up for right now on steam. Trading cards are a plus. I love these kinds of games, but this is so broken right now it is nearly unplayable. Im sad to see how hard this failed.... DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!! (even 74 cents)

Hi!Shadows of War might be a fantastic game but there is some problems on linux(please,developpers,take attention to my commentary...).First,there is no pictures of the units to buy(it is white squares).Then,i can't do a campaign because when i start it,a text displays to indicate me the objectives of the mission but i can't clic on the arrow.
For the positives points,i think it could be a very good strategy game!
Thanks for reading,and i hope you 'll do the necessary to make your game better.
dodod974

The tutorial worked fine, but i could not get the campaign mission to start. It simply
did not respond to any button at all....lol. Unplayeble and therefore I immidiatly
pushed the uninstall button.

Easy, fast and addicting...

Maybe it does not worth the 10 €
But you should give it a try anyways!!!

This game may be good later on, but I seriously could not take 5 minutes of it, it completely bored me out of my mind. I do not recommend this game at all. Although it is an effective way of torture!

There has been nothing revolutionary about this game, there is no cover system, no 'this tank shell has such low accuracy that it surely won't hit a soldier, eh?" Turns out, all tank shells are both HE and AT at the same time and they are OP. There is no strategy options like go backwards or run forwards, not even a crouch and crawl. I have not tried any mods yet but the gameplay already does not look promising. This game deserves a re-make. The concepts need work since there is no structured research, tiering, weaponry selection... There is nothing that can even level up at all. This game is a lie, it and it's promises. Do not buy this game as they are scamming people of a great game they made in your mind to entice you to click that button... To everyone else, what fun is there in playing a level field game with the occasional bridge just for bad balancing, no depth gameplay and a really unoptimised game for what should be a very few number of sprites.

This game is Not what i hoped it to be i expected atleast base building and the first Level of this game Is the A.I Storming you with nothing but Vechials treating you like you've played this game before i don't recommend this game a matter of fact you can play a game that is similar in every way here FOR FREE!

This game is esstitally shendez with a graphical and sound update
http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/Shadez.html

few strategy invole beside arti and anti-air. It's too easy too much money when you start you should have less and then the one you gather from destroying enemy should have more value. support is overpower shoud be limited in number of use or cost more... i was unable to switch to the resolution i wanted to use 1280x1024. i liked the graphical style sound is not bad for a small game. one last thing i would have appreciated that the bullet have a nice lighting effect that would improve the game a lot

This appears to be an Early Access game, despite the lack of such a label at this time.

The game looks promising, but sorely needs a manual, a tutorial, and better English translation.