American Conquest: Fight Back

Published by CDV
Developed by GSC Game World
Platform: PC CD-ROM
Released - August 2003
Price : £29.99

Following on from the very successful Cossacks was always going to be difficult for GSC. However they rose to the challenge in excellent fashion and gave us American Conquest which, in my opinion, improved upon Cossacks. Since it's release American Conquest has been immensely popular both as a single player and multiplayer game. There is no secret to the game's appeal either. The ability to have thousands of units onscreen at any one time allows you to battle in dramatic fashion and is far better than many RTS games that only allow a couple of hundred units onscreen, at the most, which means you don't get any sense of realism.

American Conquest: Fight Back is a stand-alone expansion pack that has a heck of a lot to offer. There are an impressive 50+ new units and 8 new campaigns which are comprised of a total of 25 missions. Five new nations have been added, Russia, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal and Haida (Native Alaskans). A new gameplay mode, called Battlefield, has been added to both the single-player and multiplayer game and 10 missions have been included. Your units' morale is now further influenced by victories you have on the battlefield as well as the availability of food supplies. Finally some huge (30x20 screen maps at 1024x768 screen resolution) have been added. As this is a stand alone expansion you also get an editor so you can create your own maps to do battle on.

As you would expect some of the new campaigns allow you to play as the new nations. The eight campaigns are:

El Dorado 1531-1541 (Germans)
Cortéz's Expedition 1517-1546 (Spanish)
The Conquest of Yucatan 1517-1546 (Maya)
The Aztec Rebellion 1517-1545 (Aztecs)
Pontiac's Rebellion 1760-1767 (Native Americans)
The British Struggle 1760-1767 (British)
Russian Exploration 1784-1804 (Russians)
The Frozen Lands 1784-1804 (Haida)

That's a lot of American history covered in these campaigns and it's also a good compliment to the campaigns that can be found in American Conquest. I haven't played all the campaigns but the quality of them is again impressive and once more they are completely deaf gamer friendly.

One of the attractions to existing American Conquest players is the new Battlefield mode. This mode offers a series of 10 battles for you to test your strategical abilities. Basically you have a predefined army that is ready to attack (the game begins in the zoomed out mode so you'll be able to view all your troops). There is a 30 second countdown before the action commences that allows you to upgrade any units you want to. Be aware though that your resources are limited and exhausting your food for instance will lead to famine, something you definitely don't want in the middle of a difficult battle. The Battlefield mode battles are challenging and I feel it's a mode that will appeal to those who are already comfortable with the game. That said though it's great to be able to just have all out war without the micro-management if you don't have much time to play.

Fight Back also offers some changes in gameplay balance. Various units have had their costs and attributes changed. The Spanish Rider now costs +50 gold, some of the Delaware buildings now take longer to build and the cost of the Sioux mounted archer has now been reduced. There are many more alterations that have been made to enhance the gameplay balance between the nations and the above are only a few examples.

American Conquest looked very impressive for a 2D RTS game and American Conquest: Fight Back is just as good. Of course new units and new terrains have been used for the campaigns but other than that it's exactly the same. The game still features the zoom out mode. This is done by pressing the 'L' key and it allows you to gain an excellent overall view of your army. This is surely a feature that RTS games will copy in future games.

Just like the American Conquest, American Conquest: Fight Back is completely deaf gamer friendly. There is actually very little speech in the game but all speech is shown in text. During the actual missions all information is given in text and you'll be required to click off the box for the game to continue. All messages can be recalled at any time. Unit and building information can be accessed at any time from within a mission and this shows you all the details you could possibly want to know. In fact you could say that GSC have set the benchmark for making a RTS game as deaf gamer friendly as possible.

American Conquest: Fight Back is another impressive RTS title to come from both GSC and CDV. Even if you never bought American Conquest you can still enjoy this because it's a stand-alone title. It's a bit difficult to recommend this over American Conquest if you don't own it because it's the price of the full game. Fight Back has the Battlefield mode as an extra but American Conquest had 42 missions in it's 8 campaigns instead of the 25 missions that the 8 campaigns have here. Ultimately it comes down to if you prefer having the extra mode (and having the extra 5 nations) instead of having more missions to complete. Maybe a gold edition featuring American Conquest and American Conquest: Fight Back will happen in the future.

Overall Game Rating: 8.9/10
American Conquest: Fight Back delivers all the RTS goodness that American Conquest did. It's disappointing to see it priced at £29.99 but it does offer a heck of a lot to both owners of the original game and those who don't own it.

Deaf Gamers comment:
Perfect for deaf gamers.