Welcome to our CHEATfactor Game Review of Act of Aggression. We review the game and then factor in how the available cheats affect the overall game experience. For better or worse, our reviews will help you decide whether or not to use cheats when playing the game.

Even if you’ve never touched the game, you’ve already played Act of Aggression. You’ve played it in the likely hundreds of military based RTS games you’ve played through the years. you’ve played it in games like Command and Conquer and even in games like Warhammer and Company of Heroes. It does literally everything in the vein of these established franchises and while it doesn’t do any of these things bad necessarily, it also does very little to strike out and create an identity of it’s own. Act of Aggression isn’t a bad game it’s just a redundant one.

To be fair, the true issue with Act of Aggression isn’t that it recycles literally everything in it’s arsenal, it’s that most of that arsenal already feels incredibly dated. I don’t think anyone would blame you if you confused Act of Aggression with a game from the late 90s. Complete with the same screeching guitar soundtrack that you could find in any war game from the era, Focus Home Interactive seems to be mining the well for Act of Aggression. Of course,there’s a bit of charm that could come with that but Act of Aggression isn’t an update of old mechanics, it’s a replay of them - complete with the same problems.

Take the campaign for instance. The game centers around a near-future war between three factions, The United States, The Cartel (a collection of PMCs) and the Chimera - sponsored by the UN. Like most similar games, the campaign is merely a means to get you ready for multiplayer and skirmish matches and here it gives you more and more freedom and control over your army as you complete missions. The issue here is the missions themselves and how they’re presented. Again like most games of the dated era most of your enemies and the major events that bring them closer to you are heavily scripted which results in more or less a trial and error type of gameplay that does little more than help you figure out how to exploit the AI at every turn. Losing wasn’t a huge deal, it just turned into a mild inconvenience that constantly sets you back a few minutes since you’ll rarely lose more than once to an AI opponent.

There were also quite a few times when the AI seemed to completely lose track of what it was doing. On a number of play throughs the AI would just randomly stop actively trying to do absolutely anything. They didn’t level up or search for other resources, it was like they didn’t exist when I wasn’t actively in battle with them, even though the game said they had been doing a lot of things in the background. Granted, this didn’t happen every time but it was incredibly disappointing when it did happen and made me wonder what the hell I was missing.

It’s all a shame though because Act of Aggression packs some seriously impressive maps. Each map is much larger than I expected and when playing with other skilled players you can be involved in some pretty jaw-dropping moments. Resources are often spread out randomly and if you’ve got a game going with dedicated players matches can quickly turn into a fascinating arms race. The problem though becomes that Act of Aggression rarely boasts the online numbers that similar games have. If the developer has absolutely any hopes of Act of Aggression having an extended life they’re going to need to do something to get more people online and quick.

Presentation wise, Act of Aggression feels just as dated as the rest of the game. The campaign is told via news reel style footage, photographs and broadcasts and the writing and acting is pretty atrocious. It doesn’t get much better in game either as everything is pretty rough around the edges and most of the game’s visuals seem incredibly dated. Just look at how pixelated the trees, buildings and shadows look. Act of Aggression is not a pretty game by any means, which is a shame because it’s a full price game.

While Act of Aggression isn’t a terrible game, it literally does nothing to create it’s own identity, despite it’s pedigree. Nearly every single time I thought that I was falling in love with something in the game, something else came along to remind me otherwise. It’s big maps and fun multiplayer can only go so far when the rest of the game feels so incredibly dated.