Yes, you're seeing this correctly. A Humongous Mecha in a World War II Game.
War Front: Turning Point is a 2007 PC Real-Time Strategy game developed by Digital Reality. The story utilises an Alternate History scenario where Adolf Hitler gets assassinated earlier than usual, somehow allowing technology to advance ahead of schedule, and giving the Allies, Germans and Russians some frankly insane weapons ranging from tanks with freeze rays to pre-modern era stealth bombers to that very Humongous Mecha that you see proudly displayed on the cover.
All right, put your hands down, let's not jump to conclusions: this game is actually more like Generals than Red Alert in all honesty, and for the uncanny resemblance, it has most certainly been criticised for that. There is one unique feature, though! You can hop into any defensive turret and control it in first person mode! Or...you could just allow the auto-aiming to do it for you and not murder your pc's graphics card with the choppy framerate.
Has a patch if you're going to run it with Windows 7
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This game provides examples of:
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: The game has a notoriously low army limit, forcing the player to adjust its unit composition. Unfortunately, neither the limit numbers, nor the mechanics are balanced, combined with the frail units it forces the player to set to autobuild new units as time passes.
- Artificial Brilliance: The A.I will use every power and trick at its disposal: It will layer its anti-air defenses carefully to block any airstrike paths from your airfields, and will always focus on units accomplishing secondary objectives sliding through defenses such as sending tactical bombers to single the engineer building on a critical location. Soviet Partisan Attacks, a power which makes cheap riflemen pop up anywhere on the map will be specifically chosen to be used where your defenses are weakest... Only as far as A.I planes have scouted. However, a single player game combined with The All-Seeing A.I. and Computers Are Fast, resulting in Fake Difficulty situations where you have to escort units and the already widespread enemy bases automatically zoom towards the escorted unit, or tactical bombers locking on your infantry where you have to capture a structure, and immediately focus on the captured building if it needs to be defended. Even so, a straight skirmish match will be entertaining.
- Badass Normal: Allies. Their only Stupid Jetpack Hitler candidate is a repulsor force-field generator truck limited to each HQ, otherwise the Allies have the blandest, simplest units that can be fielded quickly, cheaply and efficiently. They also get the earliest renewable resource buildings and fastest income upgrades without fighting the enemy, and their buildings have internal generators avoiding blackouts. None of their tanks are ahistorical combat monsters, all of them are historically authentic. Late game technology Rapid Production makes all their units and buildings a bit more expensive but gets them built even faster, reflecting USA's incredible industrial potential.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: The German Chancellor (who looks suspiciously similar to Himmler) and Stalin.
- Cool Airship: The Germans have armored zeppelins equipped with two howitzers.
- Cool Plane: Germans field the infamously strong and fast jet interceptor Me 262 as regular fighters. Needless to say any area defense with the said plane will result in instant murder to infantry, aircraft, and even lightly armored tanks.
- Death from Above: The Allies' schtick. Allied side packs a staggering variation of four airstrike choices, 1 conventional B-17 run, one suicide radio-controlled plane Aphrodite, one earthquake bomb and one tactical nuke. Smaller Allied planes are fragile but hard-hitting, with the P-38 Lightning planes being outfitted with rocket pods on top of bombs, double armor and 25% speed upgrades AND being able to shoot at other planes on top of that(other factions' tactical bombers do not have air-to-air capability), it's not uncommon to see Allies win with sheer airforce alone, Lightnings not even needing aerial escorts. Germans on the other hand have two, a normal Junkers bombing run and a more expensive Horten fixed-wing bombing run, but have V-1 and V-2 rockets which have no defence against.
- Defector from Decadence: What the early part of the German campaign is about.
- Deflector Shield: The Allies' force field tank.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The mission to overthrow the chancellor has a very climactic tone, but is only halfway through the German campaign.
- Drill Tank: The Soviet Mole APC.
- Gone Horribly Right: Twice. Hitler's earlier death resulted in a smarter National Socialist movement that didn't seem to spend notorious amounts of effort for a counterproductive Holocaust or technical wastage, resulting in an extremely advanced Germany with enough resources to invade the British Islands twice, conquer London and ignore the Soviets. The Soviet spies fed intelligence about the whereabouts of the Chancellor, the assassination carefully tuned to weaken Germany so the Soviets can steamroll over it, though the latter is barely held back by the joint German-Allied coalition.
- The Federation: The Western Allies.
- The Gulag: Soviet building which generates income over time per defeated enemy. Said defeated enemy capacity
drops over time. - It's Raining Men: All three sides have easily available parachute drops for all infantry, so much that it's more convenient to order paradrops than training the men in the barracks...Unless the drop zone has AA. Even a single one can slaughter the paratroopers.
- Kill It with Fire: The jetpack infantry and their flamethrowers. German defenses have flamethrower turrets as well, annihilating everything close.
- Kill It with Ice: The Russian super weapon. Does not particularly "kill" enemies but freezes them, after which a tactical strike or a single bullet can shatter them.
- Mini-Mecha: The German Exoskeletons. How powerful they are is up to debate.
- Nuke 'em: The Allies super weapon. It can be deployed from every airfield repeatedly per few minutes, provided you have resources.
- No Campaign for the Wicked: The games two campaigns focuses on the Allies, and the Germans who want to overthrow the Nazis, and both soon team up to fight the Russians who are the main bad guys.
- Soviet Super Science: Liquid nitrogen bombs, drilling subterranean APC's, gigantic turret tanks suspiciously similar to an Ordinatus Engine and five-turreted monstrous Kharkov Rampager Tanks that can supercharge their engines for greater damage.
- Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Hitler's early death is part of the Alternate History, but otherwise this is a spot on example, with sonic tanks and actual jetpacks. V-1 and V-2 rockets are commonplace, Horten bomber is pretty much reliable and Maus and Elefant tanks are afield without their technical problems. It's Wehrmacht without the Hitler-era shenanigans that sapped its strength.
- Tank Goodness: All kinds. On the historically accurate side, the game has Allied Sherman tanks with optional T-34 Calliope launchers, German heavies like Maus and Elefant, and Is-3 Soviet tanks. As a fictional addition, the German side fields sonic destructors with gigantic sound amplifiers to shatter enemies, the Soviets field liquid nitrogen tanks that freeze and weaken enemies for other tanks, and Soviet Superscience tops the arsenal with the gigantic, nearly indestructible Kharkov Rampager (basically a working, stable version of the prototype T-35) and even crazier artillery-tank hybrid called Giant Turret that can one-shot armies across the map. The Allies just get a jeep with a forcefield to shield other units from harm.
- The Vamp: Nadia.
- Vodka Drunkenski: Soviets have "Vodka Dealer", a pistol packing fat merchant in a fur coat. The distributed vodka makes the nearby infantry invincible... Provided the dealer lives, and many overhead late-game artillery and tank rounds blow him up anyway. On the plus side, a vodka dealer supported backdoor raid where there aren't any area affect weapons can annihilate everything in sight... Unless the player micromanages to target him first.
