Introduction

Publisher: TalonSoft
Official Site: http://www.talonsoft.com/hidden_dangerous/

Die, Nazis, Die

The Year: 1943

The Location: War-torn Europe

More than two months ago, Nat turned 21. 11 days later, this joyous occasion was marked by a preview of Hidden and Dangerous. In it, we promised you an update as soon as we got more levels to play with (the demo had only 2 levels) from Talonsoft. Well, it's taken them this long, but we now have the full version of Hidden and Dangerous sitting in our grubby little hands. We've risked the life and limbs of our virtual soldiers to bring you the full story on this real-time action/strategy behemoth, so keep reading, so that those brave souls will not have died in vain.

In Hidden and Dangerous, you command a squad of soldiers through twenty-three different missions. You have a pool of forty soldiers to choose from; some elite commandos, some average Joes, and some in-between. You can bring four men into each mission, and eight into each campaign. Each campaign is about four missions long, so if you lose some men, you've got back-up forces. You also chose equipment for each campaign and then for each mission. If you don't feel like perusing all the options available to you, there's an auto-setup option that will pick forces and equipment for you.

FPS and Strategy, together again

While in single-player mode, the combination of action (from an ¾ overhead or first-person perspective) and strategy is a must. Your commandos can issue orders to each other: "Follow Me," "Stop," "Move On," "Hey (e.g. you're in my way)," "Hold Your Fire," and "Quit Grabbing My Ass." The other way to control more than one of your soldiers at once is to go into the overhead strategy mode. When you do this, you're presented with a map that allows you to plan out orders for each member in your squad, effectively enabling you to execute complicated maneuvers with split-second timing.

Hidden and Dangerous isn't the first game to combine a 3D shooter with tactical strategy. The game that springs to everyone's mind when talking about such a genre is Rainbow Six, Red Storm entertainment's hit game. The comparisons between the two games are unavoidable (even the game's box suggests it may cause Rainbow Six fans to uninstall), so we dusted off a copy of RB6 for comparison purposes. Keep reading to find out who won the shootout!

Aim,

Fire