Reviewed: November 3, 2006
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud

Publisher
Sierra

Developer
Most Wanted Entertainment
Mithis Entertainment

Released: September 12, 2006
Genre: RTS
Players: 1-8
ESRB: Teen

5
8
4
5
5.5

System Requirements

You are in charge of your forces from simple ground troops comprising soldiers, medics and others to vehicles and support equipment such as tanks, aircraft and artillery. You need to make the decisions on how best to use all available resources to accomplish your assigned mission. You also have access to extra funds on missions to call in reinforcements such as more troops, equipment and vehicles. Missions range from simple peace keeping assignments supporting NATO food distribution efforts to attacks against rising terrorist organizations.

You have to be able to quickly order units or individuals to do things and then be able to forget them and move on to your next area of concentration without having to worry about that unit. JTF often has you telling tank and other armored vehicle occupants to button up their vehicles or telling soldiers what weapon to use against armored vehicles. That was two of the biggest problems with JTF I found, quick orders being carried out without worry and troops out in the open.

In Joint Task Force each mission in the campaign or single missions have certain objectives that must be accomplished without your main officers dying. You are given troops and often vehicles and equipment to accomplish these missions but can also call in reinforcements if you have the funds. When you complete certain objectives in a mission you get money for it and when you successfully complete an entire mission you get more for your next one. Joint Task Force has you attaining money while in a mission which seemed an odd way to pay for your reinforcements.

The user interface is easy to use but there are often too many things to do when the action gets hot and you watch your troops do things you don’t want them to. Good preplanning and placement of troops often is not good enough because your troops don’t use what little cover they can. It all boils down to micro management and the fact that you have to watch and keep an eye on every troop or piece of your equipment to make sure it is doing what it is supposed to.

The screen has menus on the bottom with orders and important information being displayed on the top of the screen. You have your mini map in one corner and the current troops for whatever you have selected in the bottom center of your screen. Moving units is simple by just clicking on the unit to select them and clicking again on the map to where you want them to move. Once they get there you have to tell them what to do or you can tell them to attack targets or defend areas and they will move there and do what they are told.

You can also group units by selecting them and holding shift plus a number to assign them to that number. Then ordering groups of unit is simple by just selecting their number and giving them orders. This is one part that is very important and does work well to make calling in reinforcements and backing up troops quickly when they are in trouble.

Calling in reinforcements is easy like some other things in the game, simply click on the $ button and a menu pops up with available units to deploy. They show up by helicopter or on an airlift if you have captured an airfield. But this takes time to select units and make these decisions so they have to be made quickly or when the action is at a stand still.

That is the whole problem with some of the things in Joint Task Force, making decisions and the troops do not obey as well as they should. The action can be quick and many times when things start to heat up your troops can just as quickly end up dead because they don’t do some of the things they should naturally do on their own. Things like seeking cover automatically and tankers buttoning up when being shot at should be automatic but it is not in JTF. And there should be more cover like being able to use buildings and not just the occasional sandbag stack where they put them.

If you tell them to attack a certain area they will move pretty much in a straight line to their objective and sometimes get boxed in by terrain or buildings. Other times when they get to their objective they will stand in the open and shoot. If cover is available you have to order them to use it or if you want them to shoot a rocket at a hardened target sometimes they will on their own but often you have to select a soldier and tell him to.

The cover I am talking about is sandbagged reinforcements with big arrows behind them that only the number of arrows open can be used. If you send five troops to a pile of sandbags with four arrows one of your troops will be out in the open, and quickly dead. This lack of available cover with troops in the open leads to a lot of dead troops or having to use your saved games to restart from a previous point in the mission.

Joint Task Force has the campaign with 20 missions in five different locations around the world and the single missions which are those from the campaign you can play separately. It also contains a skirmish mode where you choose one of three groups of men and vehicles to fight in death match or capture the flag mode against the computer. The skirmish mode is the same as the one used in the multiplayer matches you can play over the Internet.

Many of the features in the game are nice like the available reinforcements, the saved game to start from a previous point and the variety of troops and vehicles. The gameplay gets a downgrade from the general lack of cover and troops not doing what should be natural for them to do when under fire from an enemy.

The explosions, animations and general over all appearance are very realistic. The tanks and other vehicles move well and you can plow through many of the scenery objects like fences and trees to get to your objectives. The graphics were pretty good and definitely improved the games appearance and over all feel.

The biggest problem I had with JTF in the sound area was a stuttering all the time with all the sound. I did update my system drivers as suggested but still could not get rid of the stuttering for all the sound in the game. I’m not sure if this is my system but I do not have this problem with any other game I am currently playing.

The settings for sound are pretty limited to the three sound volumes of background, voices and effects with a selection for your speaker configuration.

The missions are different and the terrain can make them even more difficult but the general feel of the game is kind of lost when you spend so much time trying to plan and you can’t get things right. I often could get a mission accomplished by just continuing to restart from a previous saved point and knowing where the enemy would pop up next.

The games entire feel for combat is far from reality and this is one point that makes Joint Task Force more of an average rated game. The combat portions of the game occur rather quickly and everything is over before you know it, or can do much about it. Setting up your troops and equipment for what may be coming is where most of this game is won or lost.

The multiplayer portion of the game is having many problems and I could not get onto the server to play. This is an issue that many players are having so there are not many playing online.