Joint Task Force

The present hasn’t been a popular setting for real-time strategy games. Unless Europe declares war on America, today’s asymmetric warfare means that one side has all the hardware and the other has to make do with changing its tactics to even things out—guerrilla warfare, unconventional weapons, and so on. But no one wants to play an RTS that is all house-to-house searches or Jack Bauer heroics. That’s why we have tactical shooters, after all.
Joint Task Force tries to solve the problem by making the media an enemy. Well, not the media exactly, but bad press. The JTF is an elite team assembled by the G8 to eliminate the world’s bad guys, whether Somali warlords or Balkan brutes. If you kill—or just fail to protect—too many civilians, the unflattering coverage will cut into your budget or end your career.
This is the one big innovation in the story-based campaign, and it doesn’t work particularly well. There’s never any sense that the eyes of the world really are on you. For instance, there’s an odd moment in an early scenario when you hear of militias murdering refugees, even though you destroyed all forces in the area and were just praised by the news anchor for doing so. Successful missions are often the ones that nobody reports on, though you would think someone would notice you airlifting heavy armor and supply crews into Serbia. In a world where television can also be your best friend, it’s odd that the developers chose to emphasize the worst, “enemy” side.
The modern setting is novel, but nothing that last year’s Act of War didn’t do better. The current event references—pre-emptive strikes, 9/11, ethnic cleansing—seem designed to make you think about the world around you. The hints of the hero’s dark past are certainly topical, as America debates the limits of proper military action.
This is all well and good, appropriate to the themes of the game. But virtually all this interesting stuff happens in the cutscenes or in pre-mission narration. The only in-game reminders we get that this is an ongoing struggle are the militias massacring poorly defended UN or Red Cross outposts. Despite all the talk of a global terrorist network, you move lockstep through the regions, chasing one boss after another.
The shame of it is that the campaign game itself is above average. The cutscenes aren’t great, and the flying bodies are more amusing than stirring. Still, there’s a great variety of missions, and you need combined arms to be effective. Rushing in with tanks alone won’t get you to the end. The theme of an elite team stuck in humanitarian disasters works well when you are told you should escort civilians to safety before you take out those anti-aircraft missiles. You can play the campaign co-op, too, though clear communication with your friend is essential.
The campaign has good scenario design. There may be only one road up a hill, but you’ll find you have multiple ways of killing what’s on top. The financial reward for meeting objectives must be spent wisely, including on refits for damaged equipment or anti-tank weapons, just in case. Pathfinding is erratic on many maps, but it’s not always clear what the problem is. Tanks happily mow down huts and power lines even when the road is clear, but they just sit still when there is a group of friendly infantry standing in the way.
Replayability is seriously limited by the lack of enough stuff to do to make the skirmish sessions as interesting as the campaign. The three factions (JTF, Dictator, Terrorist) are your typical American/Soviet/ragtag equipment groupings, with little to distinguish them in functionality. The computer opponent is pretty lame most of the time, dashing from flag to flag before securing airstrips that provide the heavy equipment. Quick movement is certainly key to victory, but the early moments here redefine the idea of the “rush” strategy.
It doesn’t help that this has been a great year for real-time strategy. Three years ago, Joint Task Force would have stood out. Today, it’s an also-ran with a glimmer of something better inside.

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #192