Men of War: Assault Squad 2 - Cold War is available now By Ian Boudreau

Digitalmindsoft's surprise expandalone Men of War: Assault Squad 2 - Cold War is available now on Steam, but you may want to hold off on buying it just yet, even if you're a fan of the series. The game is getting savaged in Steam user reviews, which currently sit at 'mostly negative,' and my own time with the game has not been particularly inspiring.

A major complaint users are raising is the lack of factions. MoW:AS2-CW limits your options to the US and USSR, which is an odd choice when most of the real fighting done during the Cold War was between American/Russian proxies. Then you notice that the game also reuses a lot of assets - even voiceover lines and animations - from prior Assault Squad 2 releases, and the spare nature of this entry in the series becomes a bit clearer.

This is by no means an official review, but I thought it might be worth sharing some initial impressions. The dynamic campaign generator so far seems to just be a string of somewhat randomly-generated scenarios, nothing like a full campaign. You'll recruit units, place them into reinforcement waves, and then call them in over the course of the match. There's veterancy and experience that tracks across missions, but other than that it doesn't appear that there's a lot holding the single-player experience together.

Apart from all that, it is more Assault Squad 2, at the floorboards level at least. But as several frustrated Steam users have pointed out, what's on offer in this paid release doesn't do much to distinguish itself from content that's been available in the form of mods for years now.

Editor Joe is working on a full review, and he sounds as frustrated as anyone is with Cold War.

"The theory was promising but the execution is deeply flawed," he tells me from his undisclosed location. "You can pretty much ignore everything I said from Gamescom."

Stay tuned to this space for his full thoughts on Men of War: Assault Squad 2 - Cold War. For now, you may want to stick with Armored Brigade or Wargame.