War Zone Middle East is a pre alpha title, that has been recently placed in the Greenlight section of Steam (It is not yet Greenlit) It features base building with the feeling of Command & Conquer : Generals, and that’s exactly what the developer “Arian Studio” wants, and -to be fair- it is shaping up quite nicely.

The story goes: After the world’s biggest economic depression, oil took the place of money and now has become the most valuable natural resource for mankind, and its laying deep in the Middle East, the most conflicted region in the world. Now the great battle between the biggest and strongest powers has begun. Who is going to store more oil for survival? Choose your side on the map and fight for you future while vicious and violent militias are trying to keep the oil for their homeland. Build your base and strategy in the air, land or sea, it’s not going to be easy. The battle for oil has begun!

There are land units, which consist of soldiers, tanks and jeeps, there are also air units, such as jets and helicopters, and also, my favourite are the naval units which come as aircraft carriers, destroyers and even submarines. I believe there is a unit cap of 500, which is understandable as the units are very detailed and having too many would slow down most computers.Speaking of the graphics actually, when I got to the third mission I was treated to the naval units, and the graphical prowess of the water looked eye poppingly good, while the “land” terrain seemed like it needed a bit of a touch up here and there, but for a pre alpha it does look very good. Especially as it’s coming from the unity engine.

At the time of writing this, there are three missions to play under one faction; the U.N.I which is your general American faction who have lots of fire power, but whilst the first mission is just a tutorial showing you how to move your troops across the battlefield, and how to get to grips with base building, and operating your camera, it was the other two missions that had got me on edge. The second mission was a rescue attempt with nothing but special forces soldiers available to you, it was tough especially when I had to take out armed jeeps with nothing but rifles. Then the third mission was the best one yet, I could build tanks, then a naval yard, acquire an island, then repel a counter strike… it was nail biting stuff; especially when I saw the AI start to bring out his big guns like his destroyers.

The resources which you need to build up for your army comes from diamond mines, which you need to build from your headquarters. Delivery trucks to pick up the diamonds so that they can get turned into cash, and of course oil which is what the game is all about. You’re gonna need trucks to deliver the oil too, but don’t worry, it’s all autonomous, but be warned…if you make more then three resource collecting trucks, then there can be traffic jam’s that form, so its best to stop at three.

Musically is exactly what you expect already. If you’ve ever played a Battlefield game or Command & Conquer Generals, then the sound effects don’t seem to have enough “oomph” about them; especially with the cannons firing from tanks and destroyers. Although it does seem to be easy on the ears, but it’d be great if they could “beef” it out a bit more.

A couple of final thought’s before I wrap up, and hopefully a developer is reading this… please, please for the love of god, please give the game these two things. Allow us players to create our own maps and share them with friends. And bring an anti-cheat/anti-hack system to the game so that we don’t end up playing against, or with cheaters.