Blitzkrieg: Rolling Thunder, released in 2004, is one of two stand-alone expansions for the original game.

If you’ve played the original, then you’d noticed there were hardly any changes to the interface or graphics.

Especially the menus and options, no effort was made to include the title Rolling Thunder.

Once you have completed what I thought was an extremely helpful tutorial, you scan the menu for the campaigns, which will only allow you to select one campaign since there is only one.

Upon selecting the General Patton campaign you are brought back in time to a world where tanks rule.

Playing as the legendary General George S. Patton, the game takes you through 18 different missions in an eclectic variety of terrains in seven different countries; ranging from the arid deserts of North Africa, a snowy forest of Ardennes in Belgium, coastal cities of Sicily, beachheads of Normandy, temperate lands of France, War-torn Germany, to a secret underground weapons factory in Pilsen.

All the while, action and explosion follow you non-stop, or of course until you finish the campaign.

Excited?

I thought so…

Blitzkrieg: Rolling Thunder allows you to control a variety of different units, bypassing any construction or unit building you may have experienced in your last real-time strategy game.

For every mission, you are given a set amount of units to control, sometimes with reinforcements.

The units that are put under your command are usually more than enough to allow you to complete the mission with relative ease, if you are familiar with https://warpath.guide/redemption-codes/ then you know.

Each unit is an important part of your path to victory, ranging from land troopers, supply trucks, to fully armored tanks.

The one thing I didn’t like about the troopers was the amount of confusion they caused while trying to distinguish them in the heat of battle.

They all look alike, minus a few…very few, differences.

In the heat of battle, you don’t really have time to pick out a particular unit, by the time you do, your whole division is dead.

However, being a bipedal unit, the common infantry is one of the slowest units in the whole game, but fear not, you can ferry them in trucks and cross your fingers hoping that your truck doesn’t explode.

Of course, like any other World War II game, tanks play a huge part in your military and the game.

Thankfully, each tank has a unique look, so you could easily select the right one to leave track marks on your enemies, or send them a nice little capsule of sulfur.

Although, tanks are really powerful, don’t overlook your infantry.

They are quite important, they can take over enemy artillery, spy, and takedown tanks with grenades if they’re close enough.

Speaking of artillery, I think these are the coolest units in the game, even if they are slow-moving.

For the lighter artillery, self-locomotion is possible, but as you’ll find out later, heavy artillery will require a little towing, and you can do that with the same truck that you ferry your infantry in, which I thought was an interesting little feature because in many games, your infantry transport usually only has one function and that is to transport infantry.

Regardless of their sloth-like movement, artillery can create a lot of damage and at ranges that are usually out of your viewing radius.

This incredible range allows you to take out your enemies from far far away.

One of the best battle scenes in the game takes place in the air as warplanes fight about.

Each mission will allow you to call multiple airstrikes depending on your situation.

You can call in for paratroopers, fighter planes, and/or bombers.

Mid-air battles are one of the coolest graphical features this game has to offer.

Airstrikes can turn the tides of any battle, and regardless of who called the strike, it could devastate both sides.

The bombs aren’t friendly, they will kill anything that it lands on, including your own troops; so be careful where you call the strike.

Lastly, the units that are frequently left out of the spotlight, the support troops.

In many games, you could ignore using support troops, but in Blitzkrieg they are crucial to your victory.

The ammunition in all of your units will eventually deplete and it’s up to your supply trucks to gather supplies for your army.

Unlike most games, there are no “resource mining” areas or resources to manage.

All your supply trucks have to do is find a supply tent and take supplies to distribute.

Your engineers, who can build bridges, find minds and build tank obstacles also use these supply tents.

The one thing that really annoyed me was the fact that none of the buildings, resupplying. or repairing had meters!

I didn’t know when tasks would be completed and just had to wait it out.

Another, more vexing feature of Blitzkrieg: Rolling Thunder was its interface.

All the icons are so small and there are so many minor features for each unit, it’s hard to memorize all at once.

When you’re in the heat of battle, the last thing you want to do is hover over each icon to find the correct command for your unit because before you know it, your unit is dead and you’re crying.

After wiping away your tears, and completing the game, you go through the menu hoping to find a multiplayer or a skirmish mode, but alas, they’re nonexistent.

What can do you but shed more tears and put away the game forever?

As you scroll some more you end up in the options menu and gasp as you see a multiplayer options menu but then sob again as you realize that it’s a relic of lazy programming left over from the original game.

You may think that Blitzkrieg: Rolling Thunder is just another World War II game, and unfortunately, you’re right!

So before you decide to buy this game, think it through and ask yourself “Is this the game for me?”

I highly suggest you try out Nival’s other games, they will prove to be more entertaining.