Game Play

Along with an expanded storyline, Northern Strike adds new elements to the mix of vehicles, maps, unlocks, awards and scenarios that make up the action portion of this game. The expanded features, available only on the multiplayer portion of the game, include the following:

New Maps: Somehow retaking northern Europe centers reconquering around three areas: the bridge across the Rhine at Remagen, the city of Leipzig and a Titan base in the Alps called Port Bavaria. All three boards are large (read: you need vehicles) maps and feature the same frozen, snow-covered terrain as Belgrade and the Fall of Berlin in the original game. The Liberation of Leipzig features the same claustrophobic street-to-street fighting you’ve already encountered in the Fall of Berlin along with new night time combat, while Bridge at Remagen evokes the spirit of the original capture of the same bridge by the US 9th Armored Division in 1945. All three maps feature a number of great chokepoints and from what I’ve played with them so far are as good as the best maps from the original.

New Scenario: Along with Titan mode (and yes, that means you’ll be fighting Titans over a city for the first time), Northern Strike includes a new scenario, called Assault Lines. Similar to Conquest mode, Assault Lines revolves around capturing flags, but now the attacking team can’t take the defending team’s home base until they’ve capture all of the other flags. The change sounds simple in principle, but in application I’ve found that the new rules, combined with the chokepoints on the new maps, make for a consistently higher number of firefights per map. If you enjoy the heated action of desperate combat over tightly contested checkpoints, you’re going to love Assault Lines.

New Vehicles: After giving both sides a balanced set of war machines in the first game, EA/DICE went the opposite direction in Northern Strike, including two new and totally different vehicles in the expansion. The EU gets the Goliath, a seven man heavily armed assault machine that spawns that the EU entry point on each map. Along with the ability to act as a mobile spawning and resupply point, armament of a scatter cannon, a magnetic mine launcher, two energy cannon turrets and two machine gun turrets, the Goliath also features regenerating armor that can only be disabled by destroying the energy cells mounted on its sides.

The PAC gets the Hachimoto, also known as the Speeder. The Hachimoto is everything the Goliath is not: fast, agile and very, very fragile. A hovercraft with minimal armor, the Hachimoto features a top speed similar to the FAVs used by both armies, but has both a front mounted gun for the driver and a more powerful turret, equipped with both an energy cannon and a guided missile launcher, for an optional gunner.

As you can probably guess from the descriptions, the usefulness of these two vehicles depends entirely on the abilities of those driving them. Because of its slow speed, the Goliath requires a full crew to protect it from assault by vehicles and gun emplacements and a driver who isn’t afraid to keep the beast moving. I’ve seen the Goliath take four or five checkpoints before it was finally destroyed; I’ve also seen it taken out right after it started moving because the driver was too timid. The Hachimoto also requires a good driver who can handle the hovercraft’s high speed and volatile controls. With a good crew, a Hachimoto can race to defend a checkpoint or circle around a Goliath and take out some of its energy pods. With a poor one, the Speeder is almost useless.

One odd thing about the new vehicles: they only appear in Assault Lines mode on the new maps. I don’t know why the developers made this decision; all ground vehicles are equally useless when assaulting Titans, but equally useful for taking missile silos.