Act of War: High Treason

I came to High Treason from the shooter side of things, but I keep a rotation of competent military sims on my secondary monitor, and this one kept getting name-dropped by the kind of players who argue that Generals is still the high watermark for the genre. They are not entirely wrong. High Treason is a modern military RTS built by Eugen Systems that picks up the Task Force Talon storyline three years after the original, drops you into a domestic coup conspiracy, and then proceeds to make your life very difficult at every level. The core loop is tighter than most genre peers. Resource management runs on an oil economy that depletes over time, forcing you to branch out and hold banks or take prisoners for ransom to keep units funded. That prisoner mechanic is one of the smarter economic twists in the genre. Infantry actually matter here too: well-placed foot soldiers in cover ambush a tank column for double damage, and buildings become fortifications, not just backdrop. Abrams tanks, Stryker APCs, Black Hawk helicopters, and infantry in power armor make up the hardware you will lean on most, while nine hireable mercenary units ranging from medic teams to anti-air specialists give you tactical flex when missions start going sideways. The naval layer, new to this installment, brings destroyers, submarines, aircraft carriers, and even torpedo salvos into the fight. On water maps, artillery range was buffed significantly to account for the scale change, which opens up some satisfying long-range scout-and-shell plays in skirmish. That said, High Treason has a difficulty problem that reviewers were already calling out at release. Campaign missions frequently send what feels like infinite waves from multiple directions on standard difficulty, and the resource imbalance between you and the AI tips into exhausting. A handful of stealth missions sit inside an RTS framework that does not suit them at all. To its credit, a chapter-select system lets you skip the worst offenders, but you lose story continuity when you do. The campaign also cuts back noticeably on the live-action cutscenes that gave the original its thriller feel, which is a meaningful downgrade for players who came for the cinematic angle. Now for the part you actually came here to read: the multiplayer state in 2024. The short version is rough. GameSpy infrastructure is long dead, the dedicated server layer is gone, and you are left with LAN tunneling through Hamachi or similar tools, with mixed community reports on stability. There are about 45-plus maps supporting up to eight players, three multiplayer modes, and meaningful pre-match customization including unit lethality toggles and game speed adjustments. On paper that is a solid package. In practice, finding anyone to play with requires coordination outside the game itself. Some users also report an AI pathfinding regression on modern multi-core CPUs where units go passive and stand next to enemies without engaging. It is a known issue and there is no clean fix. For single-player campaign and skirmish against the AI, you should be fine. For online, manage expectations hard. High Treason landed with a 74 on Metacritic and sits at Very Positive on Steam from its small but loyal community. Both scores feel accurate. The bones are good, Eugen Systems clearly knew what they were building, and the faction design across Task Force Talon, the U.S. Army, and the Consortium gives you legitimately different unit rosters to learn. The campaign difficulty and multiplayer decay are real problems, not minor complaints. If you played Direct Action and want more of it with naval combat bolted on, you will get that. If you are coming in cold hoping for a living multiplayer scene, this is not the ticket.

Fred · Scout Team

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