Although I cannot write a full review of Ground Control II, I would like to share my thoughts on the 3 Mission Demo that became available yesterday.

Tested on “m0nk3y”
AMD 3000+
1024mb
ATI 9800 pro (Latest Drivers)

Graphics:
This demo shows off a whole lot of pretty. The Cut scenes before each mission are well done and give you a general layout of the terrain and get the wheels spinning as to where to go and where troops can be placed. Units when zoomed in look great! And the explosions in the game give you a great feeling of destruction. I have a major issue, with how the game looks when you have to zoom out in order to play. Your units are nothing more than specs on the screen, and zooming in to see the eye candy make strategy impossible!
The engine itself seems stable, however I did notice clipping issues if I were to zoom all the way into a unit. Also there were drops in frame rate but this was with a full view of a city map, 30 or so units (soldiers and vehicles) and a dropship coming into the battle. All in all no issues here, and those that do exist I hope will be addressed by the time GCII is shipped.

Game play:
This is where GCII lost some points with me. GCII is a Real Time Strategy game, however there is little to no strategy needed when taking on opposing forces. The game try’s to give the player new options when using foot soldiers. The player is given unit bonuses for using: higher ground, taking bunkers and buildings, and hiding in forests (a little nod to Advanced Wars on the GBA sp).
Having these options makes you think of the best way to take a hill or a base, in theory sending units in “Strategically” with artillery support from the rear, will cause minimal losses and a feeling of accomplishment. In truth you can simply do the following to win ANY confrontation. Select all of you foot soldiers and vehicles, and then send the straight into the battle! This will always result in a, win if you have more units that the opposition even if the enemy is hold up in a bunker with anti-tank weapons you will win its just a game of numbers, and that is a disappointment…
I will admit one of the best things about GCII is NO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT!!!! The game uses a model that I hope gets into more and more games, you are awarded acquisition points for each Landing Zone or base you take. The more you win the more units you can call down from you drop ships. While resource management has its place, I think GCII idea keeps the game moving at a good pace.

Control:
The controls on GCII are the usual set; much of the troop movement can be one with a 3-button mouse. However there were some areas of frustration in this 3d world.
For starters let me address the camera, the camera I feel should be an antonymous tool in the game the camera in GCII is bound by the same laws of physics you units are. I cannot count how many times I would set up a nice view where I could see everything going on only to move the camera over a gorge and have it fall in!? This was not a huge deal but you spent a lot of time setting up a view (because its a 3d field) and then you loose it. The camera in a game should never get in the way but in GCII it does.
Due to the layout of some of the maps, you units will get close or among buildings. This is where more frustration enters the game, if you pointer is anywhere near a building or bunker the game is stuck thinking you would like to send them into the building…a majority of the time i would have to select units then move them back out of the city, then move them from a new position. Again this is just something that gets in the way of game play.

I did enjoy playing this demo, however my major gripe with GCII is that underneath the surface, the game play is awkward and really has not changed a lot from the first. There is nothing that really set it apart from any other RTS. If I have some spare time and GCII ends up on the sale shelf I would love to play it.