Desert Operations is a free-to-play military-styled strategy game that tasks players to advance their nation in a heavily-populated world. It’s set in modern-day, offering architectures common in other strategy games, such as research, construction, and resource management. In Desert Operations, the resource is the cornerstone, helping you lead victorious battles with your army against other players. When you’re not leading PvP battles, you can form alliances with other players for a more exhilarating experience.

The game isn’t the easiest you’ll find around, but the learning curve is just fantastic.  Even if you have no flair for military encounters, Desert Operations still make a good thrill. You can buy the in-game Diamonds to help you recruit soldiers and raise buildings faster. After you log in, the tutorial sets off, getting you to terms with the game’s mechanics almost immediately. This is a clear departure from the spread-out approach in most strategy games.

Manage Resources and Lead Your Nation to Victory

If you’ve played strategy games for a long time, Desert Operations’ mechanics will be very familiar. However, there’s some freshness about this particular game, especially with its less dependence on fantastical elements to drive gameplay. Your goal is to build a formidable army to help protect your nation from invasion and attack other players for rewards. As the map is filled with so many other players, Desert Operations is highly competitive.

To forge ahead in your mission, an understanding of the game resource system is imperative. The main resources in the game are ammunition, oil, kerosene, and diesel. These resources help gear up your armies for war against other ambitious players. You generate them majorly by building resource infrastructure, and this takes a lot of grind. Most times, you have to spend several hours raising a particular building. However, the good thing is that even when the player is offline, the buildings keep generating resources. You can click on them when you log in and receive the resources to your coffers.

It’s also important to grab the game’s currency system, which comprises three different currencies. The first, Cash, is the main currency of the game, and it finds use in conducting researches and constructing buildings. The other two – Gold and Diamonds – are premium means of exchange in the game, allowing perform tasks faster. For example, raising a build usually takes forever. But with Diamonds, you don’t have to spend so much time. That’s a way, I believe, the game forces you to spend money on these currencies.

It’s all about Warfare

Desert Operations is all about warfare, and you’ll never stop fighting. The earlier you got ready for the many enthralling battles, the better. There’s no other way to get ready than progressing on different levels. You do that by effectively managing your resources, raising armies, constructing buildings. Point gathering is another way to get prepared, and every task performed raises the point level. In Desert Operations, you can only fight play when your Points are between 67-150 percent of the other player.

Raising an impregnable army is non-negotiable. When that is done and settled, you’re ready for some real fun. Send a group of soldiers to spy on an enemy base to gauge their strength and formation.  Then send set up three different fleets to carry out varying functions during warfare. This process is seamless, but it’s important to pay attention to the game’s unique weather system critical to every battle. The fluctuating dynamic system determines when the armies arrive for battle. While every fight happens in real-time, players don’t get to see it. There’s, however, an action-by-action narration of the battle, with a replay of the fight at the end. In general, the game’s graphic is poor and unimpressive.

Form Alliances with other players 

Besides the normal PvP battles, you can join other players in the Alliances mode and fight together. This group play is especially of great benefit for players yet to gain experience in the game. Besides gaining real-time friends, you get to improve on gameplay and enhance progression. Now, Alliances also make a great way to hit your chest with some pride if your group does way. The game has a leader-board on display in the main menu. 

When you look at the bigger picture, Alliances are critical for the endgame. Players get to join forces in bringing down powerful alliances and rank high in the leader-board. Another way to earn some bragging rights is by piling up Achievements. While achievements are commonplace in many modern games, they come up rarely in strategy games. For some outstanding accomplishments, you get the achievement bars to mark these moments. Besides the fun and ego-boost they bring, there’s no benefit to the game’s overall outlook.

Our Verdict

If you love to play an enthralling military-themed simulation, then you should consider playing Desert Operations. While the game bears semblance to the many strategy games in the scene, it has an aura of freshness in that it relies less on the many fantastical elements that we’ve all gotten used to.  The player base is impressive, with so many players to engage in PvP battles and form Alliances.