I was a big fan of the first ground control game, and years later the announcement of a follow up had me excited to go drop off at the game shop.
First and foremost, this is not more of the same. Gone is the old slow pace and careful movement and strategy, gone is the idea that you have what you take in and that's it. This time you get to hold control points, and holding control points gives you resource points which can be used to call down reenforcements on the fly, not to mention a big drop ship with a couple huge cannons on it.
The story picks up hundreds of years after the first, and the connection is almost limited to the name only. Still what you get is well done even if a bit predictable. Voice acting is actually pretty good, and some of the characters are quite interesting.
The game starts out smoothly, and even perhaps the difficulty stays a little low till you hit the second half of the game where you take over a new faction. Here is where the trouble begins. You're faced with a confusing structure of merging units that slows you down right when you need to be running full speed as the difficulty finally ratchets up at a high pace. Perhaps I would have gotten used to the units, may have even beat the game if I hadn't lost my cd case along with the key in one of my many moves. Every now and then I come across the disk again and wonder what happened in the rest of the story. For six bucks, this isn't a mistake. Though include the extra $40 in vodka I'll want to make it through the second campaign...