Developer(s) | Silver Style Entertainment |
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Publisher(s) | Bigben Interactive Simon & Schuster Interactive |
Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
Release | October 22, 2002 |
Genre(s) | Real-time tactics |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Soldiers of Anarchy (SOA) is a 2002 squad-based real-time tactics video game released by Simon & Schuster.
Gameplay involves squad tactics, vehicles, and a wide variety of weapons and ammo.
The game takes place in the year 2015, ten years after a deadly man-made virus (Spontaneous Genome Degeneration Syndrome) kills billions across the planet. The initial protagonists are four soldiers who have spent the last decade in a bunker at a Russian Kalinina military base where they were stationed. What greets the survivors initially is a barren world populated by sporadic groups of survivors. Every community is self-sustaining, with trade organized by the Seeker Guild. Seekers are people who scavenge pre-catastrophe (referred to as Old Time) equipment from ruined cities, "from sour drops to tanks". It is also revealed that after the disaster, central society became non-existent, with territories being controlled by gangs; apparently the area where the group's base was located was the territory of the Slingers, a group of thugs and thieves who have started to capture and kidnap people lately.
After securing the allegiance of a Seeker, the group took control of a nearby town and its radar station, improving their equipment with scavenged weapons. They also interrupted another kidnapping and busted up the Slinger base nearby, securing vital intelligence. The purpose of the kidnappings became clear: the Slingers were trading in human lives. A major slave market was located in New Boston, which the group wiped out and freed the slaves. They also paid a small visit to the Slinger headquarters nearby, killing their leader and permanently crippling their operations, as well as narrowly avoiding being caught in the crossfire of a gang war between the Claws and The Final Revolution, descendants of the Mafia and the Russian military, respectively.
The protagonists acquired intel about a secretive group of highly trained and heavily armed soldiers and scientists, known as NOAH. Their operations and location were a complete secret with only the local Seekers knowing the location of their laboratories. To gain this information, the protagonists intervened in the gang war in Bergstadt, joining one gang and wiping out the other (the choice is up to the player). However, the defeated gang retreated first to Smolensk, then besieged the nearby NOAH base. Although the protagonists broke the siege, another disaster was narrowly avoided as the gang attempted to deprive NOAH from power by shutting down the nearby nuclear plant, unknowingly starting a meltdown.
The leader of the local NOAH forces, Prof. Vlamidir Czeko gave the group minimal info: they were extensively researching SGDS in the hope of finding a cure, but so far nothing worked. They are suspicious of a group of monks known as the Children Of The Undying Child. The COTUC was a relatively insignificant group of religious fanatics who gained the attention of the media through their mass suicides. Suspiciously, nearly all of them survived the SGDS-catastrophe and seem to be benefited from it, as they used the past ten years to research advanced technology.