Armageddon Empires [Indiescene]

October 30, 2007 by tgoodfellow · 2 Comments 

Some games require a huge buy-in. You need to invest a lot of time learning the system, understanding the interface and reading the documentation over and over. The problem with this, of course, is that the payoff may not be worth it. Beyond the learning curve could be great indie gems like Dwarf Fortress or Dominions 3, but you need to either find a walkthrough or commit to the self-education. Who wants to do that?

This is the dilemma facing Armageddon Empires, a new post-apocalyptic wargame from Cryptic Comet. It’s an old-fashioned game in many ways, most significantly in how you will need to read the freaking manual to get started. There’s not a lot of in-game help for you. There’s not a lot of clarity on when you need to right click and when you need to left click. The drag and drop tool is fussy, too.

But you’ll forget all of this once you master the system. Armageddon Empires is a game of exploration and area control. You explore hexes to uncover enemies and resources. As expected, you spend resources on bringing new units to field, but there’s an original twist here. You can also spend these resources on dice before each turn, high rolls determine who gets to go first. The person who goes first gets more action points. So do you save those green resources to move your hero from your hand or spend them on the chance of points you can use to buy more cards?

This either/or decision making is everywhere in the game, potentially turning the tide of battles by spending “fate points,” making an intimidating game quite intuitive once you get the basics in hand. It helps that the setting is familiar enough to not throw up too many barriers to understanding. Air, artillery, infantry, zombies, cyborgs, etc. Nothing that your standard geek can’t manage.

Armageddon Empires rises above the crowd, though, because it is a surprisingly sophisticated wargame. Your armies will start with a couple of units at most, but eventually you will need to manage their composition carefully. Air strikes will need to be timed to even the odds, all the while costing you precious resources which are rarely in high supply. Like the best strategy titles, Armageddon Empires expects you to balance the needs of the moment with the promises of the future, but it never makes you feel like everything is riding on an early turn or a single fateful decision.

Of course, a large number of you will just give up early in the demo. Those of you that stick around will be treated to one of the best new old strategy games in a while.

gameboard.png

creation-image.png

battemoduleinterface.png

Ecco the Dolphin [Retrograde]

October 28, 2007 by Lesley Smith · Leave a Comment 

There’s a wave of nostalgia – pun intended – when loading Ecco the Dolphin for the first time. It’s been fourteen years since this charming swim-em-up enthralled Genesis/Mega Drive gamers across the world. Released under the banner of the Sega Vintage Collection, Ecco the Dolphin is a welcome inclusion to a growing range of titles perfectly pitched to a generation who grew up with Sega, myself included. For me, this was the game which prompted the purchase of a Mega Drive all those years ago.

For those of you who missed it the first time round, the story goes like this: Ecco is a happy-go-lucky dolphin until the day a mysterious whirlwind rips his pod and most oceanic life from the seas. Alone, the young dolphin must travels the seas, explore the past and even travel to another world to rescue his family. He must find an ancient whale, battle alien denizens and the sentient ancestor of life itself before going one-on-one with an alien queen. Powerful stuff, eh?

For the most part, time has treated Ecco well. While the graphics and music are true to the Genesis incarnation, it’s a shame to have to say that for this re-release the graphics were not at least upscaled. Like Sonic, the game is played against a blue border, and modern HD TV’s manage to make each pixel painfully clear. This is the kind of game where you don’t sit too close to the screen, but it is still well worth purchasing.

Ecco remains one of the best examples of mid-nineties gaming. The plot is strong, and the levels are a genuine challenge. The XBLA incarnation even offers the ability to save the game, mid-level, a blessing to anyone who had to try and remember the passwords the first time round. Like most ports to the 360, Ecco comes with Achievements, although in this department, they are painfully lacking and oddly random, from completing the Undercaves to finding hidden statues left over from the original game in Jurassic Beach. However, playing Ecco is not about Achievements, and anyone who does unlock one is bound to be more interested in their ocean adventures than in a few measly points. Where else do you get the chance to explore Atlantis, travel through time, and listen to the song of the ocean?

Ecco’s biggest pull is with its previous audience. Given that, I’m pretty sure it won’t be too long until more Genesis titles including the even more gorgeous sequel hit Live Arcade. If you remember Ecco then this will be gaming heaven, and if you don’t, it’s high time you tried this true unsung classic.

1037825679-00.png

1037825645-00.png

Roadwar 2000 [Retrograde]

October 26, 2007 by Peter Berger · Leave a Comment 

We were just outside of Pittsburgh when the mutants attacked.

We’d seen them tailing us since DC.  Well, smelled them more than seen, you know what the mutants are like.  They picked off three of our escorts in the first wave, but then our commandos and bodyguards brought their firepower to bear, and we tore them apart.  They only caught us because we had lost two of our hardtop sports cars just north of Bethesda, where some penny ante local gang got lucky with a few shots on our tires.  Fortunately, Pittsburgh is the steel city, and we made up for the losses by bolting on armor to our bus at a foundry.  We also found a few construction vehicles.  Those will come in handy for hauling our supplies.  It takes a lot of food and gasoline to keep a gang like the Rum Runners mobile, and we’ve got a long way to go before we get to the ruins of Chicago.

Roadwar 2000 is a strategy game that borrows the trappings of the Mad Max and Road Warrior movies to simulate life and combat in a post-nuclear apocalypse United States (or, in the case of Roadwar Europa, a post-nuclear apocalypse Europe).  It’s a world where abandoned cars, guns, and ammo are plentiful — and death is just around every corner.

Life in Roadwar is nasty, brutish, and short.  Every turn you can decide to move (if you have sufficient fuel), or search for loot, vehicles, or people.  The people you meet might be weak refugees, willing to join you in exchange for food, or they might be seasoned gangsters, eager to either join or kill you.  Every possible stereotype has been thrown into the blender here, and it works well.  Mutants, Communist invaders, born-again Christians, Satanists, renegade National Guardsmen, and other groups all pick on the corpse of a devastated continent.

Your job is to survive, and as they say, the best defense is a good offense.  As you travel around the country, you’ll acquire vehicles and gang members, and even take over a few towns if you’re lucky.  Become strong enough, and you may be contacted by a secret underground network, the remains of the legitimate government.  They want you to … well, that would be telling.  Let’s just say you’ll want to stock up on gasoline.

The graphics are serviceable but sparse – think Ultima II – and the user interface is daunting, one of those “a different letter for every function” approaches that dominated the mid-80’s.  Print out a reference card from the internet and keep it near your keyboard.  Complicating matters is that the game offers not one but three different systems for resolving car-to-car combat.  There’s a full-on turn based tactical combat (similar to Steve Jackson Games’ Car Wars).  There’s also “quick combat”, which is somewhat faster and requires fewer decisions, and “abstract combat” which is even faster and requires no input at all.  Early in the game, you get a bonus for winning a full tactical battle (your gang can manage an additional car), so it’s worth going for the gusto.

For being so hard to beat, Roadwar 2000 is wonderfully approachable.  It has a wonderful setting (Fallout fans will feel right at home) and crisp, if sometimes arbitrary gameplay.  It’s not for everyone, but I have been playing Roadwar 2000 off-and-on for 20 years now, and I don’t think I’ll be stopping anytime soon.  If you’re handy with an emulator and willing to get your hands dirty, give Roadwar 2000 or Europa a try.

Roadwar 2000 and Roadwar Europa by SSI, for Amiga, Apple II, Apple II GS, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS.  Occasionally available on eBay.

967835879-00.png

FreeCol [Freeplay]

October 25, 2007 by Peter Berger · 2 Comments 

In 1998, director Gus Van Sant remade Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in a particularly unusual manner: he filmed a shot-for-shot remake. Critical opinion was divided on whether Van Sant’s work was an homage, a rip-off, or simply an exercise in pointlessness.

In the world of video games, the equivalent to Van Sant’s work are the free versions of classic games. FreeCiv is the most well known, but there are efforts at free versions of X-Com, Master of Orion, and the subject of today’s column, Colonization.

It’s fairly easy to be snide about this. “Wouldn’t it be great to have a game that is just like this other brilliant game, only I didn’t have to pay for it?” Truthfully, though, these games don’t exist just out of a desire to save money. Largely, they originate because the developers wanted to play the games on some non-Windows platform.

Like its cousin FreeCiv, FreeCol suffers from a user interface that is somewhat clunky, unattractive, and only minimally planned out. A slightly more central problem, however, is that the original Colonization wasn’t that great a game to begin with. Most of its charm was in its graphic design and implementation, very little of which makes it into FreeCol’s implementation. So in this case, it’s as if Gus Van Sant decided to remake Herbie The Love Bug.

The game is a faithful remake of Colonization, and so it clearly met its own objective. From my perspective, though, the tragedy is that they didn’t take the opportunity to move beyond a simple reimplementation, and actually improve on its inspiration.

If you’re one of the seven people who were addicted to Colonization in the mid-1990’s and want to play it on a modern system then FreeCol is the answer to your prayers. For the rest of us, however, it is more of a curiosity than a work of art. But then, I didn’t like Gus Van Sant’s Psycho very much either.

FreeCol, for Windows, MacOS X, Linux, and any platform that supports the full Java 1.5 VM. Free download from http://www.freecol.org.

java-shot13.png

java-shot17.png

java-shot8.png

E for All Expo - Day 2

October 19, 2007 by PK Hufford · Leave a Comment 

Today things are just as busy as the opening (and when I say “busy”, there’s plenty of people, but not E3-like crowds), but it appears that people are here mostly for the various competitions. Just before we’re let into the expo floor, a Scottish drum and pipe quartet get the crowd going.

Scots

I head over towards the Fatal1ty area and watch the legend himself completely decimate gamer after gamer in Q3A. I tried to play him a couple of years ago playing UT2004 and he wiped me all over the map. Quite a humbling experience, but then again he gets paid to do this.

Fatal1ty

But all the talk is the Guitar Hero II competition, sponsored by Target and judged by some of the Major League Gamers. Some of these guys are very impressive, and the top five from each day get to complete in a finals, with prizes ranging from the Guitar Hero 3 demo kit $1000 gift cards from Target. It’s pretty entertaining to watch some of the folks getting on stage and see these guys really get into the spirit of the event.

Guitar Hero II 2

Guitar Hero II 1

Rock Band

There’s been a lot of buzz for this game, and it certainly delivers. All throughout the day you hear “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden or “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi being belted out by rock wannabes. The guitar controller feels very substantial and has a few more knobs and switches than the Guitar Hero controller, such as an effects switch and five more buttons on the lower neck. The drum kit also feels good and easy to use. Don’t bother asking if I tried my chops on the microphone, I’m tone deaf. I can already see the Rock Band videos popping up on YouTube now.

Rock Band Stage

Metal Gear Solid 4

People usually run to this area to get a chance to play MGS4. You basically get to play the same sequence as seen on some of the demo trailers floating around the Internet. Thing of it is that they only let 12 people in every 30 minutes, having to first sit and watch a video sequence, then go into the play area to try the game. Some people have stood in line for over three and a half hours. I’m not one to want to stand in line for that long, so I just peered through the fence surrounding the display and watched people play. If there’s a reason to get the PS3, MGS4 will be it. The gameplay, controls, graphics, etc., are stellar. Solid Snake may have a chance of knocking the Master Chief on his armored kiester! They were pretty strict about taking photographs of the game, so I managed to sneak a shot of the outside of the display. If you’ve seen the videos of the demo, you’re not missing anything really.

MGS4

Guitar Hero III for the Wii

Your eyes are not deceiving you! I got a chance to play it, and it’s outstanding. Unlike the demo stations for the Xbox 360, where you can only play five random songs, the good folks from Activision were kind enough to unlock the entire set list to public! The controller is also all the buzz; simply insert your Wiimote into the guitar controller and viola! And one thing the Wii Guitar Hero III controller can do that the others can’t is use the rumble features of the Wiimote when you use your Star Power. Graphically it doesn’t look as great as the Xbox 360, it still impressive nonetheless. I spoke with some of the Activision developers and they said that unfortunately there will not be any DLC for the game because they wanted to get the game out to market and had to sacrifice that functionality. However, they said that have a lot of evil plans brewing in their studios and that the Wii has a very bright future for the franchise. And the best news of all is that it will be released along with the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions at the end of this month. Righteous!

Wii Guitar Hero III

Super Smash Brothers Brawl

There were massive lines to get a chance to play this game. When I finally got a chance to play it, it was equally fun and frustrating, mainly because I was getting my butt kicked by one of the Wii Booth Babes! I had to resort to just a whole lot of button mashing in order to get anything going.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl

Super Smash Brothers Brawl 2

PMS Clan

For those of you that run in the professional gaming circuits, you probably have heard of the PMS Clan. I got a chance to speak with one of the co-founders and clan mates. For those of you that don’t know, the clan was founded by two twin sisters in college and have been at it for almost 10 years as professional gamers. They were there promoting their clan as well as representing some of their sponsors. They were really nice people to talk to and are doing a lot to help promote safety for young girls that are playing a lot of games on the Net. They even agreed to pose with me for a picture.

PMS Clan

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

As I walked over to the HP display, where they were showing off their new Blackbird 002 super-rig, I got a chance to play the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare demo that was just released. There’s nothing like playing this game on an $7000 computer, decked out and overclocked to 3.7 GHz. This game manages to capture all of the magic of the previous CoD games and then kicks it up a notch. One of the most impressive parts of the demo was having to walk into a darkened building, activating your night vision goggles, and running around taking out your foes. You could see the infrared beams of your squadmate’s rifles as you maneuver around.

Call of Duty 4

Power Outage

If they wanted to get rid of us they just had to tell us! Toward the end of the day the conference center experienced some “technical difficulties,” meaning they lost power to right half of the South Hall. To make matters worse, there were about another 15,000 people meandering around the Staples Center because of the Jennifer Lopez/Marc Anthony concert playing later in the evening. That was my cue to get back to the hotel.

Staple Center

Power Outage

That’s it for now. There’s plenty of things to see and I need to get back onto the floor. Keep checking back this weekend for more coverage!

Cheers!

PK

E for All Expo - Day 1

October 19, 2007 by PK Hufford · Leave a Comment 

Day 1 8:30 AM - Where is everyone?

As I walked down to the Los Angeles Convention Center, I was picturing the chaos associated with these events. Having gone to E3 the previous two years, “sensory overload” wouldn’t even scratch the surface to describe the event. Literally tens of thousands of gamers, geeks, media and business types were lining up outside the South Hall entrance in the hours before the expo opened, and everyone and anyone involved in the gaming industry would literally cram into 720,000 square feet of exhibit space.

LA Expo Center

Therefore, today I had a chill run down my spine when I walked up to the LA Convention Center today.

As I meandered around the Expo Center, there were several booths opened to received folks that pre-registered, and another for those that were walking off the street and opting to pay for admittance. No G4TV broadcast area with Morgan Webb and Adam Sessler to be seen. No huge throngs of people chugging down gallons of Mountain Dew. No America’s Army recruiting demonstration tent. There were just a couple of booths setup. You could almost imagine tumbleweeds blowing through the place. This is not looking good.

The first order of business was to find the media center. As I walked in, I noticed that there were only two people among the 100 PCs and Apple desktops setup for media use. Not very interesting, so I decided to go to the convention floor. As I looked inside, it was a bustle of activity as convention workers and exhibitors were putting the final touches of their displays. Again, no more over-the-top mega structures. Everything is fairly small but well equipped. As I tried to step into the floor, a security guard approaches me and says that I can’t get in yet.

“I have a media pass. I was supposed to have early access to the floor before the public.” (Well…not really, I wasn’t supposed to be in until 11:00AM.)

“Um, I don’t know…let me check with someone…” A security supervisor approaches and asks if he could help. Again, I mention that I was told that I was told I could get early access before the public is allowed. He shrugs and said “Go on in.” My persistence pays off. In I go.

Wii Section Pre-Show

EA Area

MLG Area

Another chill goes down my spine. They’ve got whole sections that are still getting carpet put down! I sensed the impending doom of this expo. But since I’m here I might as well walk around undisturbed by the public.

Unfinished Area

First was the Guitar Hero III demo area. I tried my hand at Even Flow by Pearl Jam. It looks absolutely amazing on the Xbox 360. No PS3 versions were available to try out. Next was the Rock Band tour bus. Nothing was powered on yet, but it has about five demo areas, including a front stage area where you could perform to the masses.

Guitar Hero III

Rock Band

Next I discover a small booth with a couple of guys stuffing nice computer tote bags with information. These guys were from PowerUp Games. The service they’re trying to provide is a clearing house for people who want to get into the gaming industry as testers. But more importantly, they provide training on how to actually do proper testing and bug reports and act as a middle man between the testers and the game studios. The premise is that they feel they can provide a better service to game developers by actually letting game enthusiasts test and evaluate games instead of having to hire actual professional testers on the payroll. They then store the debug data and roll up the results to the developers. It’s a pretty neat concept, and gives the opportunity for thousands of gamers the chance to get involved if they think if they want to pursue a career in the industry.

There’s a lot of preparation still going on the floor, so I take a few snapshots. I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, so I decided grab a bite. While I sat, people actually begin to show up, and by the time the doors open there’s probably about a thousand or so attendees, mostly people that paid for VIP access and the rest of the media. Others that paid for a lower level of access would be let in at 3:00 PM. When I return to the exhibit hall when the floor opens, I definitely notice the difference an hour made. As if by magic all of the exhibits were ready, so I begin to make my way to the various demo station

People Waiting

I’ll be posting first impressions of games I’ve demoed throughout the expo as separate previews, which will include pictures when applicable. Keep checking back throughout the weekend!

Cheers!

PK

E for All Expo - Day 0

October 19, 2007 by PK Hufford · Leave a Comment 

Day 0 - On the way…

To say my journey to Los Angeles was interesting would be an understatement. I had been looking forward to the E for All Expo since it was announced. I even booked my flight with the new Virgin America airlines that started in August.

Inside, the plane has the Red entertainment center at every seat, which is a touch screen system that allows you to watch satellite television, premium movies, music videos, play games, and even chat with other passengers on the plane. You can listen to hundreds of songs from different artists. You can even track your flight’s progress by looking at a Google Map, which shows your current altitude and speed and lets you zoom in and out. If you want something to eat, you can order it on the screen and pay for it by swiping a major credit card underneath the monitor (they do not accept cash). Each seat has a remote control that comes out of your arm rest which allows you to control the system. On one side is the volume control, channel select, cursor control, and video controls (pause, play, etc.). On the flip side is the QWERTY keyboard with two top buttons for use of some of the games (such as Doom).

Virgin America Interior

Virgin America Entertainment System

Virgin America Controller 2

Virgin America Controller

Virgin America Map

Virgin America Linux

Let’s just say that they have a few issues to work out. First off, the title screen clearly says “Beta,” so let’s set our expectations a little lower. Many of the features didn’t work properly on my flight from Dulles to San Francisco. First, none of the games worked. Any attempt would cause my system to reboot. This was humorous because you can see that the system runs RedHat Linux, and you can watch the actual book sequence. Because of all the technical issues, the captain announced that all food and premium content were comped. This was a relief, because an Italian sandwich was $8!

The flight for the most part was uneventful. However, I thought I was hearing things at the start of the flight, because I kept hearing a “Meow” for the first ten minutes of the flight. I had figured it was somebody’s kid sitting behind me playing with a toy. However, the meowing persisted, and when a flight attendant walked by I asked if there was a cat on the plane. She smiled and said, “Yep, and it’s right behind you.” Lo and behold, there was a nice young lady with a cat in a pet carrier. Now, I’m an animal lover, owning two dogs and a cat, but the meowing continued on and off for the five and a half hour flight. I began to fantasize about jettisoning that cat out of an airlock. So much for sleep.

Next, as we approached the Bay Area, the captain announced that we’d been on a holding pattern for a while, and due to weather conditions at the San Francisco, we’d now have to land at San Jose International Airport to refuel and wait on the ground. He explained that the clouds were too thick and too low to the runway to allow for a visual approach and that the airport had stopped taking arrivals. You’ve got to be kidding me!

So the pilot made haste and landed us in San Jose, where we taxied to a refueling area where we were forced to wait about an hour until we were given permission to take off again. I was headed towards San Francisco International Airport where I would catch a connection to Los Angeles, which we’d obviously missed. Luckily Virgin America has several flights between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and those of us that missed our original connection had no problem getting a seat on the next flight.

After arriving, I went to claim my luggage and take the shuttle to the rental car agency, where I’ve managed to get a new Dodge Charger. It’s a pretty nice car, but since I was so late getting to Los Angeles, I had to fight the infamous rush hour traffic to get to my hotel. An hour later I arrive at the “historic” Ritz Milner in downtown LA, about 6 blocks from the convention center.

Now, when I travel for work in my full time job, I’m usually staying at some of the nicest hotels around, such as the St. Regis near the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco (Lorien can attest to this as he shared a room with me while attending the GDC earlier this year). Rooms average about 500 square feet in size, with suites as big as 1000+. Their hotel rooms have 42-inch flat screen televions, DVD players, separate sunken bathtubs and showers so big you could fit about 4 people in them. The epitome of luxury.

I’m not kidding when I say that this time I have the smallest hotel room in Los Angeles. I think the room itself is about 150 square feet total. My master bathroom in my house is bigger than this room! And even though I requested a non-smoking room, the place obviously has been smoked in. The air conditioner for the room is a loud window unit. and the bathroom is literally a closet. I the shower, no lie, is about 24 inches wide, barely big enough for a normal size adult (which I’m not). And the Ethernet port for Internet access is behind the night stand, not at the desk. The network cable that the room provided wasn’t long enough to get to the tiny desk in the room. Thankfully I brought my handy Airport Express, so I just used my own secure wireless connection. At least there’s a 24-hour IHOP across the street, where I plan to pick up some dinner and call it a night.

Hotel 1

Hotel Bathroom

The things I do for you guys!

PK at E for All Expo!

October 17, 2007 by PK Hufford · Leave a Comment 

Howdy folks!

So here I am, crammed into what I think is the smallest hotel room in Los Angeles, bringing to you coverage of the inaugural E for All Expo, which starts tomorrow morning. I’ll be updating the site periodically with photos and major announcements throughout the event. I’ll even chronicle my journey here on the new Virgin America airlines. Let’s just say they have a few kinks to work out. Read more

Qwak

October 6, 2007 by cpickering · Leave a Comment 

Addiction can be a terrible thing. It’s ruined lives and torn families apart. So it’s strange how many games have the term ‘addictive’ bandied about so easily when it can have so many detrimental affects. Qwak, from Team 17, the creators of the stunning Alien Breed series, is one such title that can only be labelled as obscenely addictive.

Released on the Amiga way back in the early nineties, it reminds us of that Taito classic, Bubble Bobble. In much the same ilk as that much fondly remembered title, Qwak was much more fun in multiplayer mode. Across 80 stages, your task was simple in essence, but devilishly addictive in practice. Tossing eggs around with the kind of eagerness you only come to expect from the young ‘uns at Halloween, your duck avatar had to collect keys in order to progress to the next more challenging level, as well as bagging as much fruit as possible to up your score. What else would you expect from, erm, ducks?

Simple? Certainly. Easy? Not on your nelly. Though the 80 stages spread across 8 levels were random within each collection of 10, the jump to the next step on the ladder most certainly was not easy. That’s not taking into account the various ways to up your score, the most notable of which was a hefty points bonuses you’d achieve for “peacefully” beating the level.

The levels certainly didn’t lack style, with a sublime explosion of colour adorning each and every stage through the game’s hefty length. There might not have been any of the immense graphical trickery which was starting to make an appearance on the powerful 16-bit consoles of the time, but that never stopped Qwak from being quite an exciting sight to witness in action.

The graphics never mattered though, and matters even less so now in these heady days of quad core processors. What made Qwak was its astonishing ability to keep you coming back for more. You might have failed at a single level a dozen times, but you’ll still find yourself loading it straight back up almost the instant you switched off your Amiga. It’s so good, that a recent mini re-release has appeared for the GBA, which you can find out about at www.qwak.co.uk. It’s firmly restricted to 300 copies however, so you’d better be quick.

To nab the words of Matt Broughton in the original review found in issue 62 of The One Amiga, Qwak is “brilliantly simple, simply brilliant.”

box_photo_front_med.jpg

Carrier At War

October 3, 2007 by Peter Berger · Leave a Comment 

Carriers at War is the latest in a series of remakes of classic SSG turn-based wargames. For those of us addicted to turn-based wargames, SSG is the Pablo Escobar of the game industry, known for some of the most famous games in the genre.

If the company’s products have a weakness, it is that the company hails from the antediluvian days of the computer gaming industry, and so, sometimes, do their user interfaces. SSG games range in design from elegant and simple (e.g. Warlords) to unplayably baroque (e.g. Battlefront). Carriers at War, I am pleased to say, is much closer to the former than the latter. It has the accessibility of Panzer General combined with the strategic depth of The Lost Admiral Returns.

The game effectively simulates both of the grand challenges of strategic ship combat in the Pacific. Search is beautifully depicted (reports of sightings come in, but they are uncertain and often inaccurate), as is combat, where with each strike you must balance your desire to inflict a fatal blow on the enemy against the risk of leaving yourself without adequate defensive combat air patrol. The tension you feel after sending out a strike is exquisite.

One aspect of Carriers that it accomplishes grandly is playing the “What if?” game. The included scenarios – Pearl Harbor, Midway, Wake Island, Coral Sea, Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz, and Phillipine Sea – cover the breadth of the war in the Pacific. A number of the scenarios also have variants (for example, a version of Pearl Harbor where the US was expecting the attack). The game shows the great extent to which warfare in this era was about information. One can’t play as the Japanese in Midway and not know that there are three American carriers out there, an advantage denied that nation in real life. Needless to say, this can lead to dramatically different outcomes than were seen historically.

Is there anything missing? A scenario builder would be nice, but given that most of the great Pacific naval battles of World War II are here, it’s hard to complain too strenuously. On the whole, this is a wonderful game for those who enjoy naval combat simulation games.

picture-91.png

« Previous PageNext Page »

Bottom