Tag Archives: wargame

Thoughts: Red Dragon.

landing

Another year, another Wargame. Eugen are releasing these things like clockwork, but while last year’s Airland Battle was a massively polished and improved version of European Escalation that more than justified a cheeky release of something that looked like practically the same game just one year later, the simple fact that it was so good has created some problems for Red Dragon. After Airland Battle already raised the bar to a point pretty close to where I suspect the ceiling is for the Wargame franchise, Red Dragon was going to have to do something pretty damn special in order to warrant filching yet another £23 from my pocket – and unfortunately for Red Dragon, thanks to that ceiling there doesn’t seem to be any more latitude to refine the series any further in terms of the core mechanics. It’s already as good as it can be, and so Red Dragon instead needs to concentrate on framing those core mechanics in new and interesting ways. And it only partially succeeds.

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Sunday Soundtracks

Has AirLand Battle been released yet? I have no idea; as of writing this I’m still back at the start of May playing the multiplayer beta. Hopefully if I reviewed it I did end up mentioning the excellent work that’s been done on the game’s sound, including its music. Listening to it while watching a pair of A-10s desperately strafing a tank column that’s threatening to break through your lines is one of the better experiences I’ve had in recent years.

What can I say, I’m sucker for anything that has heavy amounts of percussion in it.

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Thoughts: AirLand Battle.

stunned

First, there was Wargame: European Escalation. Now, almost exactly a year later, there is another one of it. Since I loved the first Wargame I’m more receptive than I might otherwise be to a sequel that’s been turned out in such a short period of time, but if it were another developer and another series I’d probably be inclined to assume that AirLand Battle was a low-effort attempt to cash in on the original game with another made using the same assets. AirLand Battle asks for the full £30 on Steam (although it was 25% off if you already owned the first Wargame and you can pick up a disk copy on Amazon for just £20) and so it was going to have to do more than be a slightly shinier iteration on the Wargame concept in order to justify its asking price. Fortunately – and actually somewhat surprisingly – it delivers in spades.

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Thoughts: Wargame.

Wargame: European Escalation (henceforth referred to as Wargame because honestly) suffers from an affliction similar to many of its peers; a horrible disease I have dubbed Total War Syndrome. The most telling symptom of TWS is that all the publicity screenshots for the game tend to be close-ups of the action like the one headlining this review. The military hardware and the explosions are all very photogenic if you’re into that sort of thing, but that kind of picture is actually a little bit useless from a marketing point of view because all it tells the person looking at it is that Wargame is a game with nice graphics. Lots of games these days have nice graphics. Nice graphics do not make Wargame stand out from the crowd in any way, and this was particularly telling when somebody asked me the following question as I was talking about the game:

“What is it actually about?”

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Thoughts: Unity of Command.

A small disclaimer before we start: I beta tested Unity of Command. I played it to death over a two day period, and then I went to the developer’s forums and posted a single incredibly long and exhaustive breakdown of what I liked and didn’t like about the game. Then I forgot about it, because the beta was released around the same time as Space Marine and Dead Island and I obviously felt I had to play something shit to restore karmic balance.

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