I went for clever not vulgar, personal choice I guess. This game is absolutely brilliant, my only quibble is the lack of a pause and or slow time option, I like to view a firefight up close but with the video replay I guess I get my close in war movie cake also.
Played a co worker the other day, I am a thirty year warming veteran, he is a twenty something cocky kid. I did have an air defense unit, but then, much to my surprise, he had an recon helicopter lurking, brought in an ECM airplane, and finished me off with the F 111's! Obviously going to have to elevate my game, too much WWII tactics over the years, stuck in a tank battle rut.
Now there is this great WWIII wargame, and things have changed.
Corrections: "But should you instead maybe save up today’s points [so] you can bring in the US 199th Light [Brigade]" "the real air power — namely, the jets that could slap down helicopters — [was] busy elsewhere"
I can't wait to check it out. I am not sure entirely what you mean by the campaign decks simplifying things, but if it helps make sense of the unit spam, I'm all for it.
Actually I'd say there is a pretty big difference between a T-80OU and a T-55L. Knowing the difference means pulling out your Challenger to take him down or calling in your entire air force.
I've seen one "General So-and-so is a c-word" deck, at least one Nazi reference, and my own Czech Mech Deck, which is a crime of rhyme. Of course, who knows that's going on with all those Cyrillic characters I see late at night!
I'm just surprised there doesn't seem to be any sort of filter on the deck names, which I'm pretty sure are stored on Eugen's servers.
Wasn't the lack of explanation, clarity of rule-set and the bad UI the essential problem you identified in the Warhammer Quest review Tom?
I'm curious because i played both games and could argue that both tutorial and general UX of this game provide even less information and provide no guidance on how the numerous hotkeys and UI elements are designed to play the game properly.
In fact, i miss this relevant information in your glowing 5 star review entirely...
Basically, the campaign gives you a actual real world military units to play with. Each one of these units is a pre-built deck (of a somewhat doubtful historical accuracy), so you don't actually go crazy trying to choose what troops to bring because you don't have as much choice each battle. For instance, if you are playing a battle with the US 82nd Airborne Division, you will have like 5 different infantry squads to choose from, but only 2 kind of tanks. It obviously pushes you to lean more on your infantry for that battle. It makes the game so much more easy to grasp.
Of course, you can still go crazy and build your own deck for the multiplayer or skirmishes, but I recommend playing the single player and getting used to the pre-built ones first.
Tom - Awesome review. You've just reminded me how much I've missed reading great reviews. Gets me all nostalgic for the golden era of PC coverage at GameSpot et al. I was on top of reviews more then.
I lucked out here and clicked through to Metacritic from Steam and saw the Qt3 quote. Then bought the game on this rec, since I liked European Escalation.
Actually, it come over time. One of the first lessons you learn is a simple one: A tank is a tank is a tank. You can do pretty fine already without knowing exact details as you play your matches; and as you play them you quickly learn more of the speifics of each unit. Perfect memorisation isn't necessary, having a basic idea what a specific unit is capable of s good enough.
I don't get how Tom suggests the AI knows how to play the game. It doesn't. In skirmish or campaign battles, it just spams smokes + masses units and charges your command vehicle. It also cheats by knowing the location of your units...
Edit to add: Just to be clear, I love the game. Wonderful multiplayer, fun singleplayer despite the AI cheats.
From back when I discovered your work, it was evident that you were an RTS fan through and through. I am glad to see that nothing has changed.
This review was great; a true ode to a favourite game, something personal and fun and entertaining and just generally great. Reading it put a huge smile on my face. Thanks for that.
