The long awaited successor to Matrix Games Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, released in 2013, which depicted a Soviet assault on West Germany in the eighties, the expected war that mercifully never came. Flashpoint Campaigns: Southern Storm focuses on the fighting in Southern Germany.
Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm used an innovative movement and fight system that I really liked. The Flashpoint Campaigns: Southern Storm trailer does a good job of depicting some of the improvements in the system we can expect:
The system looks complicated but after the first few turns of Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm I had no difficulty with it. The game is out next year, and I am looking forward to it.
The screenshots look really good, especially in the UI department. Clearly the devs have been listening to what folks were asking for based on the first game. The only potential downside is that the new game is just that, a new game, and the old game’s scenarios won’t work with the new engine. The plan is to re-add that material eventually, from what I understand, but it seems unlikely the old stuff (which centers on the central and northern German front) will simply get converted. Rather, I expect there to be new paid DLC covering those areas of the conflict. So, nice improvements balanced by probably having to buy more stuff to cover what we already had with the old game.
I was bummed this got bumped to 2022. I really like Flashpoint Campaigns Red Storm (and, prior to that, Flashpoint Germany).
But, yes, they most certainly need to port over the old stuff. The largest campaign in Red Storm is damn near unplayable because it is on the razor’s edge of the 2GB memory limit of the 32-bit engine. Scroll around too fast and the game crashes as it runs out of RAM.
The old GDW Third World War or whatever it was called series of games had a lot of different maps, but I don’t think they got to Africa much. I’m not sure anyone has done a serious wargame about a hypothetical WWIII on a truly global level like has been done ad infinitum for WWII, have they?
It is good, and the modded maps people have done, plus the additional user-created scenarios, are nice as well. Well worth picking up even with the new engine coming next year.
It looks like they have the person who did some of the original map mods that everyone loved so much they got his work officially added working on the maps for Southern Storm, or using the code he’d written to do it. Nice to see this is finally close to release.
There is a wealth of Cold War PC games coming out now - Flashpoint Campaigns, Regiments, Warno, Combat Mission: Cold War. Plus there has recently been Armored Brigade and CMO. If you want to play Fulda Gap gone hot, you’re pretty well covered.
I have Armored Brigade and CM: Cold War, but have hardly touched them. I am fascinated by the subject matter but don’t always follow through :). Ditto with CMO.
I got in the beta but then had to replace my machine and didn’t gotten around to reinstalling. And I couldn’t post on the beta forums due to some glitch. But I’d agree with @Don60420.
It’s been so long I barely remember how to play. Was this a series that’s pretty straightforward to pick up, or did they have some tutorial videos? I don’t remember it being that difficult.
It’s not too hard to get into, but really grokking the nuances can take a while (not that I ever really did, mind you). A lot of it is about reading terrain and formulating plans.
I found the game mechanics pretty simple to apply, but playing the game well and understanding what was going on required some time and thought. If this were a board game it would be an unplayable monster. One of many reasons why I love computer gaming.
