Talking about prices for wargames, Battlefront have put out a new ‘upgrade’ for the 5 CM2 games - Normandy, Italy, Red Thunder, Black Sea and Final Blitzkrieg at $10 a pop for each game. By ‘upgrade’ I mean a handful of AI and UI tweaks, some of which would be found around line 150 of a patch note from any other developer. I’m all for paying for new content and upgrades, but this is a seriously underwhelming release. When this was pointed out on Battlefront’s facebook they went into an epic meltdown over ungrateful customers!
Just proving they didn’t learn anything from the Windows 7 compatibility patch debacle.
Yeah, I don’t see myself ever buying another Battlefront game. Between the high prices and the DRM, the final nail in the coffin is paying for patches. I understand the argument, it takes resources to keep putting out updates but every other company does it for free. Doesn’t Paradox apply improvements from new expansions of their games to the older originals? So glad that Hubert jumped ship with Strategic Command.
So this is the fourth version of their engine? I’d consider $10 if it actually made the game run well. But I doubt it does.
As long as enough saps are willing to pay, Battlefront will continue to charge. Clearly the system is working for them.
Well that’s what they say, and sure - they’ve survived. But by their own admission they haven’t exactly thrived. Which is probably why they need to charge $10 for patches for each game.
''Tis an interesting conundrum, eh? “We’re getting by, so this is working. But we’re only getting by, so we have to do this.”
I knew the Battlefront folks back when I was a journalist, and the original CM: Beyond Overlord was still in development. I was thrilled when it came out, and still remember fondly playing the hell out of some of the scenarios (Buchholz Station sticks in my mind for some reason). And Barbarossa, too; I had many a good time there. But I sort of lost interest after that, and never really got into any of the others, though I had the Africa/Med one and the modern one, as well as Normandy. I think I bought them on inertia.
One reason I can definitely say I drifted away was their online community. Whereas many games have communities that draw you in and encourage you to discuss things, Battlefront’s was…toxic. Simply toxic, intolerant, angry, defensive, you name it.
There will always be an element of war gamers (and strategy gamers, to a lesser degree) whose primary message seems to be "See how smart I am? I don’t play those silly, childish video games. I play games for adults that require planning and intelligence " I should know - I used to be one of them.
They can usually be found hanging around in grog-centered forums.
An adult? :)
Oh yeah. I started playing wargames (by playing, I mean, I got one and started fiddling with it, because I couldn’t convince anyone to play such a thing with me) around, um, 1972. AH’s Luftwaffe, believe it or not. Hardly the best to start with, but those little cardboard counters were cool! Soon enough I discovered SPI and I remember finally convincing my father to play a game of WWII: European Theater of Operations, which came out in like 1973. I, um, misread the rules and we were doing some weird attack and defense stuff that defied mathematics, but it was fun. For me, at least. My father, not so much I don’t think.
Anyhow, from that point I was obsessed, as only a teenager can be, with wargames. Every cent I had went into these things (well, and records, of course, actual vinyl things). I badgered my parents into letting me go every Saturday to a wargame group that met in Decatur, initially, and it was what I dreamed of all week (nerd alert!). A whole day of talking military history, playing wargames, talking about wargames, you name it.
But it wasn’t all bliss, to get to the point here. There were always those in the group who were, shall we say, assholes. Some were of the “I know everything about X, don’t even try to challenge my encyclopedic knowledge!” variety (pre-Google, this was an easier bullshit line to pull off). These were, though, easily ignorable. Some were the aforementioned wargame snobs, who disdained non-war board games and even less complex wargames. If it wasn’t DNO or CNA, or whatever the latest super-complex game was, it was crap. These were even more easily ignored.
No, the worst were the ideologues, sadly most of them seemingly on loan from the local Gauleiter’s office. Guys who would never, ever play the Russians, even in a WWII game. Guys who wore Wehrmacht regalia, had “Gott mit uns” belt buckles (or worse, " Meine Ehre heißt Treue"). These folks often subscribed to wild conspiracy theories, some were ex-military (often, discharged under murky circumstances), and had predictably reactionary domestic political positions, which they all too often insisted on discussing, loudly.
It never got as bad as at the firing range (I quit target shooting and sold my nice gun collection years later partly due to not being able to stomach yet another session at the range surrounded by literal neo-Nazis shooting (irony of ironies) fully automatic Uzis at targets shaped like African Americans; this was in Georgia), but it often was annoying. Later in life I’d meet more of the wargaming tribe–the radical leftists who only played the Soviets, the stoners who glommed on to the infinite detail of the game systems while under the influence, etc. It was, for sure, an eclectic community.
Paradox can do it because they have figured out how to tap into the greater strategy gaming market.
Battlefront has positioned themselves to cater to a grognard base that is getting smaller every year.
Never that.
A better analogue would be Matrix. While there’s no doubt their games sell in higher numbers than Battlefront’s, I greatly doubt they approach Paradox sales. I bet if you asked TPTB there, however, they’d probably agree that embracing sales and Steam was one of the smartest moves they ever made.
You also have Shrapnel which is kind of in the middle (but closer to Battlefront). Refuse to diversify distribution, but at least they have the occasional sale.
Ok, so I found a copy at a discount in a local shop (under $100), and I had a return from a failed christmas present (a game I already had) and took the plunge, in part driven by how much I enjoyed Battle of the Bulge for iPad.
So far I’ve played the 1 turn scenario as the Germans once, and the three turns scenario 3 times.
And while I love how the game plays and the sense of fog of war and a battle in constant development the solitaire system gives you, I have no idea how to win, or even how to get close to winning. Best score in the 3 turn game has been 12VP.
Breakthroughs are very hard to get, with the roadblock system further complicating things.
Any leads?
But yeah, great recommendation. Thanks.
I don’t have, and have never played, Enemy Action: Ardennes, but from everything I’ve read about the Battle of the Bulge, that’s historically pretty accurate. >.>
This is the game I really, really want. I’m looking for a game with campaigns where you control individual soldiers through the campaign, and they develop through their experiences, have individual strengths and weaknesses, etc. Set in WWI or WWII.
This game has been “coming” for, um, fifteen, twenty years, maybe? Seriously; I played the original (with the 101st) in the mid-late '90s, and the sequel was announced then…
I love how they’re still taking orders for it,
I guess that Vista compatibility patch is taking a while.