Thoughts on Hearts of Iron

Games
1

Is anyone else playing this game? It’s a feast (or is that beast?) of a wargame. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this detailed and accessable at the same time (I’m sure there’s EU, but I missed out on the series). It can be picked up in minutes, but is as complicated as any other serious wargame…with nice graphics to boot.

In particular, the research system shines. There are far too many technologies for anyone to research them all, and they take a very long time to finish. The trees (sixteen of them, I think) seem to have a lot of branches which end in ‘fruit’. You can follow a branch to the end and reap a reward, or save time and go to whatever branch your research has opened for you.

I have to wonder if this game is going to make any sales in the United States, though. Heck, is it even getting shelf space? I couldn’t find it at EB, CompUSA, or Babbages. I had to grab it mail order. It seems to me that we have a terrific wargame…but no wargamers. And it’s a shame. These kinds of games take an eternity to play on a tabletop, but with a few notable exceptions, they’re scarce on computers (where the details can be handled automatically).

Are we going to see -more- wargames as consoles gain more share of the video gaming pie (as the action crowd finds more of the games they want on consoles), or are the grognards just fading out of existance?

2

The EB I work at only got five copies so far, a few people have been waiting for it, but not many. Kohan: AG is going for 15 dollars new too, a crying shame.

3

I was going to pick it up last week but I got pneumonia and it kinda turned me off games. Not being able to sit up straight without feeling naseous is a bitch. Bloody shame, I’ve been waiting for this game for quite a while now. I’ll pick it up this week if I’m feeling well enough to go outside.

4

Most people that game just aren’t interested in war gaming anymore. We have a new generation of gamers, and if isn’t sports, action or rpg they couldn’t be bothered. And since graphics aren’t top priority in most war games, the majority of people aren’t interested in these titles.

Also… It seems to me that when I’m in EB’s looking at the PC games , I ususally notice 10 people who are looking at the console titles. And it’s the same old questions. “What’s better? Sega sports or EA?” “When’s final fantasy coming out or how’s the Xbox?” Most people seem to be very close minded when it comes to gaming genres and they just aren’t interested in war games.

What a shame…

:(

5

This is actually how it’s always been, hasn’t it?

6

This is actually how it’s always been, hasn’t it?[/quote]

Well, depends on how far back you want to go. Before personal computers were a mass market item, in the early 80s, wargames were one of the most popular genres, perhaps because the “geeks” who bought them were also into wargaming. Expectations for sales were pretty low back then, so wargames were pretty successful. SSI did very well back then as a company that was primarily wargames. SSG came along later and also did quite well as a wargaming company.

Yeah, arcade game were big (Pac Man and Battlezone, etc.) and Adventures were in their prime, but wargames pretty much held their own in terms of sales and shelf space.

(hitches pants up to his chest and drinks his coffee…)

7

One of the guys who works at my local EB is really looking forward to this one. EB had not gotten it in on Tuesday but they were expecting it for last Wednesday. I second all that has been said above about likely sales, but surely anyone designing such a game already knows all this. It seems to me that the best avenue for such games now is small publishing/developing, such as the games published by Shrapnel, Tiller, etc. Most of the people that like such games know about these outlets and how to get the games they want. EB just isn’t going to devote a lot of shelf space to such a game because it won’t sell or draw in customers to buy other games. If they have 5 copies, they will probably be stacked into one space.

In fact, I am a fairly hardcore gamer, but I find wargames too intimidating and time consuming to play. I do love TBS games, like MoM and AoW, but wargames just seem too involved. Maybe this one will show me the light though :).

8

Wargames for me is completely a time issue. I don’t have time to play longer games, so I stick to games like Diablo II on the PC and fighting games on the consoles.

The quick pick up n play affairs.

9

Preordered it and just picked it up yesterday. So far, very enjoyable, and I haven’t scratched the surface yet. Bothersome that I’ve already had 2 CTDs.

I highly recommend it!

10

I canceled my pre-order when the ship date switched to the 26th (was out of town that week). Searched my area and didn’t find it - sold out everywhere. Good news was I found a brand new EB Games in our mall, so all was not lost :-)!

11

I’ve not tried it much, in part because I have an exam soon, but also because it really disappointed me. I played a lot of EU II, and while that game certainly wasn’t stable right after release, it did not think it was anywhere near as bad as HoI. Even with the 1.01 patch, it’s quite buggy.

The bugs are not the problem, though. It really feels like EU II with new art and expanded unit management. The old EU II interface was never very good, but with the new, more complex elements (individual divisions) introduced in HoI, it becomes really unmanagable.

However, what really disappointed me was that while it tries to seem like a realistic WWII strategy game, it neglects some aspects (trade, intelligence, diplomacy, among others) and focuses too much on the military aspects. You control every division, you have to order air support manually.

The end result is that, particularily when playing as minors, but also as the major powers, you can get pretty strange results. For example, playing as Communist China in 1936, I joined the Comintern, and requested military control of the USSR, which I, much to my surprise, received. Another time, the Nationalists besieged three of my divisions in my capital with their 25+ division army while I overran ALL of China and Sinkiang with three mountain divisions, in the end also destroying the Nationalist armies through lack of supply.

The game is big, but has a lot of issues, in both the interface and the actual gameplay. Luckily, Paradox is very good at supporting their games post-release, still working on patches for EU II, in fact. So, in a year’s time or so, i believe HoI might become what it now promises.

12

I’m so disapointed. It’s a joke, it’s not a bad game but as a WWII strategic wargame it’s a joke.

It’s just like a fan made mod of EUII.

They make the common mistake of confusing complexity with realism. World in Flames was a streamlined, consistent abstraction of WWII. Overwhelming the player with hundreds of parameters just because the computer can handle it doesn’t make it more realistic.

13

I’m confused. Is there supposed to be an AI in HoI?

I just got my 3rd CTD in 1944 but already owned Europe and most of Africa. Russia was out of the war, the UK was a puppet, and France was annexed.

I invaded the US briefly…

Where is the AI??? Did I miss the difficulty setting?

14

I have not seen this one, though I’ve heard of it. I was thinking of buying it but now after reading all of these comments…I think I’ll pass…

15

I really want to love this game.

It’s got all these great things in it, all this depth… a wargamer’s dream.

But it’s soooo problematic. Constant CTDs. Impossible interface. Incomprehensible economy. Bizarre results (in my world, the French charged out of the Maginot line into the teeth of the Germany army, saving me even the trouble of having to go through the Low Countries).

I agree with some patches this could be fantastic. But as it is, I keep going to back to it and stopping play frustrated.

My current favorite strategic level WW2 game is Battlefront’s “Strategic Commander”:

http://www.battlefront.com/products/stratcom/stratcom.html

Beer and pretzely? Yeah. Old skool graphics? Yeah. But damn, it’s hard to beat the gameplay and just fun factor of it… really brings home the old World in Flames kinda vibe for me.

16

I’m going to keep an eye on this one…

17

Is this like Europa Universalis where it was extremely easy to just completely conquer and expand over the whole continent? I remember reading forum threads where players complained how ridiculous this was and the devs essentially said “You need to play the game how we designed it to be played; you shouldn’t be trying to conquer every nation because that’s not what happened in history.” I thought that was a ridiculous attitude; the controls to keep players from doing that need to be part of the games schema – you can bet that if they didn’t exist in real life, that would have happened in real history too. I didn’t play EU2, though, maybe they fixed that.

18

"“You need to play the game how we designed it to be played; you shouldn’t be trying to conquer every nation because that’s not what happened in history.”

Thats a rather wierd statement. One of the points about wargaming is to try diffrent things and see what diffrent outcomes happen. A game that only was playable if it ran like actual history would be pretty boring.

19

Ok, let me qualify, since I did finally find the difficulty setting.

That was with the AI set to weakling. So, maybe on Hardest, it’ll put up more of a fight!

20

Good news was I found a brand new EB Games in our mall, so all was not lost

Heh – I just found out that a new EB Games moved into our mall, too!! November must be their official expansion month. :)