War Gamer's Schlaraffenland

Schlaraffenland, a paradise of gluttony from German folklore where fried chickens fly through the air and rivers run with mead and other ridiculous shit happens.

I’m an avid gamer, particularly war games. I like to say that I only play games where I get to kill people or blow things up. That sounds pretty bad taken by itself, so let me add that it’s not the violence alone that attracts me, in fact I am generally repulsed by games that try to sell themselves based on excessive gore and amoral killing sprees. As near as I can tell the thing about military and other violent games that appeals to me is the presentation of a strategic challenge with the added spice of mayhem and danger in a somewhat believable context. Perhaps non-violent games can be more innovative and strategically appealing, but the virtual fiction of strafing a column of panzers has a bit more bite for me than collecting magic mushrooms to free the rainbow gollywogs or whatever.

So as an obsessed PC war gamer, this is a particularly interesting week, four of the most intriguing war games in many moons are being released over a 3 day period, creating a dilemma and no doubt balkanizing the community of my fellow armchair generals. The contenders are Star Wars: Battlefront, Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War, Rome: Total War and the only title not truncated by a colon, Full Spectrum Warrior. I’ve had a chance to preview all of these and formed some half-baked impressions that I will now share with the rest of the class.

Rome: Total War is the latest in the highly evolved Total war series, and probably the new release I was most looking forward to. Shogun and Medieval, it’s predecessors were historic/military games combining a board game style map for strategic maneuvers and real time 3D terrain for the tactical battles. The shortcoming of the beautiful real time battles was the rather crude 2D sprites used to represent individual units. Rome promises the huge advancement of having actual textured 3D animated models representing each soldier. The net effect is the battles play out with an almost cinematic sweep and detail.

For better or worse the remarkable graphics engine of this game has also been used on the History channel to show ancient battles, but the poor use of the technology seldom shows it at it’s best, resulting in campy and embarrassing close ups of stiff low polygon generals rocking in their saddles as if they had a stick running the length of their gastrointestinal tract. The demo was fun, and had some replayabilty and my impression is that fans of this series will get their money’s worth from this title.

The unknown is whether the strategic part of the game will be as deep and at times overwhelming as the version introduced in Medieval: Total War.

Full Spectrum Warrior reportedly began life as a military simulator teaching infantry tactics, and that is pretty much how it plays. The game focuses on using an infantry squad to overcome various urban combat challenges in the fictional third world shithole of Zekestan. The game is intriguing for it’s logical use of fireteams in real world situations, the focus is on positioning and ordering your squad. There isn’t much call for arcade reflexes, or even aiming, it’s more of a tactical puzzle-solving game with a rather unique interface. The graphics are top notch and the game has a very authentic feel, but the scripted missions, poor AI and lack of competitive multiplayer would seem to work against it’s replay factor. I would love to see this kind of interface combined with the brutal enemy AI and mission depth of the Rainbow Six series.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is an RTS adaptation of the popular miniature war game. This game recaptures the fun and break neck pace of StarCraft, but adds the depth of the rich 40K universe. One of the strange properties of miniature wargames is that they are always increasing in complexity, supplements and rules are always being updated, and new units are constantly being invented with the net effect of making the game slower and more confusing. By taking the result of all this evolution and using it to flesh out a computer game Relic has created a strategy game with great depth that is also easy and quick to play. The ability to upgrade and customize units, the nifty army painter and the awesome intro cinematic help make this my unexpected favorite of this week’s releases.

Star Wars: Battlefront is LucasArts Battlefield clone, featuring armies from both trilogies and battle locations from the films. The battlefield series features large scale multiplayer battles with objective points and usable vehicles, and Battlefront doesn’t stray far from the blueprint. This one looked pretty hot, but on closer examination it doesn’t bring anything new to the table and appears to have even incorporated the Battlefield series tradition of dirt stupid bots. Bots are pretty critical to games of this genre so it’s hard to understand why this couldn’t have been fixed before pushing it out the door. A while back this game could have been designed just to appeal to me, but after playing a handful of Battlefield releases and mods and having been bludgeoned by all the movie hype I just can’t get into it. Only the Star Wars license and Marketing muscle of LuscasArts could even get this one on the radar.