Published August 4th, 2008
If you’re into war simulation then Combat Mission II is a must have. Unlike the first person simulations, which may have very realistic graphics, this PC game is realistic in that it forces you to think out your every action. You become the general of the army. You decide whether to attack or retreat, try to outflank the enemy or meet him head on. You have to consider the terrain, time of day and weather. You don’t need skill, as the game is actually simulated for you after you supply your troops with their orders, but you do need brains, lots of them.
And that may be the one drawback to this game for people who don’t want to have to think that much when they’re playing a PC game. This game is all thought. And the control you have over your army is complete. The instruction manual is over 200 pages long. Fortunately, it is very well written, though it will require a lot of reading.
The concept itself is not even that simple. Basically, Combat Mission II focuses on World War II on the Russian Front. The armies involved are the Germans, Fins, Russians, Italians and Romanians. The game covers the time period between 1941 and 1945 when the Russians marched into Berlin. For US fans of the good old US Army, this is one big disappointment as the game doesn’t cover the war in Europe.
The game follows what they call the “we go” principal. In other words, even though you are commanding a large army, depending on the battle itself, you give specific order to each division, company and squad and then after you give these orders you don’t physically control the actions of each. They will take action on their own based on your orders. If you command them to attack a bunker, they’ll attack the bunker on their own. In the course of doing this, they may be ambushed by an enemy squad or company. If so, they will either fight back or retreat on their own, that’s if they’re not killed first.
There are a number of weapons and vehicles in this game. Each one is programmed to behave as realistically as possible based on ballistics and other factors. Yes, a lot of work went into the programming of this game.
The terrain is set up according to the actual terrain of the various countries and has a great effect on each battle’s outcome. The battles themselves are set up according to many of the real battles that were fought in the war. Of course you may get different results since this is a simulation.
But the most fun comes from programming your own battles and designing your own terrain situations. The number of things you can do with this game are virtually unlimited. Not only can you program battle scenarios but you can program campaigns which are a number of battles strung together.
Combat Mission, made by CDV, is arguably one of the best war simulation games ever made. If you’re a big war fan, you won’t be disappointed if you check this one out.
Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to PC Games
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Published July 25th, 2008
The Dungeons & Dragons Eye Of The Beholder series was one of the most popular PC adventure games that ever came out. It was one of the first really big ones and started what would become a very long line of other similar types of games by a number of companies. But Dungeons & Dragons was the pioneer.
The series was issued in three installments, simply titled Eye Of The Beholder, Eye Of The Beholder II and Eye Of The Beholder III. There were sub titles to each game but most people only remember them by their version number. In all honesty, the version number was all you needed as each game was so much different from the one before it.
The original Eye Of The Beholder was a very simple and rather crude game graphically speaking. It came on one floppy disk, which should give you an idea of how simple it was. But in spite of the old fashioned graphics this game was as exciting as it came. Around every corner was a new challenge. The puzzles in the game itself were so complex that unless you were an expert at these games you couldn’t get through them without the clue book. Clue book sales were very big for all three games.
The concept of EOB was simple. Your team of adventurers was given a mission by the king of the land. You then went out on the mission and tried to complete it without getting killed. There were 12 levels in the game so it took quite a long time to get through the whole thing, even with the clue book. The creatures were many, including skeletons, goblins and of course the evil Beholder himself, one very dangerous creature. In order to ultimately win the game you had to get by him, which was no easy task.
Eye Of The Beholder II was a vast improvement over the original. The graphics were a little cleaner and it was much harder. There were many more levels and the final battle itself, against the evil dragon, was even harder than the one against the beholder. In this game you also fought not just one beholder but many. Again, the clue book was a must for this game as the puzzles in the game are mind boggling to say the least.
Unfortunately, Eye Of The Beholder III was a step back from number two. Yes, it was even more involved and the final battle was so hard that your hands could go numb trying to get through it, but the game itself was very disjointed. Things in it didn’t seem to go very well together and many of the puzzles seemed thrown together. Plus, they changed the battle mechanism. In an effort to make it easier, they only made it not as interesting. The game itself just had no real heart to it. Oddly enough, it was the least popular of the series and after number three the Beholder series was done.
In spite of its disappointing finish, this series was still one of the most popular early adventure games of all time, even to this day.
Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to PC Games
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Published July 21st, 2008
The year was 1989. The concept was simple. Build a city from scratch, watch it grow and hope to God that it didn’t end up getting destroyed by fire, storm or just a bunch of riots in the streets. It was simple, straight forward, to the point and started a craze of goal oriented PC games that have been going strong ever since.
The original Sim City was very simple and by today’s standards, very primitive. The graphics were crude two dimensional blocks and the terrain itself was pretty unrealistic. But people had a blast playing it. As you kept building onto your city, which had to be done under certain basic rules, it became harder and harder to keep it from crumbling under your nose. There was a degree of realism to the game. As your city grew and the population grew with it, so did crime, pollution and all the other negative things that went along with a big city.
As was stated above, you did have to follow some basic rules. For starters, you couldn’t have a city without some kind of power plant, whether it be coal or nuclear. Nuclear was very expensive so you pretty much had to start off with a coal plant. You then put up your houses and businesses and had to connect them to the plant with electric lines and to each other with the same.
You were given a certain amount of money to do this. Everything cost money in this game, even the power lines. So you had to be very careful with the way you spent it. Income was derived by the taxes paid to you buy the people who moved into your city after you started to build it. Actually, at first you’re a town. You don’t get to be a city until you reach a certain population, which takes quite some time.
There are other ways you can make money such as putting up a stadium for sporting events. You can also put up a sea port to get income from trade. Airports can also be built. Eventually your city is really hopping. That’s when the fun starts. How?
Well, your roads start to crumble from the weight of all the traffic jams. People begin to complain because of the traffic, crime and pollution. They start to move out if things get too bad. When that happens, your income goes down. There’s not enough money to repair the roads. Funding for your police and fire departments is inadequate. Fires start to break out and there aren’t enough firemen to put them out. Things become a real mess.
As simplistic as Sim City is, it’s also a real challenge. Unfortunately, because of limitations of the game itself, cities can only get so big before the game crashes. Fortunately, Sim City 2000, a 3D version of this game, released in 1993, took care of this problem. Sim City 3000 came out in 1999 and Sim City 4 saw the light of day in 2003.
To this day, many people still get a thrill out of seeing their favorite city crash and burn.
Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to PC Games
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