If you were going to recommend a wargame today, which one would it be?
I've got some birthday money that is burning a hole in my pocket. Any thoughts on which game to buy?
My historical preferences are: ACW, Napoleonics, WW2, Vietnam era, modern warfare. I have been looking for a good Roman era tactical game (not sure if that exists).
I am considering:
War in the East by Gary Grigsby and Vietnam '65 but other than that I am out of ideas.
Feel free to suggest a game below!
My historical preferences are: ACW, Napoleonics, WW2, Vietnam era, modern warfare. I have been looking for a good Roman era tactical game (not sure if that exists).
I am considering:
War in the East by Gary Grigsby and Vietnam '65 but other than that I am out of ideas.
Feel free to suggest a game below!
Comments
Other than that, if you are considering War in the East, it just had a Steam release and is 30% off there. That's not much, considering that the game is 5 years old and still really pricey, even with the discount. But that's wargaming for you, the prices are extremely high, compared to other genres.
I do have Black Sea though, and if you like the WWII titles I'm sure you'd enjoy Black Sea too, unless you have little or no interest in modern warfare.
Vietnam ’65 is $9.99 on Steam and frankly if you have even a passing interest in that era of combat it is well worth the money. Although not a true gronard type wargame by any sense, it just had a major update that improved virtually every aspect of the game play and it can be quite satisfying to win a mission in that one. As far as indie titles go, this is perhaps one of the best ones out there.
If I were to recommend anything not mentioned on your list, something that is at the top of my Steam wish list is Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm. I have the original Flashpoint Germany and it is a quite enjoyable and challenging effort, so I am hoping that the new game has some potential as I really like the late Cold War setting.
In the end though there are truly too many good games and too little time to play them.
I recommend Graviteam Tactics, really hard core WWII East Front with good graphics and impeccable and implacable simulation of eastern front.
You can get them at HPS http://www.hpssims.com/Pages/Products/Ancient/RCW/RCW.asp
They are similiar to John Tiller games. I have a couple and like them.
Or you wait till this is released https://ancientarmies.wordpress.com/
Looks like an ancient Command Ops.
There are several eastern front and a few more modern dlc's available (like Operation Hooper for example)
Its a real hardcore simulation, imagine Combat Mission with a more detailed C2 simulation, less micro-management and a operational layer !
Or take a look at "Steel Armor - Blaze of War", its a tank simulation from the same developers.
Another game you could consider (if you want a Hex game) is "Decisive Campaigns: The Blitzkrieg from Warsaw to Paris", its also on Steam !
A (pausable or accelerable) real-time 3D game of grand tactics in the ancient era, focuses on Romans vs various barbarians, Carthage of course, early and late Greeks, Macedonians, Eastern empires etc.
Definitely inspired from some miniatures rules in its internal mechanics (designer having done a grognardy computer game in the late 1980's on same Ancients theme; R:TW is mostly a 3D-ification of that concept). A player controls like 10-20 'stands', not each soldier, and they have some nice emergent behaviours on their own.
Don't know, has Napoleonics been done well like this recently? Like in your blog's title photo?
Steel Beasts ProPE?
I also played a lot of GTOS and FCRS, by the way - though no longer. Both these games, from those mentioned above, are distinguished by having pretty developed enemy AI (and GTOS has good friendly AI too), moving in the direction of the kind of AI development in CO2. I gave up on FCRS because I found the scale to be dull, after a while. It's 500m hexes, I think, and you end up with close range battles, eventually, where you can't really see what's going on (counters on top of each other). I also found the enemy AI unimaginative, to say the least, so that most battles ended up played out with massive soviet losses (me as the US) and yet the AI just kept pushing the soviet armour into ambushes etc. Maybe that's realistic, but it felt a bit WW2 to me. That said, the system in FCRS is superb and the maps are now great (since Plodder got involved0 and the dev team all great guys. I will certainly come back to it, I think, and hope they will do a WW2 iteration with smaller scale. I think that will work much better. I have played a lot of WITE and WITW too, but ultimately find the scale in those to be really daft for a turn-based system. Moving units that size a week at a go you can just cover too much ground before your opponent can react to make it realistic, for me. GTOS Is fantastic but flawed, in many little ways, but one big way, for me. It's a game that looks like it should play like the CM games, but it's definitely not. In fact, you have to command units more like in CO2, trusting the AI, because there are just not the detailed effective terrain features used in the CM series to make tactics realistic. In GTOS you cannot actually move a platoon up behind a hedge and carefully position them in cover. Instead, you have to trust the AI to do that. And it doesn't. Hence casualties are really stupid. Troops really get wiped out in a totally unrealistic way and there's not much you can do about it. So I gave it up, for now, but will probably buy GTMF when it comes, hoping for improvements.
Lol. Hope all this info is helpful! You probably know all this already. For me, CO" still the best thing out there, hands down, if you want to play a computer, or play real time against a human.
Looks very interesting. Hope it gets somewhere. Like all one man shows, I fear it will be forever in development, or beta....
Here's a link to an AAR that's just started for the new game, so you can get a feel of it all (assuming you haven't already tried these!)
http://nws-online.proboards.com/thread/379/perseverance-determination-japan-aar
Peter