Airborne Assault: Highway to the Reich
Designer: Matrix Games
Platform: PC only
Focusing on the events of September 1944 and Operation Market Garden, Field Marshall Montgomery's plan to land 35,000 paratroopers 150km behind enemy lines in order to secure bridges across the Rhine, Highway to the Reich gives war-gaming buffs the chance reenact one of the greatest military blunders of World War II.
One of, if not the most true-to-life real-time strategy wargame currently on the market, the 2D game-play engine features cutting edge AI. Players can go into combat as either the Allied or Axis forces in real-time, can pause the game to issue orders or slow things down to a snails pace in order to forestall any upcoming military disaster.
The military units are structured in a hierarchical system, with companies grouped in battalions, battalions grouped in regiments and so on up the chain of command. This enables players to issue orders at any level; meaning you can issue parallel orders to a single company, an entire battalion or the complete regiment. While sounding rather complex the game's user-friendly interface and, of course, the pause mode, comfortably do away with the over-hectic micro-management problems of many a real-time wargame.
Packed with 30 scenarios, several full-length campaigns, a map creation utility which enables players to create custom scenarios, historically correct weather conditions, the game's only drawback is its lengthy learning curve.
Highway to the Reich might not appeal to fans of 3D first-person shoot 'em ups, but with its multitude of options and true-to-life details and decisions, the game will keep armchair generals entrenched for many hours, if not days.
Total Club Manager 2004
International distributor: Electronic Arts
Designer: EA Sports
Local Distributer: EA Sports Taiwan
Platform: PC and PS2
If you're one those people who enjoys yelling at the TV while your favorite club battles it out for 90 minutes and then you bore friends with next-to-useless soccer statistics, then EA Sports latest soccer management game Total Club Manager 2004 is for you.
It allows you to manage one of 1,500 teams, as well as national squads, realistically portraying the pressures of being a football manager. Including teams from 50 leagues, such as the English Premiership, Nationwide, French Ligue, German Bundesliga, Spanish Primera as well as the UK's non-league Conference, Total Club Manager 2004 is the most extensive and complete team management game to date.
The game includes a 3D-Matchplay option, customized formations, individual player orders, passing styles, a realistic transfer market and transfer window, reserve squads, lifelike player attributes and even authentic team chants. And should you wish to renovate your stadium the game's Stadium Editor function allows you to create a unique ground -- all of which works well on fast computers. Owners of slower PCs, however, might get frustrated as the graphics and certain screens take some time to load.
Along with nifty new-look interfaces and gaming actions, players must organize their private lives, buy and sell players and club stocks, create training regimes, discipline players, deal with the media, set prices for club merchandise and, more importantly, keep the fans happy. Should things take a turn for the worse then you can even hire a shaman to improve club moral.
RSS