Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm Player’s Edition
This is an excellent game that combines playability with a design philosophy that rewards authentic gameplay. You give your subordinates broad directives and waypoints, which they will carry out to the best of their abilities. The game abstracts the busywork and assumes that your subordinates are handling their own responsibilities. Fire support can be automated in case plotting artillery targets becomes tedious. Battle command becomes the player’s main concern over micromanagement. It’s very easy to plot out a battalion or brigade-size action and coordinate timings between the component units.
– Real player with 1271.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Cold War Multiplayer Games.
A very strange beast of a game, aiming to tackle myriad of unique aspects that are rarely represented in games of similar nature. Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm is not only a treat for fans of turn based strategy games, but also a must have for ‘Cold War-turned hot’ scenario fans, meaning those who liked Tom Clancy’s most famous book about same topic will feel ultimately at home with this game.
FC:RS gives us a plethora of operations and separate missions, which we can play against the AI, from any angle, or in multiplayer with hotseat mode as an option. Be warned though, it’s a hefty game, meaning battles may last hours of real time, and despite it being a sort of old school tile/hex based strategy, it very much aims to simulate the outcomes rather then entertain you as a ‘game’ in it’s strict sense. That said the simulation itself sets of to tackle so many aspects of modern warfare it still amazes me to no end how many features are being calculated over span of a turn.
– Real player with 295.6 hrs in game
Möbius Front ‘83
I think this is my first Steam review; I watched a talk from Zach and he said that he takes feedback seriously so I figured, why not?
I love Zachtronics’ coding games, and I also love turn-based wargames, so I was pretty excited for this one. Unfortunately I think they’ve missed the mark this time. There’s a lot to like, but while it has the pleasing simplicity of games like Into the Breach (single-digit numbers for health, damage, range, and speed, grid map, etc.) it lacking some of the elegance.
– Real player with 53.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Cold War Sci-fi Games.
Möbius Front 83 is a simple and good game. Yet to finish it, but played enough of it to say what I think.
PROS:
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Great presentation, graphics is aesthetically pleasing, great animations of units – I love how dust animation is used to indicate direction of movement of vehicles.
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Outstanding sound design. Muffled sound of weapon fire and explosion sound like you hear weapons firing in the distance or if, like I imagine it would be to hear sound of weapons firing while you sit in an armoured vehicle.
– Real player with 39.7 hrs in game
Vietnam ‘65
Vietnam ‘65 is a turn-based strategy war game set in the la (sic) Drang Valley of the former Republic of Vietnam. (South Vietnam, if you prefer.) You start with a US Army base with some units inside, and expand from there. Expansion involves setting up a fire base to extend your zone of control and (if you prefer) forward bases where you believe they’ll do the most good. From there, you fight against Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units of various types, send US and South Vietnamese (ARVN) infantry into villages to get intelligence on the enemy and/or raise support from the locals (called “hearts & minds”), purchase more units (or perform some actions) with the game’s version of currency (called “congressional support”), make sure units are supplied, and hope that you have at least a 50% score in hearts & minds when the mission ends. End of mission screens (win or lose) feature a US Army officer’s uniform and medal case that shows the rank you’ve achieved and progression to the next rank, along with progression to earning future medals and decorations.
– Real player with 81.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Cold War Historical Games.
November, 1965 South Vietnam.
In the past two years the Vietcong (National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam a.k.a. the Viet Cong), with support of the North Vietnamese Peoples Army (NVA), established a foothold in southwest Vietnam, along the Cambodian border.
Running supplies and reinforcements from north to south Vietnam. Since December 1964 the South Vietnamese army repeatedly suffered major defeats against North Vietnam, to the point of breaking.
To prevent that a first deployment of just 3500 Marines in a defensive role in March ‘65, quickly escalated to 200.000 GI’s by December ‘65. Marking the beginning of a full grown offensive ground war, of the US and his allies, against North Vietnam. In a plan to destroy the enemy and his infrastructure in 12 to 18 month.
– Real player with 61.4 hrs in game
Lock ‘n Load Tactical Digital: Core Game
TL:DR - LnLT is amazingly flexible, easy and cheap to try out, and really fun. The only reason NOT to try it is that you already know you don’t like hex-map war games.
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If you’re one those people who have been waiting forever for a computer version of Advance Squad Leader, or if you’re someone who just appreciates a solid tactical war game, Lock ‘n Load Tactical Digital is for you. It is certainly not as complicated as ASL, but the LnLT system is amazingly flexible and quickly translates into a fun and repayable experience.
– Real player with 331.9 hrs in game
This is an excellent digital version of a great squad level wargame, played with counters,chits and hex boards and dice.
If you pine for the days of Squad Leader fun, this might scratch your itch.
The mechanics are slightly different to most other tactical games - basically you and your opponent take it in turns activating a squad/vehicle/hex/stack. This makes for interesting decision making, because you can’t move everything forward at once while your opponent just watches.
Rules are not super-complex, but they’re not dead simple either. There’s enough complexity to keep grogs happy, while being streamlined enough to not get into having to read or understand multiple sub-clauses. In any case the game handles all the rules and results of fire/assault etc for you. You get to just have FUN.
– Real player with 232.5 hrs in game