Land Doctrine
At one point during play a gamebreaking bug happens in the design screen. It states that I need to add the engine gun and suspension and yet have all three, still the game won’t let new designs get built for this arbitrary stupidity, dear dev, I have no idea where exactly the code is wrong for this but please fix because it’s easily the best 5ish bucks I’ve spent
– Real player with 33.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Tactical Sandbox Games.
A small 5 dollar (or regional equivilant) game that has the player conquer every city on the map using researched and developed tanks and varying levels of trained infantry.
Building up your armies with the right equipment and soldier/tank ratio is important; large numbers of tanks are good for deserts, planes, and quick movement across the map, but will be slaughtered in cities. Large numbers of infantry and a tank battalion or two is great for assaulting and holding cities, but are slower to move on the map. Reasonably equal ratios of tank and infantry battalions are well-rounded, able to take on just about every environment, but won’t be as good as more specialised army groups.
– Real player with 33.3 hrs in game
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 Tactical Cold War 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
Armored Brigade
Armored Brigade is one of the little games on the current market that tackle the idea of ‘Cold War going hot’. Not only that, but its actually good unlike some other titles I shall not name.
Personally, being almost a stan of the Cold War setting, ever more so of the concept of the entire situation going south and sparking into a full-blown conflict, I must say I came into AB biased.
In short to not write a novel– AB is a land-centric, more accessible spin on CMANO and CMO in the sense of giving orders to your troops, making objectives and such, all while set units fulfil them. Where this game differs from the CMANO/CMO apart from the focus on land forces, are 3 areas– setting, communications and maps.
– Real player with 127.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Tactical Simulation Games.
Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s I played to death Close Combat the Russian Front. I played the Single player campaign countless times and also dabbled in the MP scene at the time through my 56k modem. By todays standards that game is now obsolete but it inspired in me a fascination with military history and tactical and strategic games. Since those days I’ve been searching for a game that could be a worthy successor. This game is it. Its realistic but not to the point where its boring. Its extremely easy to learn but requires sound military judgment to play successfully, which is testament to its realism. Its customizable in terms of you creating missions and content for it (I used some of my own sound effects for example). There is a great Chechnya mod on steam workshop, although there isn’t much more than that ATM which was a little disappointing.
– Real player with 95.5 hrs in game
Scourge of War: Waterloo
This is a wargame and isn’t ashamed of it. It is a good representation of the Napoleonic battlefield. With the three DLC it covers the entire Waterloo campaign. The best praise for the game I can think of is that descriptions of game battles read exactly like descriptions of the real battles (see the end of this review for an example). Watch some videos, read some after action reports, see what the game is like. You will know very quickly if this is a game for you.
There are a lot of options on how to play, and there is even a game mode that puts you in the saddle of your commander so that you can only see what he sees. There is also a mode where commands have to be given by courier. The experienced Napoleonic wargamer (or historian) will find that he can do pretty much everything in the game that would have been done in the original battle.
– Real player with 317.1 hrs in game
This is actually not a review of the vanilla/base game and instead a review of
the mod named Kriegspiel. Since that mod actually is what Scourge of war
Waterloo never became.
My top favorite games:
Scourge of war Waterloo/Ghettysburg, Syrian warfare, NTW3mod for Napoleon total war, Take command 2nd manassas, Sid meiers Gettysburg, Fields of glory (Amiga), Men of war Assault squad, Project reality, Arma2
Here is my review about the Kriegspiel mod and the Kriegspiel gaming group:
Now the KS mod has been updated to 1.29 but the only person that really knows and can explain the KS mod in a good way is DarkRob316.
– Real player with 197.6 hrs in game
Close Combat - Gateway to Caen
A more up-to-date version of the CC classics.
I will edit this review later, but first off I want to say something immediately.
I see people claiming to be CC “fans”, give it thumbs down, and post stuff like “you can’t pause the game”.
Guess what, you can.. just hit the “pause” key on your keyboard. Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? And if you truly had played any of the predecessors, you’d realize that this version works just in the exact same way.
By the way, you can press spacebar to activate range info (I have command influence range as standard). There’s a comprehensive list of keybindings in the manual.
– Real player with 286.7 hrs in game
TL;DR: Gateway to Caen’s a better version of the older CC games. It’s worth buying, but only if you can get past the many, many irritating problems it has. Finishing the campaign feels like reaching the summit of Everest to find it wrapped in cloud; a great deal of difficulty overcome, an achievement undoubtedly reached, but disappointment souring the pleasure. It’s not worth getting - unless you can live with its numerous, crippling flaws. Read on…
Pros:
- Updated graphics, improved sounds, same intuitive interface, welcome new campaign setting.
– Real player with 187.8 hrs in game
Close Combat - Panthers in the Fog
This is a great game. I find that it has a good setting, operation Luttich, the german drive to cut through western Normandy to cut off patton as he is now in brittany. In real life the germans didn’t fare so well, they lost horribly and the losses they took here only quickened the losing of france. Now you take the helm either as the US, or as the germans. The latter I find to be the more intriguing of the game as you are desperately trying to hold off the enemy’s superior forces and achieve your goal.
– Real player with 390.8 hrs in game
Review CC: PITF
As with all games in the CC Series lot’s of fun can be had using real (historical) tactics, or making up your own.
The AI at times may challenge or confound by waivering between way too passive and too aggressive, but in general expect that you can use real tactics and they will work mosttly the way the y would in the real world:
-Terrain will affect line of site, view / cover from view and protection.
-Dismouted Infantry and Scouts, wheeled or tracked Recce Vehs / APCs (Sdkfz 234/### armored cars, Sdkfz 251/### half-tracks, Greyhounds and more) are used to peel back the fog of war, and find the soft targets that cannot otherwise be not seen until they fire upon you.
– Real player with 253.0 hrs in game
Crash Dive 2
THIS GAME DESERVES A GOOD REVIEW!
Reasons for a cheap price tag:
Graphics are interesting, even though simplified in appearance there is much detail in the game.
U-Boat modeling very simple and almost toyish, in appearance but it is all there.
Modeling on objects in distance of being observed don’t have that realistic emergence into view, just that don’t see it now and you do see it thing but it works. You won’t spot smoke on the horizon in other words, just modeled if you see them or not and then scaled according to view and size. There is debris, fires, oil slicks, smoke, fog, rain. clouds are a bit unrealistic in presentation.
– Real player with 130.8 hrs in game
Crash Dive II, it’s about the closest recent game that I have found as a sub sim to Silent Hunter III, Wolves of the Pacific.
It will be a game that will be compared because they are both based in the Pacific region during WW2, but there are differences, for instance, Crash Dive II is much easier to get straight into and overall is an easier sim to play, its not as in depth as SH II and does not have a choice of subs or starting zone to choose from, does not have historically dodgy torpedoes that don’t work (all these do) and the graphics in Crash Dive II could be better, but are still ok for the fact this isn’t a big developer.
– Real player with 29.9 hrs in game
Graviteam Tactics: Operation Star
Simply put, the best tactical wargame around, cardboard or PC. It’s not all that difficult to learn, nor is it loaded with tedious micromanagement, so don’t be indimidated thinking this is the land version of Harpoon/Command:MNAO. However, it is time consuming and the slower pace will likely bore those without a serious interest in Eastern Front military history. The manual/tutorials are not very helpful but the UI is really quite simple to pick up with some experimentation. If you’ve played less realistic games like the Wargame series, Combat Mission, or Theatre of War you should feel some familiarity. As far as subject matter, it’s primarily WWII eastern front, but DLC operations are available to expand it into the rarely covered Angolan Civil War as well as a Sino-Soviet border skirmish and a hypothetical Iranian intervention in the Soviet-Afghan War. (unfortunately if you want an actual Soviet-Afghan War scenario, you’ll have to look to GT’s other game, Steel Armor)
– Real player with 263.3 hrs in game
I grew up playing games like Close Combat and Combat Mission, but I always felt like those two games could be improved upon. Close Combat, particularly the 2nd and 3rd games in the series, were a great mix of highly tactical combat with campaign systems that allowed your units to fight battles which affected future battles and operations. While the later games went on to have bigger battles and maps, they lost a bit of the magic of the early games where the battles felt much more like struggles and where your past mistakes could lead you to be stuck in situations in Arnhem, or wherever, where you had 4 squads and needed to hold on for a half hour to get a decent cease fire. On the other hand, the Combat Mission series took the war to 3D but kept the extremely complex morale system and tank combat. Yet I never found the series quite as engaging due to a lack of any meaningful campaign system and clunky, abstracted interface and graphics. What I always wanted more was a strategic system like that of the later Close Combat series mixed with 3D graphics, and I think I’ve found that in the Graviteam Tactics series.
– Real player with 134.2 hrs in game
Legions of Steel
Legions of Steel PC Game Review by GameMasters.com
The Past has hit the Present with an all new way to play the classic board game, Legions of Steel.
This game was released yesterday ( July, 16th, 2015) on the PC. I heard about it last night, and instantly started doing research about it. As mentioned before, I tried to help with the Kickstarter and after it didn’t go through, I was bummed. Yes, I probably could have tried to keep up with the Legions of Steel news and watched it develop, but I didn’t. Call me lazy, or busy, but for whatever reason it dropped off my radar.
– Real player with 376.9 hrs in game
Great game for the right person. I think this is a very well done tactical turn based game irregardless of time period. If you like tactical turn based games this is programmed very tight with few if any bugs.
I like this one a lot. My issues with it:
1. Graphically nice, however I find the background distracting. Use the tactical view for unhindered mayhem. (T key). They should give you multiple backgrounds to play with / in.
2. Ony two campaigns, yes and one is a tutorial campaign that is very thourough and well done. That being said, humans are the best to play against.
– Real player with 20.2 hrs in game
Austerlitz
Austerlitz allows you to replay the battle of Dec 2nd 1805 between Napoleon I and Alexander I from the viewpoint of the two commanders. 75,000 French troops v 95,000 Russian and Austrian, battling over a map of 104 sq miles. This game is CERTAINLY NOT RECOMMENDED FOR MOST GAMERS, if you consider yourself a casual gamer. Simply because the interface is old and there’s tremendous amounts of off-PC record keeping and documents to view (this game was made before interfaces could keep the type of data required).
– Real player with 19.5 hrs in game