JameyCribbs
Posts: 35
Joined: 2/27/2007
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Hi. Longtime (mostly) lurker on these forums. Have purchased more Matrix games than I care to remember (not that that makes me any kind of expert). I recently purchased Battlefront and wanted to give one man's opinion on it.
I'm in my 40's. I grew up doing a lot of solitary board wargaming, mostly Avalon Hill stuff. Have played most of the standard pc "traditional" wargames (anyone remember Microprose's Crusade in Europe). Like I said, I'm sure my purchases alone have provided David Heath's kids with braces and Erik's kid's college fund! 
Anyway, you would think Battlefront would be right down my alley. I prefer turn-based, operational-style wargames that focus on WWII. Plus, Market Garden is up there as one of my all-time favorite battles (I have read "A Bridge Too Far" at least a half-dozen times). So, me and Battlefront should be a match made in heaven, right?
Well, unfortunately, we just didn't hit it off. Oh, we tried a few dates, but the spark just wasn't there. This post is my effort to try to figure out why.
I think there were two major issues I had with Battlefront. Let me tackle the simpler one first.
First of all, I can't freakin' read the counters! This has been discussed in this forum before. I don't know if I'm getting too old, or I need a new prescription, or what, but having to sit 12 inches away from my monitor and squint to play Battlefront is not conducive to a good time. I have a 17-inch LCD monitor, native resolution 1280x1024. And before everyone starts suggesting things, save your breath. I've read all of the suggestions and they, to me, are un-acceptable. I tried playing at 1024x768, the counter's are still too small and now everything is blurry. I tried 1024x768 without scaling; now my screen real-estate is the size of a postage stamp. No, I'm not going to plunk down hundreds of dollars to buy a new monitor, I spent over $200 just last year to buy the one I have.
Now, I know that there has been a lot of questions about what is meant by "the counters are too small". What I'm talking about is that it is too hard to see the information on the unit counters. The unit emblems are not identifiable. It's hard to see how many steps are left, etc, etc. Yes, I know about the alt key. It helps a little, but having to move it around to see a counter feels archaic, and when the magnifying glass is over a unit, the unit and terrain in view is blurry again, because the resolution that it is being magnified to is not native. It just feels like something out of the Dark Ages. Contrast this with the sharp, easily legible counters used in COTA. Don't get me wrong, the terrain is beautiful. And I could even live with the counters, if they were just bigger so that the info on them was bigger and easier to see.
Ok, on to my second point. The designer's of Battlefront have proudly stressed the point that they wanted the game to have a board wargame feel to it, all the way down to the gamer being able to see the dice roll for combat. That's great, nothing wrong with that. Except, I think they have taken it too far. I think they have thrown away all the advantages that the computer offers. I have read through the manual twice, yet, everytime I start a scenario, I get overwhelmed. There are so many little bullets, roundels, jerry cans, etc. scattered all over the map, the unit boxes, the transportation boxes, the interdiction boxes, the combat boxes, etc, that I can't remember what everything means. Ditto for the colors. I keep forgetting what a skeleton on a red background means, is that a dead step that can be replaced by a timed replacement? The designer's have attempted to squeeze all kinds of grognardy info all over the place...and that's great! I love grognardy stuff. But the problem is that I can't keep in my head what all the little pictures and colors mean. I have to constantly refer to the manual, a manual that, in my opionion, is poorly organized and incomplete.
Now, the designer's could have salvaged the situation if they had decided to use tooltips, but they didn't. Let me contrast this with Birth of America. There are some similiarities between the two games. BOA also has a lot of little sub-icons/images/whatever scattered all over that give you information about a unit or a battle or a location. The reason why it works in BOA is that you can hover your mouse over any one of these images and an awesome tooltip pops up explaining exactly what the image represents! What does Battlefront give you? Zip. Battlefront does have a rudimentary system in place whereby if you click and hold the right mouse button, you might get a one-liner telling what a button does, or, if you are over a hex, it will pop up an equally confusing box that gives you another bewildering array of icons/images/bullets/roundels/jerry-cans that represent the state of units/terrain/objectives/etc in that hex. But you are left with the same problem, how to quickly interpret and remember what all those symbols mean!
What kind of a difference does all this make? Well, I recently bought both Battlefront and BOA. I tried really hard to get into Battlefront. Man, I wanted to play MarketGarden so bad and see Frost's troops hold onto the Arnhem bridge long enough to be rescued by the Guards Armored, but I just couldn't past the first turn. The unintuitve, information-cryptic user interface was too daunting for an 43-year old who had worked all day and was in danger of falling asleep. The last thing I wanted to do was to have to sift through the manual once again to decipher the user interface.
Contrast this with BOA. For the last three nights, I have tackled the small 1776 Carolina scenario. Everytime I play it I have fun, but not only that, I learn the game more, because it is fun to hover the mouse over all of the colorful symbols, read the well-written tooltips, and start to internalize the workings of the user interface. It is now becoming second nature and I don't have to refer to the tooltips nearly as much, but they are there if I need them.
Ok, I think I will stop. I know these thoughts are rambling and incomplete. I really have not posted this in an attempt to bash Battlefront. On the contrary, I have tons of respect for SSG and only want to see them succeed. I played Carriers At War till my fingers were numb. It's just that I think that it is possible for them to keep that old-time board wargame feel, while using the modern power of the pc to make their wargames complex yet accessible. I don't know about you, but I just don't have the time to constantly pore over 50 pages of the Third Reich rulebook like I used to when I was a teenager.
SSG, please take a lesson from Birth Of America. They designed a fun game that looks like a board wargame, but is very easy to pick up and play, and has a depth and complexity under the surface.
Jamey
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