TheWombat_matrixforum
Posts: 469
Joined: 8/2/2003 Status: offline
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I have most of the SSG stuff--don't have CaW, but I think all the rest--and I bought this one too. Mostly because I've always had a soft spot for SSG, since the C64 days, and seeing the staff (Roger, Ian, Steve, maybe?) at an Origins in the mid-1980s. I still have, somewhere, a letter one of 'em wrote me responding to a Warlords question, even. I like this game, though I certainly hear the criticisms being leveled. I was disappointed in BF because the user-created stuff didn't really come through. I will say that, IF SSG makes Kharkov the baseline game engine for a while, it has a lot going for it, particulalry the AO stuff (which is very neat). And this battle is pretty interesting in and of itself. But I do get a bit frustrated that the battles I want to play, are never on the game system I want to play! I have all sorts of nifty scenarios for BiI, but after playing Kharkov, damn it, I want 'em in this engine! My only substantial criticism is, dudes, it's 2008. I've been running 1600x1200 for three years or more now. Many folks are running widescreen (as I do on my Macs). Unless you're using some ancient steam-powered PC, there's no reason you can't be pushing more than 1280 res in 2D. So why can't we get desktop resoution graphics? Or at the very least a couple more higher resolutions? And, in the same vein, it appears that if you alt-tab or minimize while the CPU is doing its turn, the game pauses? It takes an eternity to go through the computer's turn, and I'd love to tab out and do work or something, but it appears (I could be missing sometihng) that that's a no go. Seems odd. I will say the AI is fun to play against, as it seems not only good in terms of VPs but seems to behave more realistically; in previous SSG games I've found the AI sometimes is a bit, um, gamey in its approach to winning. I like what it's doing here though. And as for the single scenario, sure, I'd love a bunch of options, but as has been pointed out, I have a collection of board and computer games that focus on one battle, so I'm not livid about it. But I do understand, completely, how folks might not want to sink $50 into it.
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