Review: Some PC games I Have Been Playing

By Mitch Reed

I am unashamedly a “triple gamer”, I enjoy miniature, board, and PC wargames. Which type I play at any given time depends on what kind of time I have on my hands. Some of the games I have been “wasting” my time with may appeal to you as well. I did not want to rank these games as much as I wanted to provide you with some comments as to why I like them, or in some cases why I will give up on them. I also wanted to compare a few games about the cold war gone hot which have been popping up recently.

Campaign Series: Vietnam (Slitherine Games)

As soon as I saw a tease of this game a few years ago I bugged Paolo from Slitherine for a beta copy. This game has a long lineage, with the initial games in this series coming out in the 1990s under Talonsoft. I love the series and I think CS:V is the best game in the franchise. It covers the conflict in Vietnam from 1948 until 1967, and future DLCs will cover all the way up to the 1979 Chinese Invasion of Vietnam.

I spoke to the designer, Jason Petho on a podcast a few weeks ago and you can hear about all the hard work his team put in the game and how much I enjoyed playing it. While the game has the look of the past games, what is under the hood will just shock you.

Recently I was trying to kill some VC units in the game and despite moving into their hex I could not engage them. I contacted Jason, and he said “tunnels”. If you love the series and if you like a good tactical game that shows you how tough the war was pick this one up. My one goal is to get my friend Brian Sherry into this game.

 

Field of Glory II: Medieval (Slitherine Games on Steam)

Not a new game, but it is one I play a lot and they are planning to release a DLC “Storm of Arrows” which I have been playing recently. I am a new convert to this period, partly because of my love of Commands & Colors Ancients and because this game drew me in.

For miniatures players, this game is for you, it has the look and feel of a miniatures game. You will pick up this game quickly and the number of factions and eras you can play makes this one that you will play repeatedly. What I have gotten out of the game is how the game gives me a much better insight into what the different units of the period can do on a battlefield. I usually play the small to medium games and they end up lasting about an hour, and even shorter if I am losing.

Radio General (Foolish Mortals Games on Steam)

This game is just different, and I think the idea is so refreshing. In RG, you play the role of a commander who is directing a battle on the radio net. You have a map where you try to fix where your units are and those of the enemy.

To make your map accurate you vocally request status reports from your units. You can even play the game using only voice commands with a microphone. RG features the Canadian Army through WWII in Europe, from Dieppe to Italy and finishing up in northwest Europe.

This game is just fun and is also very realistic. Commanders in actual conflict only know what is reported to them and in WWII it was all about talking to your subordinate commanders via the radio. In RG you control a few battalions which are historically accurate to include what kind of combat reputation they had.

Once you give your units orders, you sit back and wait for status reports, and then you can call in supporting fire and reinforcements. I played the predecessor of this game Radio Commander which puts you in the shoes of a US company commander in Vietnam. The game is so much fun and tense and why there is not more buzz about this series just baffles me.

 

Aircraft Carrier Survival: Prologue (Creative Forge Games on Steam)

This is another game that is just different and very interesting. The game has you commanding a US aircraft carrier in the early days of WWII. It is a hybrid of worker placement and a resource management game that has you make decisions on all aspects that a carrier captain would in combat.

You must take care of the offensive power of your ship such as generating sorties and finding targets and, in some cases, sending your crews to repair damage in the heat of battle. This game has a learning curve and is a lot of fun. For technical and engineering nerds like me, you will enjoy this game. The game is not yet out, but the demo is free to check out.

 

Civil War Battles: Forgotten Campaigns (Wargame Design Studio)

This game is the last ACW game that you will see in the John Tiller franchise. The reason why is simple, with the release of this game most of the battles from the war are now covered in one title or another. Forgotten Campaigns covers fighting out west in places like Texas and Missouri and some of the small battles that you may have never heard from all over the South.

The game even has the Battle of Mobile Bay which feels like a game in their Naval Campaigns series. The game has 115 scenarios, so you will never get tired of this title. WDS now owns the series and plans some great updates for the system, so if you liked any of the John Tiller games from HPSSIMS, JTS, or now with WDS you will need to pick this one up.

 

Lock ‘n Load Tactical: Digital  Lock ‘n Load Publishing (Steam)

This is a port from the board wargame that bears the same name, and it is one of the truest to the original game ports that I have played recently. I am a sucker for a good tactical wargame and I am lucky that there are so many to choose from. In all honesty, I never got into the board version of L’n L, it was not because the game was bad, in fact, it was because it was pretty good and I worried I would collect module upon module and never get the game to a table.

The game has decent AI and right now it has a ton of modules that cover several WWII and beyond conflicts. The AI is decent, but you can play online with a friend or use the matchmaker to find you an online opponent.

Games I want to love

Some games just have yet to win me over. I took the plunge and bought them and have not had the time to get into them. It is not like they are bad games, it is just that I have not had the time to explore what they do enough to have an opinion, but I want to love them.

Grand Tactician Civil War (Oliver Keppelmüller on Steam) is one such game. The game looks great and reminds me of a better version of other real-time simulation games I have tried to play before. I have enjoyed the game when I have dedicated the time to play it, maybe it is just my issues with RTS games in general.

Another such game is UBoat (Play Way SA on Steam). The game is still in beta and I love sub games, but the game I feel will require me to sit down and learn it.

Cold War Gone Hot is Hot

What is up with all the games coming out about modern warfare? This topic has always been a hot subject in all types of gaming however over the past year we have seen a boom in games on this topic.

Before I do a comparison of the new games, I want to let you know that many of the new games I have been playing have been of the RTS genre. Even though they are very popular but many of them are not to my liking. Many of the games just push too many decision points at me, giving me a sense of “helmet fire”. Too many moving units and it becomes an exercise about throwing resources into battle.

Two games that have been recently released as either a demo or a pre-release beta are WARNO (Eugen Systems on Steam) and Regiments (MicroProse on Steam). WARNO has a long lineage, the Wargame and Steel Divisions series and the new game have the feel of the past editions.

I liked the first editions of both series, however, I never got into them. I found that I was pushing units ahead and moving on to the next “crisis” I had to deal with. The game was fun and interesting, but the “helmet fire” came in fast and furious.

Regiments is a game I really love; the scope is not large and using good tactics is rewarded in gameplay. Despite the limited scale of the free beta, the unit selection is amazing and so far, the AI is pretty good.

After playing both games, Regiments is a clear winner between these two games, and I recommend checking out the free beta while you can.

The other series that you should look at is the three Combat Mission (Slitherine on Steam) games that have been re-done by Slitherine and re-released.

The CM: Cold War looks at the NATO Warsaw Pact fight in the 1970-1980s time frame, CM: Shock Force 2 looks at the recent fighting in Syria, and CM: Black Sea covers the real and hypothetical conflict between Russia and Ukraine with NATO involvement.

The CM franchise is an amazing game series and models weapons and troop morale very realistically. If the modern era is not for you, the original developers (Battlefront.com) have a series of games that covers most of WWII in Europe using a similar engine.

The last game I want to mention has a limited demo you can play for free and is called The Troop (PLA Studios on Steam).

This is a turn-based platoon-level game that is turn-based and is a lot of fun to play. As the game nears its full release, I am very interested in seeing where they go with this one.

I could have mentioned a bunch of other games, however, a brief insight into what I am playing now may help some of you to get these fun games into your digital collection.

Pictures taken from Steam and developer websites along with ones taken by the author