101 AIRBORNE: THE INVASION OF NORMANDY - Games - http://maxpages.com/strategyforum/101

OVERALL: 68%

Detail can make or break a historical game if it doesn't feel right, no amount of innovative gameplay will save it. You might think it's impossible to go too far in the other direction, but this is precisely what 101st Airborne manages.

The background information is extensive and lovingly detailed. When you go into action with your stick of 18 paratroopers, you will have a great feel about the men and their abilities, as well as the performance characteristics of all manner of American and German weapons. Your briefing will have been from the very documents used for the D-Day airborne invasions themselves.

All this hints at a rewarding and immersive gaming experience. You start with the very same information given to the men from the real 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. When you land, you experience the very same degree of confusion and disorientation that these men suffered as soon as they landed behind enemy lines in Normandy.

And then you discover that the gameplay sucks. There's nothing wrong with the instinctive and easy-to-use command interface. But the turn-based, action-point system is too laboured, destroying any sense of urgency and tension. Moving across an enemy occupied map sector, even in group walk mode, takes ages. And the group move is a dead giveaway about the risk of being shot by concealed Germans it only works when a sector is clear of enemy soldiers.

For some reason the main map is broken into a 42-sector world, rather than continuous terrain. If some of your men leave one sector, you lose control of them until all your platoon is back on the same map a ludicrous situation if the two groups of men are within spitting distance yet separated by the artificial barrier of a map edge. You can't therefore patrol two sectors at once, say, to speed up the location of your elusive equipment bags that dropped with the stick.

If you want a really moving experience of war, go see Saving Private Ryan. And play Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines instead.

Sign Guestbook

View Guestbook

BMAT Incorperated
ADDRESS DENIED
Edmonton	Alberta	ZIP CODE DENIED
Canada
PHONE NUMBER DENIED
Fax FAX NUMBER DENIED
sovereign73@hotmail.com

Visitors: 00714

Page Updated Tue Nov 23, 1999 3:02pm EST