Hell Frozen Over covers the Battle of Attu Island at the tactical level, with the LNLT system. Other games have covered this out-of-the-way fight in the Pacific Theater, including the recent War In the Wind, but this is one of the first to feature the fighting at this echelon.
Developed by Wide Games and Published by Codemasters
Prisoner of War is an evolution, of sorts, of the usual mind-assaulting first-person shooters – or a regression, depending on one’s perception. True adventure games with more puzzle solving and limited or no violence are rare; such a title set in the chaos of World War II makes for an even more interesting game. I tried hard, however, to not like this game; I’m afraid that this perception came from the plethora of lukewarm reviews that have preceded mine into print regarding this title. Something tugged at me, however, to check this one out; I had a feeling I might not be disappointed.
Besides the Cold War, very little can evoke images of skullduggery or sneaky missions performed behind enemy lines like World War II. OSS agents mixing it up with fedora-donned instruments of the Gestapo and their jack-booted gun-toting guards…it’s a time of intrigue that helps to define modern standards for suspenseful storytelling.
So bring in Prisoner of War. No, it’s not about spying, but the premise is similar: an Allied pilot is shot down behind German lines while running a photoreconnaissance mission. He’s captured and brought to a sort of way-station (which doubles as a truck depot) for prisoners that are eventually shipped off to the official Stalag Luft prisoner-of-war camps. The pilot, one Captain Lewis Stone, resolves immediately and heroically to not stand for such imprisonment, and is off on one minor adventure after another to outwit his German captors and escape to freedom. Along the way, he uncovers a heinous plot that he tries to stop.
Developed by Zuxxez and Published by EIDOS Interactive
Panzer 101
Using World War II as its canvas, Panzer Claws paints an RTS strategy game in vivid appearance, clustered with frantic game-play that fits perfectly in the chaotic battles it portrays. Although not realistic – Panzer Claws has a resource-gathering and unit-building system similar to other RTS’s, such as StarCraft – the game is still fun to play.
Cyrano
This one’s not even close: Combat Mission in its various iterations.
I remember getting hooked on the WEGO gameplay and the ability the 3D environment gave you to peek over the shoulders of your digi-troopers and guess at what war must have been like for them. Multi-player randomized battles to the wee hours of the morning were pretty great too. What made both x1 and x2 really special, though, was the incredible variety of, yep, AFVs. I’m not an WWII rivet-counter — I save my O.C.D. for Napoleonic games — but the fellows who designed Combat Mission are and it shows every time you pan around their products; not to mention the remarkable array of modifications available on-line. There are no CRTs or bog charts here. These are games played with a merciless physics engine that feel every bit as gritty and grand now as they did nearly two decades ago. They’ve let me play with some of the most famous tanks of the war and some I never even knew existed.
Others have come for her throne, but CMx1 and x2 are still queen of the battlefield for me when it comes to tank warfare.
The tanks used in World War 1 were monstrous beasts that stood well over the ground. Most carried machine guns or at best very light cannons. After 1918 the industrial powers realized that anti-tank guns (and even anti-tank rifles) could easily knock out a WW1 era tank because of its thin armor, weak engine, slow speed and very high gun profile.
Much of the interwar period saw the development of Armored Cars and light tanks. Armored cars were much faster than the WW1 era tanks (especially on roads) and carried either similar or heavier guns than WW1 tanks. Thus the armored cars were faster, lower to the ground, less expensive to build, easier to maintain, and had more firepower than a WW1 tank.
Many armored cars were developed immediately after World War 1 through the early 1930s. As they developed, they became lower to the ground.
The development split into three directions.
In one direction the gun was removed and it became a scout car. An example is the Dingo Mark 3.
