Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath Impressions - First Look

Strategy First's PC strategy game will pose the question, "What if the Cuban Missile Crisis had gone badly?" The similarly titled game will take place in the wake of a fictitious nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, and it will represent a mad scramble for resources among the world's surviving superpowers. In fact, its four playable factions will be China, the USSR, a coalition between the US and the UK, and the combined forces of France and Germany (all of whom will speak in their native languages).

Aside from including a great deal of black-and-white stock footage of President Kennedy looking extremely worried, the game will also feature a highly realistic set of soldiers and vehicles that you can lead into battle, all accounted for in an in-game encyclopedia that keeps track of size, weight, armor, and other data for war buffs.

The game's battles will take place all across the globe. You'll observe your position from a tactical map that shows the world from a continental view, and if you wish, you can choose to autoresolve any and all of your conflicts from this view rather than getting down and dirty on the battlefield. Otherwise, you'll fight zoomed-in real-time strategy battles against your rivals in tactical engagements that require you to capture supply depots (rather than harvest resources) to commission support in the form of reinforcement armies.

Interestingly, your units will have various abilities on the field. For instance, demolition squads can blow up bridges, while engineering corps can rebuild them. Infantry units can also hide in trenches or be used to steal enemy vehicles. Furthermore, the game will have a definite rock-paper-scissors balance model among its units so that vehicles will obliterate light infantry, while antitank soldiers will blast the living daylights out of enemy armor. However, the postnuclear battlefields of Cuban Missile Crisis will have one other important nuance: the presence of radiation poisoning in certain areas of certain maps. If you're forced into an irradiated area, your troops will die very quickly indeed, and your vehicles will stop dead in their tracks (as their drivers also die). Your goals will be to wage World War III on this dangerous new version of planet Earth and emerge victoriously over your rivals. The game is scheduled for release this September.