What makes the commercial failure of Silent Storm so disheartening isn't so much the fact that it's a great game--although it certainly is that--but rather that it likely represents the dying gasp of a style of gameplay that many PC gaming grognards remember fondly. Anyone who played PC games in the early '90s likely has fond memories of X-COM, one of the many classic titles that MicroProse put out. In it, you commanded small squads of soldiers in turn-based tactical combat battles that mixed destructible buildings and true line-of-sight modeling with a creepy alien-invasion storyline to create a game that caused many an all-night gaming session--"Just one more mission!" was a popular refrain for its many addicts. Unfortunately, the tactical combat featured in X-COM never quite took off, and in the end, the real-time strategy of games like Syndicate became the gold standard for tactical combat games.

All of which made the appearance of Silent Storm in early 2004 a very pleasant surprise. Silent Storm took the turn-based tactical strategy of X-COM and enlisted modern technology to craft a gaming experience quite unlike anything we've seen since Jagged Alliance 2. The basics are the same--you control a squad of soldiers, take turns in combat with your enemy, have a set number of action points you can use in each turn, and so on--but there are some significant changes as well. One of the most unique of these is the inclusion of an RPG-esque class system, in which each of your characters takes on a specific role, such as sniper, medic, grenadier, and so on. This forces you to position your characters correctly if you want to succeed.

In addition to its solid gameplay mechanics, though, Silent Storm features one of the most impressive engines ever to grace a turn-based game--almost everything in the environment is completely destructible. In many games, destruction is merely eye candy, but it's often necessary in Silent Storm, as it's usually just as easy to get behind enemies and bust through a wall to ambush them as it is to assault them head-on. Is there a sniper hiding behind a window on the upper floor of a building? Take out a rocket launcher and destroy the window, giving yourself an easy shot at the now-exposed sniper. This kind of emergent gameplay makes each battle unpredictable and tremendously entertaining.

Unfortunately, the game does require quite a bit of patience on the part of players--individual missions can often take an hour or two to complete, and since Silent Storm doesn't have the base-building or research elements of games like X-COM, you really have to enjoy the tactical combat to get the most out of the game. Whether it was the victim of changing tastes, or merely a lack of press coverage and hype, is debatable, but the fact that Silent Storm sold fewer than 20,000 copies in 2004 is certainly disappointing to fans of the grand turn-based strategy games of yesteryear.