Airborne Assault: Red Devils Over Arnhem Preview
Airborne Assault: Red Devils over Arnhem will let you rewrite the history of one of World War II's most famous battles.
The great Allied victories of World War II, like the D-Day landings in Normandy, have long excited the imagination and have been immortalized in books, movies, and games. Sometimes, great Allied failures have proven equally compelling. Case in point: Operation Market-Garden, an attempt to build on the D-Day success and hasten the Allied march into Germany itself. Market-Garden provided the subject for Cornelius Ryan's classic book A Bridge Too Far, as well as the popular film of the same name. Now the ill-fated operation is going to get the computer game treatment with Panther Games' Airborne Assault: Red Devils Over Arnhem, a game that will let you rewrite the history of that battle. Airborne Assault will blend detailed historical accuracy with accessibility, and it will also take the unexpected step of simulating operational-scale battles in real time. You'll get to choose for yourself whether you want to lead from above the fray or micromanage your units.
Market-Garden has long been considered one of the most controversial Allied failures. Instead of heeding Allied intelligence and, some would argue, military common sense, British Field Marshal Montgomery decided not to immediately clear German troops from the area around the major Dutch port of Antwerp, which was vital for supplying the eventual Allied advance into Germany. Instead, Montgomery bypassed the area and launched Market-Garden, a complex airborne operation using British and American troops that was designed to circumvent German lines and seize vital Dutch bridgeheads near the lower Rhine River. Airborne Assault will focus on the area around the famous Arnhem bridges, where the Germans mauled the British 1st Airborne Division in fierce fighting.
Airborne Assault will let you control brigade- to corps-sized forces with individual companies and battalions as you maneuver units. Battles might set a few battalions against each other or feature hundreds of units, totaling more than 80,000 men. Rather unexpectedly for an operational-scale game, Airborne Assault won't be turn-based, but rather will play out in true real time with three different speeds to choose from. You'll also be able to pause the game whenever you like and issue orders while paused. This should let you establish a blend of tense action and careful contemplation that suits your tastes.
Not only will you be freed from the restrictive turn-based time scales of traditional wargames, but you also won't have to deal with a restrictive map scale or hexes. The game maps will be based on actual WWII Allied Geographical Section General Staff maps, accurate down to four meters. You'll get to zoom in and out freely to a level that suits you. On the main battle map, you'll get to toggle a one-kilometer-by-one-kilometer grid overlay to help you gauge distances, though units won't arbitrarily be restricted to the grid squares. A strategic minimap on the side of the screen will help you quickly locate distant units when you're zoomed in close on the battle map.
- GameSpot Score8.1great
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- Battlefront.com
- Panther Games
- Wargame
- Release: Jun 17, 2002
- ESRB: Everyone
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