G.I. Combat Updated Preview
We take another look at this World War II tactical strategy game from popular wargame developer, Freedom Games.
Eric Young and his development team at Freedom Games know a thing or two about hard-core wargames. Much of the group's extensive design experience comes from making wargames for companies like TalonSoft and Atomic Games, and Young himself was one of the guiding hands behind the popular Close Combat series. That's why Young raised more than a few eyebrows when, earlier this year, he downplayed the wargaming aspects of his forthcoming game, G.I. Combat Episode 1: Battle of Normandy. He told us in an earlier interview that "the single most important feature will be the RTS aspect of the game. G.I. Combat is much more than a wargame. In fact, I don't call it a wargame." For Young, the philosophy behind G.I. Combat apparently isn't to squeeze the game into some narrow niche, but rather to make it "straightforward to play, and not force the detail of simulation on the player." So, whether you want a relatively accessible 3D wargame or an RTS that's carefully based on history, G.I. Combat might well offer what you're looking for.
In G.I. Combat, you'll get to relive the fierce fighting between the Germans and Americans in the Normandy region during and after the famous Allied landings there on D-Day. The game will ship with around 25 skirmish/multiplayer maps, as well as nine multibattle campaigns and operations that play out on several linked maps. You'll get to configure each battle to suit your own level of ability and style of play, tweaking a number of realism options. For instance, you can toggle the fog of war on and off, as well as the effects of command and control on your units' ability to get the job done. You can also give all troops in a unit an equal ability to carry out a task, or choose to have each soldier rated individually.
G.I. Combat plays out on the tactical level, with each unit consisting of a single squad, weapons team, or vehicle. You can control up to 120 men at a time, and this focus on controlling squads, as opposed to, say, larger platoons or every single soldier individually, should help you keep a handle on things while still letting you relate to the men.
In fact, the game still treats every soldier within a squad or crew as a unique entity. Each one is defined by numerous statistics--statistics that tend to work behind the scenes rather than requiring any sort of micromanagement. Each man is rated for health, strength, morale, training, leadership, mentality (essentially how he holds up under combat), and weapon expertise.
One of the major focuses of G.I. Combat will be the psychology of the troops. Units are semiautonomous, trying to carry out your orders as best possible but opting for self-preservation if you issue a suicidal command or if enemy fire grows too intense. At the bottom of the screen, you'll see a strength indicator for each unit, which shows the rough number of casualties the unit has incurred, as well as a morale indicator. Morale can range from good, with a unit dutifully carrying out your orders, to broken, and then to routed. Units can even go berserk under certain situations. You'll be able to keep your men's morale higher by making sure they stay within the command radius of their leaders. Coupled with these overall unit morale states you'll find even more detailed psychological states for every individual soldier, ranging from panicking or cowering to heroic or fanatic.
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- Strategy First
- Freedom Games
- Real-Time Wargame
- Release: Nov 4, 2002
- ESRB: Teen
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