Shattered Union E3 2005 Preshow Report

Perhaps the blue states finally got tired of the red states. Or maybe the "Tastes Great" crowd couldn't reconcile their differences anymore with the "Less Filling" folk. Whatever the case, Shattered Union is a newly announced turn-based strategy game that depicts everyone's favorite hypothetical scenario, a modern-day American civil war. What's this? To some, a second civil war seems more likely to happen than a major publisher actually putting out a turn-based strategy game. But the success of Advance Wars on the Game Boy and other turn-based games on the consoles seems to have spurred interest once again in the genre.

Beer quips aside, the story in Shattered Union has the United States splintering into a half-dozen regional factions after terrorism, internal strife, and the nuking of Washington DC take their toll. Your job is to take control of one of these factions and attempt to reunify the country under your leadership. You can even play as those dastardly Europeans, as the old countries of that continent have the gall to send "peacekeeping" troops to America. Sacre bleu!

The game itself is played out on a 3D tactical map, with the option to even turn on a good old-fashioned, war game-style hex grid. Terrain and features of the map, such as roads and cities, are all rendered in 3D, while military units are represented by large 3D unit counters. In many ways, the look of Shattered Union is sort of what a 3D version of what the classic PC war game Panzer General would look like.

Since the game itself is turn based, you have plenty of time to analyze and make each move. Once you plot out an action, you can sit back and see it unfold. And if it's a combat action, it may result in vehicles exploding, cities and forests burning down, and more. Shattered Union will feature nonlinear mission design, and the decisions you make will affect the game.

Shattered Union is set in the relatively near future, so you'll get all the latest and greatest military hardware to play with, from M-1 tanks to Apache helicopters. (Or, if you're getting help from the Europeans or Russians, you may get T-95 tanks and MiG fighters.) Oh yes, we should definitely mention that there are nukes in the game, and we've seen one dropped on a city, shattering the buildings and leaving burned-out husks. Even worse, nukes contaminate the ground around the blast, making it hazardous for units to even pass through.

There are seven factions in the game: Greater California, Arcadia (the Pacific Northwest), the New Republic of Texas, Heartland, Dixieland, Yankee Union, and the European Expeditionary Force. (Interestingly, early versions of the map had the political divisions eerily along the lines of the 2004 presidential election.) The game will feature both online and offline multiplayer support for up to four players, and it will ship for the PC, PS2, and Xbox this fall.