I'd like to give a short and rather technical description of the sequel to the very successful tactical wargame Battle Isle. It has been released last Wednesday on CDROM, a disk version will follow the next weeks and the US release will be handled by SSI (like for The Great Battle) around May.
A more detailed review will be issued to the next Game Bytes.
The game is centered around a rather childish background plot which reminds me of old SF stories like Perry Rhodan. A huge computer network has gone nuts and battles its builders using robots. You, the great strategist, are humbly invited to control the counter forces. Actually you are kidnapped but you do not mind. :-)
Battle Isle is a tactical wargame at the level of companies and smaller. The game proceeds in turns and in each turn one of the (up to seven gamers) may move his units within the limits of their allowance and battle enemy units. This is a major change to the old Battle Isle where in one turn you move and in the other turn shoot. The other major change is that the map is initially black, just like in Empire for instance. You have to explore and you have to keep on watching to know that is actually in front of you.
There are several multi-player maps and a huge 20 level campaign that ranges from simple 10+ unit maps to *very huge* maps with complicated objectives. Each map in the campaign has a dedicated objective that you have to achieve: it is presented nicely using icons and small pictures at the beginning of each map. Here are some examples:
Map 1: two small towns are threatened by a tank brigade (6 tanks, several scouts and infantry). You task is to destroy these tanks. Map 2: you stand at a bridge head facing an enemy divisonal HQ. One depot is only weakly defended. Take that route and capture the HQ before strong reinforcements arrive. Be careful! There are partisans around. Map 3: Capture two airfields and establish a long-range scanning service for the next battles. Etc.pp.
Each map has a bonus score that may be used to boost your units experience in the next map.
Central to a sufficient realistic tactical wargame is a wide range of effects that are issued by the underlying terrain and the current weather. The weather is simulated nicely, including a weather forecast, and affects the terrain with light or heavy rain, or snow. Typical underground is fortification, streets and roads, railways, hills and mountains, rivers, ocean, woods and plain dirt. In addition the maps are beautifully adorned with buildings and technical stuff like wires etc. but these do not have an effect.
Like in the other tactical wargames from Blue Byte there are several building types that can be captured and serve important tasks: HQ, depots and towns can be used to repair, refuel, equip or train your units. Also they provide some shelter. Factories and warfts an in addition used to build new units. These building types can be captured using a robot infantry or scout unit. It is possible to recapture a build many times. Units that enter a building cannot leave it the same turn.
Every building has its own resources of material and all buildings have a common pool of energy. Some buildings are assumed to have an attached mine and rebuild their material stock slowly. Other buildings have to be equipped with material manually. Material is used to build, equip or repair units. Energy is used to build, repair or refuel units.
The full list of unit types is attached at the end.
Each unit in the game has a set of properties and capabilities as follows:
And last but not least: each unit has its own experience with ranges from 1 to 12. A unit with experience 12 is almost invincible and therefore very important. A unit gains one point of experience for every battle and two points if at least one enemy unit was destroyed during that battle. After each map you are credited a bonus score that can be assigned as experience (training without fighting) to the units in the next map.
Battles are resolved immediately after a unit stopped movement. If the unit is adjacent to formerly unseen enemy units then these start firing immediately. Otherwise you may direct your shots at all units within range. The actual formula is rather complex (surprise!) but roughly it involves the relative weapon and protection strength, experience difference, terrain, surprise, adjacend enemy or friendly units and a bit of random.
Battles are presented in a eagle view of the scenery where the units are drawn in polygon style. In addition there is a summary window that shows the factors of the battle and the outcome.
The game is presented in a beautifully drawn technical style. Units and cut scenes are drawn using Autodesk 3D Studio (animated on CDROM). Battle scenes are in polygon style with adjustable detail level and speed. The user-interface is rather good with an emphasis on mouse and lots of keyboard shortcuts. It is hard to describe but in principle it is a mouse- based menu system with which I got familiar after some minutes.
The display is no longer split but each player has a large view of the battle ground. If several human players are involved this means some turn- around times where the players have to amuse themselves otherwise.
The manuals are rather good but in a semi-conversational style that makes it complicated to find facts easily. A technical reference is missing here. On the other hand the game presents new unit types throughout the game and also you get lots of extra playing hints. There are lots of dialogs with other commanders, researchers, security staff and the like that should inform or confuse you. Apart from the mission briefings these dialogs are not really important but add a nice touch.
The game needs at least a 386 with 4mb memory (580kb free). All common sound cards are supported. The diskspace is 6mb for the CDROM and (I think) 12mb for the disk version. The CDROM should be double-speed and a good CDROM cache is advisable. The game constantly accesses the drive to load data. In general the load times are acceptable.
The overall game speed was excellent on my 486/33.
Lots but no critical bugs so far. My general impression is that the game was released in a hurry but the engine was polished long before that.
A great game that guarantees many hours of enjoyable play and some head- scratching too. If you like games like V4V, Empire or the other Blue Byte games like Battle Isle 1 or History Line (The Great War) then you will like this game. It is a definite improvement over all current tactical wargames except that it has no connection to the real world. My only gripes are a missing scenario editor, a dumb AI (although much better than in most other wargames) and the somewhat sloppy release.
This is the list of all units in the game. Most maps do not allow all types of units.
Demon I31: the regular robot infantry, 9mm MG
Troll I42: elite robot infantry, Panzerfaust and 12mm MG
Ranger: fast scout, 9mm MG
Buggy: fast scout with a long range, 9mm MG and ground-ground
missile
Planum 5: engineer, builds streets and railroad. no weapons!
Regio: engineer, builds fortifications, no weapons!
Snake: armored transport, 20mm MG
Technotrax: light tank, 80mm cannon, 9mm MG
Sting: rocket tank, ground-ground missiles
Comet FP-42: flak, 35mm cannon
Pulsar A3: artillery, 80mm cannon
Archimedes: rocket artillery, ground-ground missiles
Samurai-2: heavvy tank, 100mm cannon, 20mm MG
Nashorn: Sturmgeschuetz (?), 100mm cannon, 30mm MG
Spring 1: armored transport, 9mm MG
Sinus: engineer, repairs units, 9mm MG
Orion OR-3: mobile radar
Atlas: cheap transport, no armor, no weapons
Algol: transport (GAS)
Alcor: transport (AMMO)
Rune: radar station
Medusa: flak, ground-air missiles
Skull: bunker, 2x90mm cannon, 20mm MG
Ionstar: 120mm cannon (deadly if trained)
Super Virus: mine without intelligence
Dolmen Z1: transport train
Anaconda Z2: armored train, 90mm cannon, 30mm cannon, 9mm MG
Exaclibur Z3: artillery train, 200mm cannon, 9mm MG
Menhir Z4: fast train, 80mm cannon, ground-air missile, 20mm MG
Monolith Z6: engineer train, repairs, 20mm MG
Moewe SX-1: fast but weak boat, 30mm cannon
Vader D-1: may move on shallow water and level ground, transporter,
20mm
Patrix: patrol boat, 40mm cannon, 20mm MG
Hydra: torpedo boat, 90mm cannon, 30mm cannon, waterbombs, torpedo
Polar C-6: Cruiser, 120mm cannons, 50mm cannons, waterbombs, 20mm MG
Zenit MBS-19: Battleship, 220mm cannons and lots more.
Rex: repair and transport ship, 30mm cannons
Titan N2: carrier, ground-air missiles, 50mm cannon, gas, ammo
Orca U7: u-boat, torpedos
Shell S3: transport u-boat, torpedos
Uhu R-51: radar plane
Ghost FB-3: stealth fighter, missiles, 20mm MG
Stormbringer: high flying bomber (flak proof), bombs, 20mm MG
Genom J1: fighter plane, air-air missiles, 20mm MG
Exterminator: fighter plane, missiles of all kinds, 250kg bombs, 20mm
Sperber TB-4: submarine hunter, waterbombs
Spectrum: transport plane (GAS), 20mm MG
Crux: transport plane (UNITS), no weapons
Dragon H1: helicopter, missiles, 30mm cannon, 20mm MG
Guppi H2: transport helicopter, 20mm MG
This review is Copyright (C) 1993 by Andreas Toenne for Game Bytes
Magazine. All rights reserved.