Preview: The Falklands War: 1982. Demo of Upcoming Release. - Page 1/1
Created on 2005-06-24 by Greg 'Geg' Thomas
Title: Preview: The Falklands War: 1982. Demo of Upcoming Release. By: Greg 'Geg' Thomas Date: 25-06-2005 1522 Flashback:Orig. Multipage Version Hard Copy:Printer Friendly
There seems to be a bit of an interest in the Falklands war of late. Not as much as WWII games that are flooding our shelves, but a bit. For example the new flight sim being made "Jet Thunder", various modifications for Operation Flashpoint and Battlefield series.
Currently 'in shipping' is 'The Falklands War: 1982'. A strategy game from Shrapnel Games based on their "ATF: Armoured Task Force" engine, which is not unlike TacOps, which is used by the military.
In fact, their site even says "Uses an enhanced version of the ATF: Armoured Task Force engine (also used in Raging Tiger: The Second Korean War), a military-grade simulation wrapped up in a civilian package."
With this I was prepared for a hardcore simulation of the war between the Brits and the Argies. I started downloading the demo, which is a nice 15meg, so 56k'ers like myself won't be put off at trying it out. Download and installation complete, I fired it up.
I was immediately hit with a notice about colour quality, and that I was running 32bit instead of 24 or lower. Ooookaaaaaaay. Ignoring this, I found the game didn't crash in my naughty 32bit mode! Phew!
I was greeted then with a menu giving me the options of a Campaign, Imported Missions, Saved missions, Multiplayer & Scenario Builder. A pretty full set of features, especially if one of you wants to dress up as Margaret Thatcher and the other as Galtieri for a bit of multiplay action.
I chose campaign and presented with two choices. A tutorial or another scenario. I chose the tutorial scenario to get learn the game, which I felt, would probably have a steep learning curve for someone like me who is more of a "be the soldier" than "control the soldier" type of person. Up pops a web page with a link to another HTML page for the playing tutorial. Another link is to start playing the tutorial. Okay this is pretty good. The site claims that with the boxed version you will receive an actual manual, and no .pdf's, which is very refreshing!
With the tutorial open and the game up, I'm ready to go. On screen in the game I have a map and a number of icons representing my units, with my objectives and where things are. Things seem a bit cluttered but with a click of a button I can get rid of some of my troop icons, and I can zoom in at increments.
Everything seems confusing at the moment, but the tutorial helps a lot. Perhaps the hierarchy of units could be done a bit better, but I guess it takes a lot of getting used to. Its best if you re-read everything at least 3 times to be sure.
With a few clicks of the button I'm apparently getting them easy for when the actual game 'starts'...when I play god and set time moving forward.
Things are starting to happen now-but very slowly. Compression is set to 8-speed and they're off! To get my troops moving, you have to do an awful lot, as compared to other games where you simply point and click, or click and drag. However, with this you get the benefit of many options to give your units, in relation to cover, formation, fire/hold fire, suppress, marching speed etc.
Things are travelling along well until I spot an Argentinean unit. The tutorial says they're marines. Okay, I want to take them out. Usually, I'd select my unit and then right click on the enemy, or the like. However here it's not that simple. This may seem like a downside, but it prevents you from throwing your units away on a senseless charge.
But what have we here! My little troops are opening fire. Seems I didn't have "hold fire" on anyway. Rattatattattat. I wasn't expecting sounds so it's a good addition.
Soon, the Argentinean Marine Fire Team is destroyed, as is half the aircraft at the field. All right team! Woo. I tried following the tutorials suggestions of a fire mission from HMS Glamorgan but to no avail. Hey! There are more Arg Fire Teams at the field. But we've got them on the run now. Forward boys! Victory is ours! Mind you, I did set the difficulty to extremely easy...
I spoke to soon. Suddenly there are more Argentineans and one of my units is destroyed. Argh!
Okay, so I didn't exactly follow the tutorial, but the outcome was the same.
Victory is mine! Muahahaha! Cough. Yes.
All in all, this is a rather good game. Granted, not the simplest RTS of it's kind out there, but it's definitely good. I feel, perhaps, a video tutorial, might be a better option than a HTML page. Not to take away from the tutorial, which was detailed and helped you understand a lot of other things. Don't get this game if you're going to sit down, and expect everything to be self-explanatory. You'll end up sitting there, scratching your head, staring at a bunch of NATO symbols.
That said, this game, like any game, is not without its faults. It can, at times, be a bit too much and confusing, and you're going to do a lot of stopping and starting of time to give each unit it's orders. Though, I haven't got the manual that they're going to be shipping with the game. I can only hope they have detailed explanations of both the unit symbols and the buttons on the menu bar at the top. Those are great shortcuts which will help you a great deal, instead of doing a lot of clicking in menus, if you know what they are first.
I'm not a big fan of the pop up windows explaining things. Especially if they're opening in my browser. Not a big gripe, but I can only wonder how difficult it must be to have smaller windows, or even tabs, in the game window itself.
The graphics are okay. This game isn't about graphics. The maps are good if not a little cluttered when zoomed out. Though when zooming in, there is a level when you go from a white map to a more detailed, coloured map, showing grass, beaches etc. This made the game pause for a few seconds each time I zoomed down this far, though that might be because I had a few things running.
So, at the end of the day, what can I say about The Falklands War: 1982? It's a great sim of this conflict, yes. It's definitely a great strategy game, without being simple and straightforward. It's a real strategists game. Not a 30 minutes shoot 'em up. Hardcore RTS'ers out there will most likely love it, but there’s not much for those to just pick it up and start recreating the battle for the Falklands. This is a hardcore sim, which I think only hardcore simmers will appreciate.
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