By Eric T. Baker

Victory in the East 1: Red Thunder, EdenSoft’s first in a multigame series, depicts the Soviet Summer 1944 campaign to liberate Byelorussia and to destroy the German Army Group Center. The game requires Windows 95/98; a 200 Mhz. Pentium; 32 Mg RAM; and 25 Mg of hard-drive space. Besides fighting the campaign straight up, players can elect to change history. For instance, the Germans can be withdrawn to better defensive positions before the Soviet offensive begins. The Soviets can choose different attack-points and allocate their resources differently than the historical generals did.

Red Thunder is, however, very historically accurate. Every unit of regimental and greater size (and some battalions as well) that impacted the battle is a part of the game. Instead of simply counting guns or truck tires, and then estimating unit performance, the designers evaluated the actual performance of the various units’ historical commanders, logistical organizations and weapons and equipment when operating under the stress of combat.

As a classic operational wargame, Red Thunder has map scales of roughly 10 miles to the hex and combat units ranging from battalion to division in size. The battles include both ranged and adjacent combat. Air power is depicted in both air-to-air as well as ground-support roles. The game’s interface is familiar to players of board wargames, but includes a computer-controlled lieutenant who balances the game by controlling as many friendly units as the player designates. This permits the player to micromanage specific areas of the battle, without getting lost in the bookkeeping of logistics and nonessential movement and combat.

For historical flavor the game includes: Partisans, German security troops, Stragglers, German Tiger battalions, Soviet Artillery divisions and much more. Red Thunder gives players a deep feel for the action of combat in history’s largest and bloodiest military conflict.

Campaign 1776: The American Revolution from HPS Simulations for Win98 is a tactical/operational-level game covering the major battles of the American Revolution from the first clashes at Concord and Lexington to the Siege of Yorktown. The game combines a detailed, tactical game engine with a higher level campaign game so that the player can fight individual battles, a campaign covering several battles or the entire Revolutionary War. The basic unit is a 50-man company or single cannon. There are also all the elements that were critical fighting in America’s wilderness, for example, morale—routing troops can spread their panic to other units. The player controls his troops, monitoring the men’s fatigue, flanking the enemy, holding fire until the whites of the enemy’s eyes fill a musket’s sights and dealing with ammunition shortages.

The game can be played against the computer, in a two-players-at-the-same-computer hot-seat mode, over the Internet with Play-By-E-Mail (PBEM), or in multiplayer network mode over the Internet, a LAN, or direct cable connections. Forty historical and what-if battles are included in the game, but an editor to let players make their own scenarios is also provided. There are four historical campaigns: Greene v. Cornwallis, Washington v. Howe, Gates v. Burgoyne, and a small campaign covering the major events of the full war. The game engine supports both 2-D and 3-D graphical views. In 3-D view, units are shown in detail with uniforms matching the historical situation. There is complete online documentation, help files with printable versions and, for further color, period background music can be turned to, which plays during the game.

Back to the issue this appears in