Review: Wargame: European Escalation

[News Portal]

As far as Alan Moore is concerned, the seventies never died. So when we offered him the chance to return to his favourite era in the virtual world of [app=8418]Wargame: European Escalation[/app], he shrieked in delight and ran for the nearest airfield.

Read full article by Alan Moore

[NukeJockey]

Whats the point of publishing a "review" if the reviewer barely talks about the game, then goes on to give it 3.5 stars even though he only said good things about the game?

[Vid]

I got this game when it came out and have been playing it solidly for a few days. It's great fun, and my fave RTS for a long time. I haven't played multiplayer as I probably suck at it but the skirmish and campaign are good fun.

Imagine Company of Heroes crossed with any of the Total War games with some harder strategy thrown in and you have an idea what it's like

[Marcus Dunn]

Yep, it’s what I’ve been calling accessible realistic strategy. It’s basically the love child of RUSE, World in Conflict and ARMA. The game deftly handles the realism and the detail, letting you look after the strategy and tactics – it’s seriously refreshing, and the more you play, has layers of depth. The key part IMO is that you don’t need to be a military history buff to enjoy it – despite the super European façade.

FYI it has 22 campaign missions, a suite of multiplayer maps and currently the ability to scrim 1v1 vs AI. The dev’s have mentioned they’re working on adding the ability to co-op vs ai in larger games due to popular demand (ETA 1 month).
The missions are broken up into various campaigns of 5ish missions. The kicker is you have a limited number of units to use during these missions, so if you are complacent with your tanks early on…by mission 4 or 5 when you really need some solid armour support, you’re in for pain. The campaign is very challenging, and very addictive. It's lacking a story beyond the retelling of events in a newslike manner, and dont expect any showy cutscenes or the like, but the gameplay is king. Reminds me of TC's Red Storm Rising (the book - not any game)

The game looks bloody brilliant too. You’ll spend most of your game zoomed out, but anytime you go in close, damn if it doesn’t look great. Almost every part of the game world is relevant too. Drive tanks through a forest? Expect treads stuck in mud debuffs. There’s a great system of ‘moving fast’ where if you click on a unit and command it to ‘move fast’ to a destination, it’ll beeline for the closest road and will arrive at its destination considerably faster. The drawback is it wont return fire if its ambushed – but it’s great for using in areas you think are somewhat secure (ie between your own lines).

There’s a gazillion units to choose from, but ultimately it comes down to a tank/support/air/infantry cat and mouse type game, based around the lay of the land. Things like hedgerows, high ground, forests, towns etc are all stupidly important, and neglect scouting them before you bring high value targets close at your utter peril.

I am thoroughly loving this game – moreso because somehow it wasn’t even on my gaming radar – and I am generally all over RTS.

[MuscularTeeth]

Yep, it’s what I’ve been calling accessible realistic strategy. It’s basically the love child of RUSE, World in Conflict and ARMA. The game deftly handles the realism and the detail, letting you look after the strategy and tactics – it’s seriously refreshing, and the more you play, has layers of depth. The key part IMO is that you don’t need to be a military history buff to enjoy it – despite the super European façade.

FYI it has 22 campaign missions, a suite of multiplayer maps and currently the ability to scrim 1v1 vs AI. The dev’s have mentioned they’re working on adding the ability to co-op vs ai in larger games due to popular demand (ETA 1 month).
The missions are broken up into various campaigns of 5ish missions. The kicker is you have a limited number of units to use during these missions, so if you are complacent with your tanks early on…by mission 4 or 5 when you really need some solid armour support, you’re in for pain. The campaign is very challenging, and very addictive. It's lacking a story beyond the retelling of events in a newslike manner, and dont expect any showy cutscenes or the like, but the gameplay is king. Reminds me of TC's Red Storm Rising (the book - not any game)

The game looks bloody brilliant too. You’ll spend most of your game zoomed out, but anytime you go in close, damn if it doesn’t look great. Almost every part of the game world is relevant too. Drive tanks through a forest? Expect treads stuck in mud debuffs. There’s a great system of ‘moving fast’ where if you click on a unit and command it to ‘move fast’ to a destination, it’ll beeline for the closest road and will arrive at its destination considerably faster. The drawback is it wont return fire if its ambushed – but it’s great for using in areas you think are somewhat secure (ie between your own lines).

There’s a gazillion units to choose from, but ultimately it comes down to a tank/support/air/infantry cat and mouse type game, based around the lay of the land. Things like hedgerows, high ground, forests, towns etc are all stupidly important, and neglect scouting them before you bring high value targets close at your utter peril.

I am thoroughly loving this game – moreso because somehow it wasn’t even on my gaming radar – and I am generally all over RTS.

you may have convinced me to purchase this game now.

[Marcus Dunn]

I'm telling ya, as a strategy fan, it was a steal on steam for only 39.95

[Vid]

I do like how your forces continue from one mission to the next, if they die, you don't get them back. It was a bit of a shock at first though.

[RKazza]

AND only a few bucks more in retail. $41.33 at Fishpond.

The campaign difficulty ramps up mighty quick..
The first US mission for example, "Here's a handful of units and maybe one or two supplies, now go try and survive against the whole USSR army on a ~10km2 map". =( I just gave up and tried to make my units move on the road straight towards the destination to no avail, damn AI ATGMs aimbotting my vehicles while mine totally miss.

[InAUGral]

Yep, it’s what I’ve been calling accessible realistic strategy. It’s basically the love child of RUSE, World in Conflict and ARMA.

I second that.
I have played this game a fair bit since I first got my hands on it back in the closed beta. It has slowly been improved and perfected since then and now is a truly wonderful strategy game however I don't think it will take off as much as Starcraft II in terms of competitive gaming but it will still do quite well for clan matches.
The game has mod tools coming out as well which im hoping will bring custom missions such as the various wars from the cold war as well as a Chinese army to play as.

I recommend this to any Strategy game fan and the price currently is $40USD which is very good for a new game. I will offer some advice however and that is to make sure you unlock some vital units such as first getting Chopper recon (NATO =Gazelle or WARPAC= Mi-9) then some good AA( NATO = AMX-30 Roland WARPAC= Tunguksa) and some artillery (NATO = M109 work towards paladin variant WARPAC = Pion) and for tanks (NATO=Abrams WARPAC=T62V). Once you have those units you will be able to field a diverse army that can win and once you have them you can work on particular units you want depending on your play style.

EDIT: if you have any questions about how to play the game I can offer advice or suggestions if you want.

[PalZer0]

Seems that Starforce is being used for DRM even in the Steam version. Not sure of any activation limits yet but will post back if I hear anything.

[DarkMellie]

Pal, no-one will care when you do

I like it so far.. it's damnably hard. Even the tutorial mission is ridiculously difficult, but then I still haven't figured out how to get extra units? My four Leopard's and my Recon either die slowly or run out of fuel.

[Marcus Dunn]

The game will sell less because it's not marketed well here. Like i said before, i only heard about it recently as i saw a friend go online in the beta/steam, and im like - what game is that? While RUSE wasnt perfect, i was interested to see what they made next as it WAS innovative in a way. This game couldnt be more awesome coming out of their stable IMO - the realism side of it - the way tanks fire from miles away - it's just so cool.

That being said - while the gameplay itself is superb, it's lacking polish on the front-end. It's not terrible, and it's certainly not a console port (spit!) but the game makes little effort to actually explain to you what to do. For example - 9 out of 10 people go into the campaign not even realising you're using a set number of units from the start. From a historical pov, this is fine, i mean, you're taking units through map to map, the reward of course is the survivors become veterans and can be deployed as veterans from that point forward. But it doesnt really explain this.

Also - as DarkMellie just posted, it doesnt go to lengths to explain the unlock system. When you are ingame you can press ESC at anytime and unlock additional units using command stars. If you really need a helo recon unit (invaluable imo), go and unlock one. Finding your pissy recon jeep is getting 1shotted? Go unlock a heavier APC style recon unit.

The button top left of screen (tilde works too from memory) unlocks the 'deck'. This deck has your unit choices available. Explaining it would take another essay, but if you have any questions, post them here and we'll try and answer.

Also if anyone is looking to hook up for a game, add Deepjay ingame (go profile (top left) then add (bottom right) - again, not intuitive!) Keen for partners for 2v2/3v3 etc.

Oh and one last thing - every unit has limited petrol and ammunition. You supply them by either taking them to FOB bases, or by deploying supply trucks and helicopters (like super chinooks) who will drive out to your units, supply/repair/re-arm them, then you drive them back to the FOB to refuel. The supply trucks/choppers have a yellow bar which will empty to black to show the progress. The truck and unit has to stop to refill and i think be out of combat. You'll get used to the various icons that flash by a units name, such as needing fuel/ammo/repairs. The trucks have a large radius around them so you can usually refill several units at once, but the more units the faster it'll suck out those resources. You can buy higher capacity supply units though.

[Jude]

Whats the deal with units not being able to respawn? Do you have a limited number of each tank you can use through the entire campaign? or do you have to do something in particular to allow you to purchase more of the same unit once all the existing units have been killed?

[Otto-matic]

Pal, no-one will care when you do

And you would be wrong

Pal, let us know what you find. Too many issues with Starforce in the past.

[Jeatalong]

Why wasn't all the content in the contributors posts in the actual review?