Let’s start the New Year right.
January 9 – Heart of Empire: Rome (Paradox/Deep Red)
January 15 – City Life: World Edition (CDV/Monte Cristo)
January 23 – Europa Universalis III (Paradox)
January 30 – Battlestations: Midway (Eidos)
So, four games. Early in the year, of course, and this is otherwise shaping up to be an excellent year for strategy games. The big title for me on this list is, of course, EU3. Review copies are already out, so I have been playing it. I can’t say much else until the review is done.
Battlestations: Midway is probably the most interesting title this month, especially in light of the deeply divided reaction that greeted Pacific Storm, a game I could never quite warm up to. Mixing battle planning and action sequences is an interesting idea, but there’s quite a gap between making the action part of the strategy (like in a real time strategy game) and having action that removes you from the big picture. It is also a PC/Xbox 360 game – a growing trend. Given the Microsoft relationship to RTS development, it shouldn’t be too surprising that its console is becoming the go-to second platform for these types of games. One more reason to get a 360 instead of the oh-so-cute Wii.
Great Invasions is also supposedly coming out this month from Strategy First, but I think most people that care have already played it.
“One more reason to get a 360 instead of the oh-so-cute Wii.”
Most worthwhile Xbox/Xbox 360 games also come out on PC, making an Xbox 360 kind of superfluous for PC gamers. At least the Wii and PS3 offer otherwise unavailable titles, making them much more complementary. Not that I’ll be buying any of those anytime soon.
Yeah, I got Great Invasions well over a year ago. The manual was in French, of course, but being Canadian this was NO TROUBLE…Actually, it took me a while to get around to knowing what the hell was going on. It was better than Pax Romana, but still not great. Which is why the supreme awesomeness of Birth of America is even more amazing.
Though it is true that many 360 titles are also PC compatible, it also means that there is a possibility of strategy titles that are 360 only – designed for that controller instead of the mouse/keyboard stuff we’ve gotten to know so well. As it stands now, the Koei games and some of the handheld Advance Wars stuff are the only console only strategy games. I think that will change as developers learn how to make good use of the interface options.