We have an early competitor for the worst strategy game of the year.

World Forge is going to keep making games. They released the Mongol themed Golden Horde in Europe earlier this year and it will certainly land with a thump on our shores at some point in time. And they are working on a game called Battle for Atlantis.

And good for them for sticking with it. But Great War Nations (sold internationally as Fate of Hellas) is so similar to last year’s terrible Ancient Wars: Sparta that it in no way justifies either the expense or the separate SKU. It’s neither sequel nor expansion nor remake. It’s a cheap effort to take advantage of the people who, because of some defect in their soul, liked their first game.

It has the same problems of scale and cost that the AWS had, the same terrible pathfinding, and the same waste of a clever idea – unit customization. There may be some talent at World Forge, but given what I have seen of their work so far, I would probably not miss them if they tried something different. Like database programming.