Introduction

It's sad to see all the old World War II official remembrances winding down as we hit the 60 year mark, and all the surviving veterans marching onwards to the next life. However we can take solace in the fact that they will all be remembered in more detail than any other soldiers who have passed before them thanks to our engaging, arresting, and even interactive forms of modern mass media.

There is a downside, however, in the games industry in particular. If the current trend with World War II games, which began with Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, continues on into the future, then we shall have to forgive our descendants for thinking the Second World War began on June 6th 1944 and that the main Theatre of Operations were Omaha Beach and Carentan.

The obsession with D-Day and the following Battle of Normandy is continued in this latest game from Digital Reality of recent Desert Rats vs Afrika Korps fame, and all ramblings about historical obsessive compulsive disorder aside, I don’t hold high hopes for this one; it just seems far too much like a game thought up by some accountant and which the developers knocked out in a week.

Setting and Contents

There are three “Chapters” in the allied campaign consisting of four missions each and covering the Battle for Normandy from airborne operations such as Pegasus Bridge and Ste. Mere Eglese to the concluding operations such as Cobra and the destruction of the Argentan – Falaise pocket. I cruised through each scenario in about a half an hour each; that’s roughly 6 hours of gameplay, and the replay value is less than spectacular. What’s more, players can’t even jump into jackboots and play Panzer Commander, which would effectively double the game size in one fell swoop, and all they would have needed to do was create a few extra scenarios.

There’s a lot missing: there is talk of strange new tanks in the very well done mission histories and backgrounds, which accompany each scenario which tell of how vital they were to the success of D-Day. Yet there are none to be found in the game itself.