The worst ending to a computer game I ever saw was also the end to the worst computer game I ever played. That would be Sierra’s “Civil War Generals: The Battles of Robert E. Lee”.
Dear Lord, that game sucked. I have never played a worse computer war game. Everything was wrong with it. To enumerate:
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They weren’t even really the battles of Robert E. Lee. You started at First Manassas, well before Lee took command, as a ‘training’ mission. Upon finishing that, you jumped to Second Manassas- completely skipping all of the Seven Days’ Battles where Lee attained his stature as a brilliant general.
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Sierra hired some famous artist of Civil War scenes to paint the portraits of the generals. Apparently, either the artist was rushed, or Sierra ran out of cash, because only about twelve portraits were available- Lee, Longstreet, Jackson, Sherman, Burnside, Meade, and Grant, then five portraits used over and over and over and over again to represent everyone else. The fact that Sherman had a personal portrait just showed me how fucked the games’ priorities were- Sherman shows up for First Manassas. And that’s it. But as a famous name, he gets a portrait, while Slocum- who fights in nearly every battle- is General Generica.
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In an attempt to make things like the wildly successfull Panzer General, you were offered Prestige Points for beating the enemy. You could use these points to buy new rifles for your troops, just as in PG you could buy better and newer weapon. This was incredibly stupid. The change in gun technology from 1861 to 1865 in no way resembled the change in armored warfare technology from 1939 to 1945, and it was obviously a “well, this is why Panzer General was a success, therefore, if we include it in our game, our game will be a success.”
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Damage sustained in one fight was generally carried over to the next battle. Somewhat understandable, as it was the two same armies hitting each other again and again; unfortunately, it was overdone, especially given the timing of the scenarios. Two of the ‘toughest’- Antietam and Chancelorsville- come immediately after the turkeyshoots of Second Manassas and Fredericksburg. At Fredericksburg, I managed to kill every single Union unit on the map; this meant that at Chancelorsville and later at Gettysburg, I faced a Union army that couldn’t even muster half the troops I had.
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The rules were too goddamned simple. Now, I don’t mind simple rules, and I’m not given to playing games of ASL-level rules myself. But when your rules are so damned simple that what happens in nothing even close to historical, then your rules are bad. There were numerous examples of this, but the one that really stands out in my mind is the fact that there were no rules against moving while adjacent to the enemy. This, on top of being generally given X hexes of trench to sit in covered by Y amount of units to sit there, with Y being half of X, meant that the big battles over forts generally meant the Union rushing my lines, slipping in between the “holes” between my units, and then attacking me (with a bonus!) from behind. Gah.
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Winning didn’t matter. I won Antietam. No notice that the Union is offering terms. No notice that I was raiding Baltimore- nope, retreat back to Virginia, apparently, because suddenly I’m fighting Fredericksburg. I kept Jackson in the backfield during Chancelorsville to keep him safe; nope, he’s dead anyways because he dies at the end of Chancelorsville even if he’s at Confederate HQ. Not that any notice was actually given, he just wasn’t there for unit placement at the next battle. I won at Gettysburg- hell, I kicked ass at Gettysburg, taking the entirety of the hill for myself and picking off the Union reinforcements as they came in along the main road. I’ve beat the Union in the North, have destroyed the Army of the Potomac, and threaten to attack Baltimore or D.C. proper… and now I’m fighting in the Wilderness against Grant because it doesn’t fucking matter, win or lose, you go through the same scenarios in the same order.
So I finally get to the end of this crappy little piece of shit- mostly because I want to end it, get it over with, and never have any desire to wonder what would have happened had I won, and therefore have no reason to ever touch it again. If you beat Grant in the Wilderness, you finally get to attack Washington, though why Grant losing in northern Virginia is necessary after kicking McClellan around western Maryland and Meade through Pennsylvania makes no real sense. So then I get to fight in D.C., which apparently has taken the time to set up a network of pillboxes on the border, and has hired crack German snipers given how well they fight. But fuck it, it’s the last battle, and I just want it over, no matter the cost. Throw lots of troops at them, lots of troops die, but eventually the forts crack and I take D.C. proper. The last day of battle ends, and I have an obvious overwhelming victory according to the score.
The screen then fades out, and an American flag appears. The American flag catches fire, and quickly burns up. And then I’m back at the main game screen.
Fuck you, Sierra. Fuck your crappy little game and your crappy little programmers. What the fucking fuck were you thinking? You claimed this was a game designed for beginners- not only was it designed for beginners, it was designed for people who had never actually seen a wargame before, and never would again because of how crappy your game was. You talked about the ‘historical quality’ of the game without even talking about the history. Oh, sure, you threw in a few Ken Burns-ish dramatic readings of letters between the battles, but maybe the person playing would like to know why they were fighting at Chancellorsville rather than the fact that Johnny wanted to go home and propose to Bessy Sue.
And then, to top it all off, at the end of a game where you can only portray the Confederates, the ‘victory’ is a fifteen second clip of the American flag burning up. What, was this some sort of condemnation? “Congratulations, you’ve succeeded as the Confederacy, which means you have destroyed the United States and everything that it stands for!” Thank fucking GOD you guys didn’t design Panzer General; nothing would have made me feel happier upon finishing that game than watching film clips of Jews being led off to the gas chambers, because anyone who would deign to play the Confederate or Nazi side in a war game must obviously be an evil fuck who agrees with their philosophy.
And, while this may seem like a “the food was horrible, and the portions too small”, a one hour of play to one second of ending is not enough, you bastards. If I’m going to devote a fucking week of free time to getting through your morass of a game, I deserve more than fifteen seconds of something.
Assholes.
