I thought the article was pretty fair and balanced (heh) up until the last part, when he starts defending Abu Ghraib. Then my what the fuck-o-meter suddenly went off the charts.
The game he describes does sound pretty cool, though.
Operational level is lower than strategic.
That’s a great start. My one complaint is that it’s still a sandbox war. On a map scale that large, I would like to see cities and towns and farms. I want my military operations disrupted by scores of displaced refugees trying to escape from the battlefield.
I believe it’s moddable. Suggest it.
Yeah, it’s supposed to be the most moddable RTS ever built. Considering that Chris Taylor’s previous game was Total Annihilation, which is still being modded regularly ten years after its release, I don’t think this claim is unrealistic.
On Wargame Satire: The article linked in the OP reminded me of this Flash animation that appeared in the early stages of the Second Iraq War. Most of the humor is now outdated, however, as the main thrust of the “wargame” is that Iraq actually had WMDs and uses them as a last-minute defense, attacking Israel and bringing the whole Arab world into World War III. However, I think the main thing which is pointed out in the satire is that disposing of Saddam will be easy, but it will lead to a long, drawn-out conflict in the Middle East- which I think has proven itself to be true.
On Real Wargames: This is the one I’m looking forward to. Originally meant as an educational tool, this WWII turn-based strategy game is being packaged to be sold to the general public in 2007. “This is the nearest thing I’ve encountered to a historically credible computer game. Even experts will be forced to rethink their assumptions about the war.”- Niall Ferguson, historian and author, in New York magazine
He’s not “defending” Abu Ghraib- he’s just saying what it would be like if war games were actually like the war in Iraq.
(bolding mine)
The author makes the claim there that humiliation and torture “probably saved lives,” a similar claim to those who would excuse what happened at Abu Ghraib. “Naked human pyramids” is an explicit reference to Abu Ghraib. There is no acknowledgement of the very real question of whether intelligence attained by such methods is actually trustworthy, nor any of the other arguments against allowing such things to occur. Considering the lengths to which the author went to bash both liberal and conservative viewpoints elsewhere in the article, the omission there felt to me like he actually believes that torture is a valid tool in war.
Nope. Had a friend shoot it to me.
Hearts of Iron did it first.
Why does this game sound like it whoops a llama’s ass with my belt? This could be one of great all-time games if expectations are met.
Also, why does it seems like games haven’t solved how to combine Age of Empires (PC) with Romance of the Three Kingdoms (NES). Really, THAT’S the game we’ve been waiting for.
There’s always Spore.
That game also sounds good. Damn. I was born at the wrong time. I need more time to play these games!!!
Don’t the Total War games fit that bill?
-FrL-
The author isn’t expressing his own opinion, it’s a parody of Jack Nicholson’s character’s “You can’t handle the truth” speech in A Few Good Men:
Not so much. Total War does a pretty decent job of it, but they don’t do much for improving farmlands and dams, at least not in a similar hands-on type of way. The Total War games also don’t have that aspect of building your ruler’s/general’s personal stats to make them beefier. Lines of succession in Total War make sense, but outside of assassinating all the rest of the heirs, it’s hard to control who becomes ruler. Diplomacy, I feel, was handled better in Romance of the Three Kingdoms as well. It seems that personalities shone through in Romance of the Three Kingdoms as well. Rulers that weren’t trustworthy would eventually backstab you, but if you kept good relations and stayed relatively strong next to them, you could delay it.