Teaching tools gone commercial.
We're always interested to see video games show up outside of the regular gaming community. Whether it's simulators for military training or RTS games for shows on the History Channel, it's interesting to see the ways that games can serve a purpose beyond the fun to be had actually playing them. The latest case in point is Strategy First's Making History: The Calm and the Storm. This World War II strategy game was designed as a tool for classroom education but has finally found its way into commercial release. Now the post-grads out there can play the game secure in the knowledge that learning something from the game isn't as important as actually enjoying it.
In terms of historical modeling, Making History falls somewhere between the relatively straightforward World at War and the unnaturally convoluted Hearts of Iron. Players can choose from a variety of starting dates, from the pre-war, post-depression of 1936 to the endgame in the summer of 1944. Each of the main combatant nations is fully playable, putting the player in charge of the economy, production, research, diplomacy and of course military of their chosen country. Played out in simultaneous turns (each representing a week) on a large and detailed map of the world, Making History seems to embrace everything that a designer could imagine for an operational World War II game.
Unfortunately the game suffers from a deficiency in AI that make most nations a bit too passive. Sure, those who have the power to do so can tend to throw it around a bit. (In one game, once the Allies had conquered Germany, the Soviets decided to start new wars in Scandinavia and the Middle East.) For the most part, however, the nations of the world are content to sit and let you conquer them. Concentrating your own forces and ignoring your flanks seems like a perfectly workable strategy in the games we've played. Things might be better in multiplayer but finding opponents is nearly impossible.
Given the number of decisions you'll be asked to make in each turn, maybe single player is a safer bet. Players will need to manage each of their territories, determining how to maximize resource production in each one as well as deciding what to use those resources for. Before the outbreak of war (or even in areas far from combat) you may want to focus more on producing the various supplies you'll need to keep your war machine running. Closer to the front, you may want to focus more on the production of military machines and infantry units. We'd love to have seen a little more of this information on the main map so we could read the overall production of a region at a glance, but access to the full range of city and factory details in the sidebar windows makes it almost as easy.
On the downside, the game's logistics system seems a bit too light. While no one enjoys playing Supply Truck Commander, the fact that your units can't ever really get overextended tends to diminish the realism of the game. We've moved units from France to China without much trouble at all. On the other hand, it's nice that, like World at War, the game models and global transport capacity for your units without requiring you to ferry transports around. Strangely, the concept of occupation seems absent. Once you take over a territory, it's yours immediately and forever. There's no risk of revolt and no reduction in the territory's production capacity.
The diplomacy interface could also use some help. While it's tremendously flexible in terms of setting up treaties and demands, there's no real back and forth between the negotiators here. Your own proposals will be largely a matter of guesswork and then you'll be clueless as to why the other party rejected or accepted your terms. The Civilization IV table system would definitely allow for much more of a feeling of actual negotiations rather than the simple "yes or no" system currently in place. The same is generally true of the game's trade system, but the game does benefit from the presence of a global market where nations can buy and sell specific goods.
Though it adopts a board game style presentation, Making History offers some pleasant visuals. Information is usually readily available in a variety of pop-up windows and straightforward spreadsheets. The game sometimes dances between presenting too much and too little information, but once you know where to look, you can usually find the information you want very quickly.
The otherwise clean and colorful game map can sometimes get a bit cluttered when the units start to knock up against each other in the smaller territories. On the plus side, the units are all specific to the nations they represent; the US have little Fletcher destroyers, the Germans have little Me-109 fighters, and the Soviets have T-34 tanks. There's not a lot of animation and life here on the map, but the small touches, like effells swaying on the airfields, are nice.
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