I never was a great fan of war games (probably 'cos I'm completely crap at them) so why I got lumbered with reviewing this one, I don't know. Oh dear. But it gets worse - this one's based on an incident from a real life war (the Battle of the Bulge from World War Two, no less) and guess what? Yep, I'm crap at history as well, so I haven't got a sausage of a clue what it's all about. Oh well, only one thing to do in this situation . use my brilliant reviewer's 'talent' and improvise. (It always works).
    The Battle of the Bulge, according to Jonathan (oops - bang goes the improvisation) was apparently one of the last bits of the Second World War where Britain and America got very cross with Germany in some part of Western Europe or something. Anyway, as I've said, this one really goes out of its way to re-live that memorable experience, so everything's true to the real thing - all the units start in their historical locations on the map of the playing area and so on..
    You take the side of either Germany or the Allies (or alternatively two people can take a side each) and you sort of, erm, fight each other until everyone dies or until the Germans reach Antwerp or something. Of course, you have to do all this 'strategically' by moving lots of tanks, guns and people around. Fun eh? Other 'highlights' include blowing up bridges, air attacks and more. Each player takes it in turns to move his (or her) party or parties of people and guns and things around until they meet with the enemy - then the real 'fun' begins. Depending on your tactics and morale and so on, a natty bit where you can play the game pretending other things had actually happened even though they didn't really happen in the real thing, if you see what I mean. For example, you could 'pretend' that it was foggy all the time so all air attacks'll be out of the question. And what if British troops had chickened out at the last minute leaving poor old America to handle all the action? What a pickle you'd be in there 'cos you'd have less people, and more of a chance of losing.
    Well, that's the thing in theory, but how does it play? Well, it's all nice'n'simple with one key presses and things which no doubt you'll have under your belt in no time. Of course, the tactics of the game take a bit of time to get into - to discover what possibilities this little babe's really got to offer, like where the enemy units start, what the best attack formations to use are and whatnot - but that's just how it is with these type of games. Okay, so it's nothing extremely exciting to some of us, but for those of you really into this sort of thing, it could be your lucky day.

Ratings given by other magazines

8/10    Crash Review

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