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| | Publisher: Virtual Programming  Genre: Strategy & War | | Mac OS X: Any Version Mac OS Classic: Mac OS 9
CPU: G3 @ 333 MHz RAM: 128 MB |
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Hearts of Iron
November 21, 2003 | Michael Yanovich | |
Hearts of Iron. Yeah. Um. Wow! This game is ... well, it’s hurting my brain. No, not like it’s reaching out and clawing through my skull, but more like ... it’s making me think way too hard. Here, let me explain.HOI -- that’s Hearts of Iron on the one hand, and the sound you’ll make when you realize how complex it is on the other hand -- is a World War II real-time (well, pausable real-time) strategy game. So let’s start there. Based on conversations with several of my colleagues who are college educated and old enough to know better, I’ve been stunned into realizing how little some graduates of the American educational system actually know about WWII. There’s a lot to know -- it’s frequently called the most significant event of the 20th century, and that’s a century that saw the rapid spread of flight and electric power, as well as the invention of computers, television, and the atomic bomb. So here’s the five-cent version. Unlike some recent wars with questionable moral directive, it’s pretty clear who the “good guys” and “bad guys” were in WWII. First there were the Allies, whose key players were England, the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. That’s right -- even though America was in direct opposition with just about everything the U.S.S.R. stood for, the threat to the world was so great we actually joined forces. The bad guys, more commonly known as the Axis powers, consisted of Germany, Italy and Japan who were blatantly trying to take over as much of the world as they could while performing despicable acts of genocide. And in addition to that, the entire world had been in turmoil for well over a decade.Now throw all that onto an engine designed for a significantly simpler medieval game. See, in HOI, not only do you have to maintain a 20th century war economy while building new units, devising military strategies and keeping strong diplomatic relationships going -- you also have to decide if you’d rather focus on new armor riveting techniques for your tanks or if an infantry light rifle improvement takes priority over a medium rifle improvement. And would you like fries with that? Now that we’ve made it past the basics, let’s go for the meat and potatoes. First, go read IMG’s Europa Universalis review. This is especially relevant as Paradox took the EUII engine and converted it into a WWII game. In many ways that’s like putting a Porsche body onto a circa 1935 engine and chassis. Sure it’ll get you there, but it’s not the way you’d design the final product if you were starting from scratch. The result is a strong game but with a cluttered menu system and a Montezuma’s Revenge version of information overload.
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