Things were a little too free-wheeling in the original version, though: you could just fly your units all over the map with little regard for where those brittle helicopters were landing. The game models airmobile operations decently, and the one of the patches incorporates helicopters into the reconnaissance calculations, giving you additional unit reconnaissance using nearby helicopter formations. In fact, the appearance of the attack helicopter is probably as much of a paradigm shift in modern warfare as the appearance of the tank was over seventy years ago. It's sort of funny to think that of all the weapons used in World War II and to compare them to those in use now, and to think that while 1945 saw the first use of the atomic bomb, it wasn't until some twenty years later that we saw the full-scale combat use of the helicopter. And it has been (see below).Īnd then there are the helicopters. Making it all work within the framework of a reasonable combat system required that the system be overhauled.
The addition of powerful hand-held anti-tank weapons gives infantry the ability to hold its own against pure armor like never before, so combined arms is even more important in this game than previously. Sailing and shoringĮxtending the TOAW "modular" system to modern warfare was more than just a case of rating the M1 Abrams and the T-80 and sticking them into some database next to the PzIV's. If you can look beyond this fact, there is a lot going on in the game that works. TOAW is, despite what some people wish to believe, still an abstracted representation of warfare. I'm not going to get into the acrimonious (and, to my mind, pointless and neurotic) arguments about whether or not TOAW is a "valid" model of whatever combat it is trying to represent. It seems quite ludicrous to me to think that you can accurately model the entire Eastern Front, for example, using units on the squad and platoon level for engine resolution purposes, and not get occasional glitches, or things that seem as "out" as the aforementioned impossible soccer descriptions. By the same token, it can also lead players to focus on the shortcomings of a game for their own sake and ignore the larger picture. This seems to me to be just another example of how the ability to use the computer to crunch endless numbers can seduce otherwise talented and intelligent designers to bite off more than they can chew.
Like the messages in Championship Manager 3 which declare that a player has made a successful pass to a teammate in the opposing penalty area, only to see that teammate loft a pass "forward" 55 yards to continue the attack, TOAWgot caught in the trap of trying to model every last detail of the subject matter it was trying to portray, and to display it all to show how "comprehensive" the game was. Recently, there has been some controversy regarding the accuracy of the underlying engine, as some observant players noticed that in certain situations, the tactical engine was churning out some truly bizarre results, with the now infamous "100 jeeps" turning aside all manner of German panzers being the most ridiculous (and most harped-upon) outcome. Indeed, the first few patches (and there have been several) to the original game addressed such issues as skewed road movement rates, unrealistic supply situations, and all sorts the rips and tears that result from stretching a wrap to fit so wide a bowl. I predicted in my original review of TOAW that such an ambitious project would undoubtedly suffer from trying to extend its system over too great a range, since the word "operational" covers quite a bit of ground (from company-level actions all the way to corps). So I won't go through those points again: check out the link if you haven't heard anything about the game system at all. Everything I had to say about the game then still applies, and TOAW2, while changing gears a bit to thrust the system into the late 20th century, is very much the same game as its predecessor.
However, the system does have its limitations, and I elaborated on them somewhat in my review of TOAW, Vol. User-made scenarios abound, and some truly excellent creations exist which will provide you with hundreds of hours of competitive enjoyment.
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