Battlefront Review (PC)

Larry Levandowski | March 31, 2007  | 0 comments  | Print  | E-mail

As far as competition is concerned, the AI can put up a decent fight. The game uses a flexible structure called war cards for programming the bad guys. The AI is appropriately aggressive, but not suicidal. In Market Garden, the AI playing the British ground force blows open the German line with such alacrity that the human player will immediately get a lump in their throat. The AI generally makes good choices but, as expected, is not as creative as a human opponent would be. In one Saipan game, the Japanese AI managed to exploit a weak spot by launching a banzai charge to open the US line and then rushed through to take out soft rear echelon troops. But after that success, the AI lost nerve and dug in, only to be surrounded and cut up; a good human player would have exploited the opportunity better; but it was still a good game.

One of the best innovations that Battlefront introduces is the concept of off-map areas (OMA). These are holding boxes that represent areas outside of the map. And if the scenario is set up to allow it, players can move forces off-map, and then from one OMA to another. So tactics like forcing your opponent to the edge of the map where he dies if he retreats off-board, are now given much more realistic treatment.

Another long anticipated feature of the game is the scenario editor. The SSG design team has provided the same set of tools they used to create the scenarios in the game. A foray into the editor can be daunting and the documentation in this area is less than stellar. In fact, the AI war card system is not in the manual at all. Long-time modders are used to spotty documentation and will no doubt be churning out great work shortly. For those who are not part of a modding geek squad however, it might be better to wait for the documentation to catch up with your creative urges.

Like all good things, the game is not without some weaknesses. In addition to some issues with the documentation noted above, graphics seem small and not quite as crisp as expected. And while there is a nifty magnifying glass feature, the text and graphics could be hard to see for those who don’t have good vision. Finally, the game as released does not provide any historic background to the scenarios….anywhere. So a player who is murky about the history of Gazala for example will be dumped into the game without even knowing who is supposed to be on the offensive.

But despite these few issues, the real point to the game is good old-fashioned war game goodness, and this is where the game stands out. With Battlefront, SSG has given us a game that will appeal to a broad war gaming audience and stay on many hard-drives, for many years to come.

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