Gary Grigsby's World at War

What do you get when you take classic board gaming, mix in a generous helping of PC wargaming, and top it all off with a campaign-style treatment of WWII? Gary Grigsby's World at War, that's what. In the latest effort from 2 By 3 Games, players are given the opportunity to change history by assuming command of one of five combatants in World War II. Germany, Japan, the Western Allies (comprised of Great Britain and the United States), Russia and China are all present and accounted for, and as playable nations, they await only a fearless Commander to lead them to ultimate victory or crushing defeat in the epic war to come.

There are several methods of obtaining software published by Matrix Games; typically these would consist of a retail outlet, direct shipping, or digital download. For this review, my copy of World at War was acquired through digital download (413 MB), with good speed achieved through my broadband connection. Installation was relatively quick and painless, but be certain that you have the most recent version of DirectX installed, or you're in for some grief.

World at War has some high recommended system specs, which my primary system easily surpassed, but I tested the game on three different computers, and when playing with the minimum required RAM (512 MB), there were times during the game where I thought it might have frozen the system. However, patience is a virtue, and not only did the action resume before I had the chance to start thumping on keys, but the hang-ups seemed to both shorten and lessen as the campaign progressed. On my high-end system, the game ran flawlessly. Documentation came in the form of PDF files - a production map, and a well written, comprehensive manual were included.

New players will find it quite helpful to complete the two tutorials prior to starting their first game. There is no manual involved, the tutorials are completely in-game, and walk the player through the basics of movement and production. As there is a little more to both of these phases than one would initially suspect, skip the tutorials at your own risk. The game supports single player, hotseat and PBEM play, through four different campaigns ranging between Spring 1940, and Summer 1943.

After choosing the nation you will lead to glory in the electronic battlefields of the European Theatre of Operations (ETO), you will begin with the movement phase of your turn. Here, units may move up to their maximum allotment of movement points, battles may be setup and resolved, and strategic movement utilizing the infrastructure (rail networks, trucks) and naval and air transport capacity of your forces can all be made. In a refreshing change from some games, all of these actions can take place in any order the player wishes, and all actions, save actual combat, can be undone. This allows the player the strategic flexibility to view the results of a specific attack to determine for example, whether he needs to send additional armor units as reinforcements, or whether they might be free for other tasks.

The map itself has several settings, so you may view the territories in three modes of zoom, which can all display various information to a player. Ownership by nation, infrastructure and resources, and military units may all be selected, although the latter is subject to fog of war.

Gameplay itself is at once both simple and intuitive, yet deeper than one would expect. Clicking on a unit and moving it to a new location is a very simple task, and a player can perform it without reading any of the manuals or playing the tutorial. Yet arranging an unbroken string of naval transports in such a way that they use little or no movement points to assume their positions; and having the correct number of them at the areas where one wishes to use strategic movement to facilitate an amphibious invasion of an enemy nation's coastline can be a little trickier.

There are several examples of the above type of situation that I came across throughout the war, where I realized the gameplay had a few more layers to it than I had originally suspected. Luckily, the manual is searchable and well written, including both index and table of contents, and even a strategy section for each individual nation, so any hurdles I came across were quickly put behind me.

Planning a battle is greatly assisted by an odds calculator, which tells you of the attacker and defender's projected losses, as well as the chance to actually take control of the area in question. Resolving combat was also a very simple matter---once you have moved the desired forces into an enemy territory, any time you place your mouse over that territory thereafter, a small popup menu appears, offering you the choice to begin the general attack. (Options also exist for airstrikes versus airfields, ports, and the strategic bombing of infrastructure). One small annoyance is that if you trigger this menu by pausing the cursor over an enemy territory which you have moved units into, but do not wish to launch your attack just yet, you have to manually close the menu or it will stay on your screen.

When combat occurs you are taken to the battle screen, which displays the territory and the units involved. The first impression is of a very simple system, as units are lined up with one side on the left, the other on the right, and then they trade fire in a fashion that quickly becomes tiresome to the player. This is deceiving, however. The results are not all-or-nothing battles; it is possible for units to be damaged, destroyed, retreat, or combinations of the three. As well, there are additional depths to the combat system that are not apparent from a quick glance at the combat window. Units fire in a specific order, and have various targeting priorities. Players can use this information to their advantage when they plan their attacks, and one can quickly see that a gamer that learns the ins-and-outs of the combat system will surely have an advantage in head to head play. There is also an option to close the combat screen, windows style (click the checkmark in the top corner), which allows you to bypass all the animation and simply view the report after the smoke has cleared.

To provide the historical situation necessary for a WWII game, there are areas of the map that begin the game politically frozen. The United States and the Soviet Union are prime examples. Until certain conditions are met or a predetermined turn has been reached, these areas and the forces they contain are out of play for the controlling player. For instance, Russia is divided into three politically frozen zones. The Western Zone, which is adjacent to Germany and her territory, will become playable for the Russian during the Winter 1943 turn, barring any other activation. However, it is much more likely that it will become unfrozen due to one of the activation conditions---the Germans declare war, or fail to garrison their eastern borders, which is considered enough of a temptation that the Russians will activate. Many such regions and conditions abound throughout the game, so there is opportunity for deeper strategic thinking than simply move here, take that."

Once a player has completed moving his forces and resolving battles, it's time to enter the production phase of the turn. Here you must manage your nation's production allocation, carefully using your available resources, industry and population points to acquire new units, repair damage to existing units, conduct research and development, repair infrastructure, and perform lend lease to your allied nations. Again, this was not so straightforward as it first seemed. Units each have an associated cost in population, industry, and resources. There is also a fourth element involved: time. A simple unit, such as a militia unit, will be ready at the end of the player's current turn. Other units can take substantially longer. Armor takes several turns, and battleships and aircraft carriers take up to nine. Considering that each turn represents 3 months of real time, the differences become apparent. Projects can be placed on hold, or cancelled, as demand requires. This is where the game is truly won or lost; deprive Germany and Japan of the resources required to effectively wage war, and the amount of territory they still hold becomes irrelevant.

The costs of research and development must also be factored in to your budget. Research points can be "built" from the production menu, and then become available to spend in the R&D screen. With fourteen units and eight avenues of research, the choices for your R&D dollars must be made wisely. With options such as speed, evasion, transport capacity, and attack values for all the types of units present in the game, a player is best served by concentrating on a few key paths to invest in. Having extremely quick, hard to hit armor units that are as deadly a threat to units in the air as to the units on the ground doesn't mean a lot if you haven't built any of them! You must balance your limited resources carefully. Further drains on your already overstretched resources will be the construction of adequate supplies for your troops and units in the field, and the associated costs of transferring supplies to your allies, via lend lease.

I found myself a bit surprised when, after carefully planning out the next year of industrial production for Germany, I went to do the next production phase, and found I had inadequate resources available for several units in the queue, and not enough population points available to complete several units that were due to be deployed this very turn! A little frantic searching through the manual quickly gave me the reason---sometimes in combat, units are not destroyed, they are merely damaged. This means that if a path is available for the unit to trace back to a factory, it will appear in the production spiral for that region as if it was half completed (naval units being subjected to some randomization). The normal costs to complete the unit from this point on must be paid. So, all my careful planning was for naught, as I hadn't considered the potential costs associated with the repairs of units damaged in the field. Unused industry cannot be saved from turn to turn, so any that is unallocated when you exit the production phase is permanently lost---a player has to devote a bit of thought towards how he will deal with such inevitabilities.

The AI in the game was solid, presenting me with a suitable challenge. No overt weaknesses were found, and my programmed opponent certainly was able to inform me of any errors on my part. (Quite rudely, with hordes of T34s) This is not to say that a savvy player will not be able to beat the AI quite handily once the game has been mastered, but seeing a competent showing from my electronic adversary is a welcome change from most wargame AIs.

World at War looks good by wargaming standards, which is to say that it is still several years behind the traditional fare of the average RTS or FPS gamer. The resolution could be a little higher, as I wasn't able to achieve the zoom levels I desired in the fixed 1024 x 768 the game incorporates. Aside from these (common) complaints, World at War delivers a solid performance. There are videos that display at key moments of the war, such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, or when Germany and the Soviet Union go to war, which can be skipped if the player desires.

The map is attractive, and the units themselves give the distinct impression of having just been pulled out of the game box sitting in the top of your closet---which is exactly what 2 By 3 Games was shooting for, right down to the authentic "fold marks" on the map itself. Each nation has a specific unit set, to the end that the Western Allies armor unit is recognizably a Sherman tank, and so on. Although a bit more work, especially in combat animation of the units themselves, could have gone in to World at War, it's not trying to compete with the latest shooter. It attempts to recreate that "board game" feel, and what it promises, it more than delivers on. The atmosphere of days long past, spent sitting in a dark room across a table from my valiant opponent, were admirably recreated for me.

The music in the game is customized for each country, and does a good job of creating that wargaming "mood" that is part of the overall gaming experience. The music is martial in nature, and gives one that determined "I'm going to go invade something" feeling when you first hear it. Unfortunately, like virtually all games, the sheer repetition overwhelms a person, and the inevitable click is performed to silence the music. As far as sounds effects, each unit and nationality has its own unique combat sounds, which offers a bit more variety than the standard "booms" and "bangs" of some wargames. A quick peek in the sound directory showed well over 500 different effects.

Gary Grigsby's World at War is aiming for a certain audience. If games like Risk are about your speed, and the thought of anything more complex than Axis & Allies sends shivers down your spine, then maybe this isn't the title for you. Likewise, I have heard some longtime fans of Gary Grigsby's upset that he has designed something that can be termed "wargame-lite" by the hardcore grognards in the genre. If you require perfect historical accuracy, OOBs, TO&Es, and LoS rules to enjoy your gaming experience, again, this might not be the game for you.