Best Wargame of all time

[kam99]

There is a thread running on the Wargamer, about what is the best computer wargame of all time. The CM1 series appears to have the most nominations. I have all 3 CM1 games. I pre-ordered CMSF - I can't remember the last time I played it. Something has gone horribly wrong.

[Dogface]

Hmm, thats odd cause every one over here has loved the game from the first release. Also AFAIK there have never been any threads that point to any kind of flaws with CM:SF.

Edit to add my vote goes to (for pure personal enjoyment) Red Baron 3D.

[ November 28, 2007, 06:17 PM: Message edited by: Dogface ]

[dalem]

That's a toughie.

Master of Orion 2, Harpoon, V4Victory/World at War, and CMx1 would all be my top 4. And I guess MOO2 isn't a wargame, now that I think about it.

Maybe I'll replace it with M1 Tank Platoon. That's the only one of those I still don't play - my floppies for it died many moons ago.

Best? I gotta go with CM.

-dale

[MarkEzra]

There are only 3 PC games that every really mattered to me.

1. Panzer General still have it still play it.

2. Steel Panthers (all versions but SPWAW is the top of the heap)

3. CM.

Of those three and the desert Island offers me only one...CMAK hands down (also I'm taking the White Album with me!)

[dalem]

Oooo, Panzer General, I forgot about that one. I played a lot last month. I STILL have never won a major victory at Moscow in the campaign. I might have done it once cheating (no weather).

Never. In what, 10 years?

And this last time I had as perfect a setup and force structure as I could have wanted, AND the weather didn't even really screw me. AND I had a fantastic first few turns.

One day...

-dale

[Wisbech_lad]

X-COM for me

[MarkEzra]

I feel your pain, old friend! Many a saved last turn, rarely a major vic

[hammelman]

MOO2 is of course a war game - as war is the optimum end. I wasnt to fond of MOO2 and MOO3 was laughable. Sid Meier is a great game designer though. I think the game with the most impact for me would have been Gary Grigby's War In The Pacific, and as a very close second Hearts of Iron 2.

['Card]

Harpoon Online on AOL/Kesmai - circa 1997.

[86smopuim]

cmBB + Franko's "Tank Warning!"

[kevinkins]

" Something has gone horribly wrong."

Is it that the wargaming crowd is getting older? If CMSF came out when CMBO did I would be all over it. My time is really taxed now at 48.

Or is the era not right - the future.

Or the terrain - the desert.

Or is it the political nature of conflict in the Middle East today.

Or is it all this plus the bugs?

Maybe all of the above?

[thewood]

If CMSF had come out without CM1 preceding it, BFC would not have had the reputation of producing product that is not released before its time.

With that said, it would have been revolutionary as a wargame. The scope and bugs probably would have kept it from catching on like CMBO. I think it would definitely been better recieved than it is now because of expections set by CM1, but the release state would have turned a lot of people off.

Don't forget that EYSA and TOW have tried to do similar things, and in my opinion, less successfully than CMSF. If CMSF had come out in relatively bug-free form with complete documentation, I would declare it head and shoulders above all else, but in its current state, I have to say its only a little better than EYSA and thats mostly because of the editor and a community around it.

[ November 28, 2007, 06:42 PM: Message edited by: thewood ]

[StellarRat]

Hmm...tough one...I think I'll have to go with the X-Com series. They had everything, great theme, role playing, strategy grand and operational, and tactical combat. In fact, the whole idea is dying for a decent rewrite. I still play them (with special hacks that allow them to run on XP.) You could debate whether or not they were really wargames, but I think they were.

[Webwing]

--

Some games are released in some key moments with the right appeal. They surprise you and involve you in a way that you never have experienced before. An unexpected joy.

The first CM games had that magic.

I remember also when I played Close Combat I. I'll never forget the first week I played it.

Airborne Assault by Panther. Another great experience... Shogun TW, wow! and SteelBeasts to a less extent.

Nowadays I guess our expectations are too high. Very difficult to be really taken aback by a game release.

--

[ November 28, 2007, 07:07 PM: Message edited by: Webwing ]

[Webwing]

ops. double post

[kevinkins]

OK maybe the key question is if CMSF was placed on the WW2 east and/or west front would it be getting more forum traffic (aka excitment). Please prove me wrong, but this place seems quiet for a new release. Maybe folks are spread too thin these days.

[DzrtFox]

To me the best wargame ever made is Myth II: Soulblighter. It's set in a fantasy world but I have never experienced tactical warfare on a computer anywhere close to this. No resource management, no build queues... just pick your best guys and destroy the opposition with real tactics.

CMx1 games are without a doubt my second favorite. Because of that I had huge hopes for CM:SF, but so far I haven't exactly been thrilled. I'm still hanging on to a slim hope though!! (although it is growing slimmer by the day)

[thewood]

I can't even speculate on that. Maybe turn the question around to get a partial answer.

If CMBO were released today, would it catch fire like it did?

I think yes for a couple of reasons:

scope is pretty broad

great map editor

great scenario editor

pretty bug free

good mechanics

Graphics would be the only major tuen off, but I think you wouldn't lose most of the wargame customers over it. Still not sure how broad the appeal would be.

The other part of the question may be if CMBO had been released in a modern middle east setting with a limited scope. I would hazard a guess that it would have sold as well, but not be as long lived.

[Micheal Wittman]

xcom was addictive for me at the time, panzer general I could never get a chance to play because

my roommate at the time was so hooked into it he would leave work early to play. I enjoyed the Close

Combat series at the time, but since the "CM" series

has been out, it has tainted everything else, because now I demand so much more from games.

The only interest "CMSF" has for me is it's potential as a WW2 game in the future as I have no

interest in the theater and frankly I never played the desert maps in CMAK either as I didn't want to deal with desert terrain. So I hope for future enjoyment everybody, developers, gamers, end up being happy with the mechanics and game play of CMX2.I'm playing SC and it's good, just tried Company of Heroes and it looked pretty, but played

like crap. Still when I good one comes out I'm grateful.

[Nicoch]

For me it's Pacific General (I like it more than Panzer really), Close Combat II, and Steel Panthers: World at War.

[Spindry69]

Campaign wise, I really liked Steel Panthers. The fact that you could take a force of troops through WW2, trying too keep them alive and upgrade their equipment was great. If CMSF has such a campaign, even if their equipment stayed the same it would add immensely too the single played experience in CMSF.

[luderbamsen]

Best wargame? Some were better than others, but I could never pick one to be better than everything else.

CMx1 and X-COM are about the only turn-based games I've ever liked. X-COM win by a small margin. Haven't tried CMSF so I couldn't say how that fits into the equasion.

Harpoon 1 & Fleet Command, with a slight edge to Harpoon (better, more completed game), and also because it has nukes, and nukes are always fun to play with. Fleet Command does get the special award for the cheesiest acting I've ever seen in a computer game (at least by professional actors like these were).

M1 Tank Platoon & Gunship: From the days when good games had MicroProse printed on the box. This is a dead heat. I love both of them.

The Dynamix Triplets: Aces Over Europe, Aces Over the Pacific and Red Baron. Back when the term "survey sim" was worth something. The Aces games win on the WW2 setting.

Rainbow Six & Ghost Recon: Many have tried, even more have had the potential, but no other FPS games has ever matched these two tac-sims.

[LordCalvert]

Best wargame ever? There can only be one: COMBAT for the Atari!

[Bertram]

The best wargame? It has to be made yet, as they keep getting better with computer resources and programming languages developing.

I loved TOAW, but now it is really dated. I played V4Victory a lot, but for todays standards they are lacking.

At that level I now play DBWWII and Battlefront, which series gets better with each new version (though it seems that user build scenarios are slower coming for the last version, probably because it is so close to the previous ones).

The game I play most is CMBB though. It has all I want from a game, good PBEM, tension, new challenges each time I play it, and enough realism not to marr the experience.

An other game I like is AACW. But for me playing against the computer is, after mastering the essentials, just boring. And playing real time is just to difficult to arrange.

[Philistine]

For me, I'd probably break down games by subject matter:

Best Naval Wargame: Harpoon.

Best Air Wargame: Flight Commander 2 (also Over the Reich/Achtung Spitfire)

Best Tactical Wargame: CM Series.

Best Strategic Wargame: TOAW

To me, one of the things that makes them the best is that even though the most recent of them is 7 years old (at least the first iteration), I'm still playing them, if only occasionally for some. (Well, except for Harpoon, but I expect to be buying the Matrix CE version shortly ).

--Philistine