Christ this game is difficult. I mean, I play some tough games, but this takes it to a whole other level. And this is only the demo! It’s set (surprisingly) during the American Civil War at the Battle of Gettysburg. It’s a strategy game in which you can control everything from a single regiment of militia up to huge armies.
Now, unsurprisingly, this can prove to be a tricky task, not helped by the mind-blowingly tough tutorials which do little to alleviate the complexities of the systems involved. It starts easily enough, with you controlling one guy, who can order around a brigade of men (which is several regiments). It teaches you all the basics, moving the camera, issuing orders, stuff like that. This I could handle.
The next tutorial obliterated me. That’s right, I lost a tutorial. In fact, I didn’t only lose it I got demolished. I’m not bad at games. I play a lot of them, particularly strategy games, so I like to think of myself as a competent gamer. However, having spent about 5-10 minutes trying to organise my guys before finally heading towards my objective, I got ambushed by a bunch of Confederates. This wasn’t scripted, I was just far to slow at moving my guys along, and so the game punished me. Badly. I think it may actually be the first time that I’ve ever lost a tutorial, but it wouldn’t be the last.
Next up artillery. Easy, you just stick them on a hill and wait for them to demolish anyone that looks at them funny. This is, of course, easy because you only have to control one battery (four guns) whilst the AI does everything else for you.
I did the cavalry tutorial next, although it wasn’t clear whether or not I was actually meant to. Fortunately, that was pretty easy too, despite a weird thing about the controls. You see, artillery excepted, you don’t really target enemies for your men to shoot at, so for cavalry you just click a button labelled ‘Charge!’ and they run at whoever is closest pretty much.
The final tutorials were disastrous. I mean, really, really bad. I guess I wasn’t ready to be commanding a whole division of guys. In that tutorial, I got flattened, although I’m going to blame that more on my commanders than my own tactical ineptitude. You see, one of the games strongest features is that when you’re commanding larger formations of men, you don’t really tell them individually what to do or where to go. You set orders for each commander, and they will follow them through to the best of their ability. So, if you tell one of them to defend a certain position, he’ll organise his regiments into the most advantageous positions. Theoretically at least.
I couldn’t even do the last tutorial. I must have blagged my ways through the other ones without really paying much attention (maybe why I got crushed so badly). So when I got up to controlling a whole Corps of men (8,000-20,000 number fans), I couldn’t work out for the life of me what to do.
This may sound really negative, but I think it may all add up to why I like the game so much. This is literally all I’ve played of it, six (almost) tutorials from a demo, and it’s gripped me much more strongly than many other modern games. Even after my guys have been sent packing, I’m considering other options I could have tried, other plans I could have put in place, and other ways in which they could have fallen apart.
So, if nothing else, I say you should give the demo a whirl. It is difficult, and it isn’t for the light-hearted, but it’s a unique experience and pretty fun if you don’t take it at all seriously. It’s also one of the few games where you can get drawn in enough to the point that you’re screaming at your idiot commanders for not sending you vital support as you’re overwhelmed by Union soldiers.
Get the demo here: http://www.scourgeofwar.com/downloads.shtml. Just download that, install it, and click cancel on the screen that pops up when you run it.
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