The World at War (Hearts of Iron 2 (PC))

Name: hogsflesh

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Product:	Hearts of Iron 2 (PC)
Date:	12.12.05 (246 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice world war 2 strategy game

Disadvantages: None really, if you like this kind of thing

Who among us can honestly say that they’ve never wanted to play at being a commander in the second world war? Who hasn’t at one point or another wanted to be one of those men with bushy moustaches who pushes little models of aeroplanes around a big table with a picture of a map on it? Well, this PC game allows you to do just that (more or less, anyway. The moustache is not included).

It’s a strategy game in which you get to control a country between 1936 and 1947 (assuming you can survive until the end). You primarily concern yourself with military matters, not having to worry about other aspects of government too much, although industry and the economy play a part too, as does foreign policy. But these aspects aren’t really fully developed, only really being important in as much as they help or hinder your military build up and ability to wage war. You can command any country in the world, although realistically you’re not going to have a particularly interesting game if you choose, say, Portugal. The whole point of the thing is the war, and that’s what you concentrate on.

The game isn’t particularly graphics intensive, and it should run quite comfortably on any reasonably modern PC. There’s no animation or movies or spectacular sound effects (although you do get a selection of entertaining martial music constantly playing in the background). The main screen is a map of the world, on which you deploy and move your military units, be they tanks, submarines, bombers or any of the other obvious second world war things. Other screens let you control your country’s production (ie what you’re building, how you’re supplying your troops, keeping your population happy etc), your technology (what new scientific breakthroughs you’re researching) and your diplomacy and government (who you’re in alliance with, who your ministers are etc).

The interface is pretty simple, and not difficult to get the hang of (everything is controlled using your mouse). That said, there are an awful lot of game concepts to get to grips with, and you’ll want to keep the manual handy in order to look things up. I’ve been playing for quite a while now, and I still don’t quite understand everything (how supplying my units works, for instance, is largely a mystery to me). There is a tutorial, but I tend to regard such things as a waste of time, and prefer to plunge in and learn by myself – this is one of many reasons why it’s good that I’ve never actually been handed overall command of a real war.

One major plus point in the game is how well researched it is. You get to choose certain members of your government, as well your military commanders, and the game offers a wide variety of real historical figures, with photographs, and they even have different abilities that reflect the historical reality (at least up to a point – so, for instance, Albert Speer is a more effective German armaments minister than Hermann Goering). It’s the same when you research new technology. Britain has Alan Turing, so is great for encryption-based advances, while Germany has an advantage in rocketry (von Braun) and America in nuclear physics (Oppenheimer). In terms of general historical accuracy, it tends to stick reasonably closely to what actually happened. Germany will always invade the Soviet Union in 1941, for instance, and Japan will attack America. But obviously the whole point is that you can change the course of history, and you have a certain amount of latitude. While you can never make the Germans and Americans form an alliance, you can have them avoid fighting each other at all if you so desire.

Games typically take a long time – a couple of weeks, usually, although obviously I’m not playing constantly – my eyes usually start to hurt at about the four-hour mark, as there is quite a lot of text to read. You can vary the speed at which time passes (playing on ‘Normal’ speed means that an hour of game time takes about two seconds, but you’ll want to speed it up considerably at times when nothing urgent is happening). There are various difficulty levels, ranging from almost absurdly easy to downright impossible. You don’t have to start in 1936, if you prefer more of a challenge you can start later, when certain events have already happened. Although the game is technically supposed to end in 1947, it’s easy enough to download a patch to allow you to keep going indefinitely. (The game was designed to be easily modified by users – all the important files are apparently simple to edit, although I don’t have the confidence in my own abilities to want to risk trying that.)

There is a multi-player option, but I’ve never tried that, as I don’t really play games online. I’ve never really understood how long-running strategy games that take several days would work in an online context.

I suppose I should acknowledge the fact that, at least on some level, playing a game which re-enacts a conflict in which 50 million people died might not be in the best of taste. That said, the human element is largely absent, as you don’t get casualty figures or anything of that nature. And the game designers have been careful not to allow any of the more problematic elements of the real war, such as terror bombing of civilian targets, and the Holocaust is obviously not included. All of which is just as well, in a way, as it’s generally more enjoyable to play as either Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia than as the US or UK. Britain and America, being democracies, can’t just go around randomly committing war on other countries like the totalitarian countries can. Also, because they’re across the sea from their enemies they have to spend ages faffing around with troop transports and so on, while Russia can just randomly invade perfectly innocent countries like, say, Switzerland, if it beats Germany too easily. Basically, I’ve played as Germany, Russia, Britain and America, and the two that I had most fun with were the wrong two, morally speaking. Oh well. I’ll try Japan next.

Anyway, if you enjoy the kinds of PC games which take weeks and can completely eat up your life, then this might be for you (especially if you have any kind of interest in the war). It doesn’t have much in the way of fancy graphics or sounds, but I find this to be an advantage as they’d be completely unnecessary anyway, and it’s nice in this age of games that seem to aggressively pitch themselves at only people who can afford the very best computers to find one that doesn’t. It probably most resembles Championship Manager, except about war instead of football.

Any moral qualms aside, I’ve been having a lot of fun pretending to be in charge of the biggest war ever. I find this game completely absorbing. It’s supposed to sell for £30, but amazon has it for about a tenner.

Summary: Pretend to be commander in chief of one of the great powers in the 40s