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Great Wargame - NOT A RTS!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 26 / 27
Date: March 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Let me forewarn any potential buyer of this game....IT IS A WARGAME....What does that mean? Well, this is not a point - click and watch the little tanks run around the screen and blow up things. If you are looking for that then there are a plethora of games that fall under the RTS (Real Time Strategy) that would fit your bill.
For those of you not familiar with wargames, they are computerized versions of board games with counters (those little square pieces of cardboard with information on them), pretty intense rules, and all kinds of units. These games were very popular in the 70s (aka Bookshelf Games) and many were made by Avalon Hill.
Wargames fall into an analytical strategy based categories, relying more on accurate history, troops, and very detailed. Most try to mimic real battles in history, from Civil War to Vietnam.
With the advent of the computer Wargames have become again very popular since the computer AI now acts as an opponent, keep tracks of detailed databases, and make setting up very quick. You can also play via email with opponents.
Wargames have there place in history, the military plays several wargames to analyze strategies and practice tactics. Harpoon, probably one of the first wargames computerized to great success, took the US Navy by storm. While I served, many people had played the board based or computer based version. There was no other game to recreate actual modern naval battles as well.
Hopefully, this will clarify that this is not a splashy, click fest type of game. It is the chess of wargames, while RTS is the checkers of wargames.
That being said, HTTR (Highway to the Reich) is one of the best wargames I have played, yes it will take you a few hours to learn the rules and go through the tutorials, but it will take a long time to master.
If you miss those wargame / boardgames that you use to play (aka Squad Leader), then this is a great step into the next generation of wargames.
I believe the previous reviewer is not a wargame player or had never played war base boardgames and was unfamiliar with this style of gaming. That is really too bad. HTTR has won many outstanding awards from the wargaming community as well as many PC game magazines. Even though it is a great game, it might not be your cup of tea. It is slow paced compared to many of today's action shooters.
If you loved playing Axis and Allies (the boardgame) and want to kick it up a notch, then give this a try.
For more information on wargames visit www.wargamer.com

Possibly the best operational wargame done yet!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: March 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Airborne Assault: Highway to the Reich (AA:HttR) is the follow-up game to AA: Red Devils Over Arnhem (AA:RDOA). Those who played that game will certainly find AA:HttR a quick learn. Those who passed on AA:RDOA will find AA:HttR to have a much grander scale as the game now covers all of Operation Market-Garden. Thus the replay value is vastly greater.

AA: Highway to the Reich is a historical conflict simulation (aka a wargame) in all respects. If you are new to wargames AA:HttR is not an impossible place to begin but, as with all wargames, it requires a few hours of work to learn before one can truly enjoy the game (knowledge of the historical situation and military operations helps as well). The reward for the effort is a rich, intellectually challenging, and historically accurate game with considerable replay value. Traditional board wargamers will find much familiar and much to appreciate. There are two tutorials with an 88 page guide (mostly screen shots) and a well done 120 page manual. Playing through the two tutorials is almost mandatory (unless you are an AA:RDOA veteran) to learn the game and will take at least a couple of hours.

AA:HttR covers Operation Market-Garden from bottom to top (with 34 scenarios). Unit scale is from platoon to battalion with company being the most common. The game uses a realistic TO&E and unit subordination is key to the game. The map has six levels of zoom and, at the highest video resolution (of three) of 1280x1024, an area of 4 sq/km up to more than 45 sq/km is viewable on screen. The map is vector art and thus looks good at all resolutions and zoom levels. The map is easily manipulated with the mouse including dragging the map around, zooming, selecting units/objectives as well as right-clicking to see the terrain type at a particular spot. In may respects AA:HttR is closer to a traditional miniatures game than a board wargame except for its operational scale. One could say it is the best of both worlds. There is also a small strategic-scale map with the units shown as dots. The map even gets darker as night falls. The map and unit art could certainly be more attractive but they are nice and very functional.

The game interface is extremely well done with the majority of the screen being taken up with the map and a small left hand border containing various information and control panels. There is an immense amount of information and control provided in the panels in a very easy-to-read format (it even provides historical info on the various units and commanders) but there is a fair amount to learn to use them effectively.

The unit icons contain a lot of information. No matter what zoom level you are in the units remain the same size. This is good and bad and one wish is that there was an option to have the units scale with the zoom. The advantage to having them not scale is that they remain readable at all times. There is a lot of information packed on them and at max video resolution some may have a hard time reading them easily. One can choose between NATO style unit symbols and icons but these take up only the small upper left corner of the unit. The upper right of the unit is a dynamic spot that uses various colors and icons to display all kinds of various bits of information such as fatigue, morale, facing, strength, and more. This is a wonderful interface idea but, for some of the options, the area is a bit small for some of the icons and thus a tad hard to read (again, at high resolution).

The display of the units has been wonderfully thought out. As soon as you click on any unit its facing indicator appears along with command lines to its immediate superior and/or subordinate units. Hitting the arrow keys cycles you through the senior/subordinate formations. This all makes it very easy to see unit organizations and deployments. In addition, drag selecting units gives you some overall stats as well as displaying the facing of all the selected units, great for quickly checking unit deployments. Once you see this display method you'll wonder why no one has done it before.

Sound and animation is minimal at best. There are some good `combat' sounds but animations are limited to small explosions and colored lines shooting back and forth representing gunfire. This is all functional for sure but underwhelming at best. There is no music or background sounds.

Game play is real-time but the action can be paused at any moment (and sped up) and orders given at any time. In this respect it is similar to TacOps or the Combat Mission games (although without the 'turns' of those games). The game can also be minimized so you can easily view the PDF manual or do other things while playing.

Play proceeds simply with giving orders to units and then hitting 'play' and watching the action unfold. You can give orders to units in real-time or pause the action and give orders and check out other things. There is an almost bewildering array of order options including various actions, formation types, aggressiveness, fire frequency and a whole lot more. You can also speed-up play if you are just moving to contact. Note that you are not playing with turns with a `planning phase' and then an `actions phase'. You can stop time but it will always move forward. You cannot rewind to watch other events unfold. This is one of my few quibbles with the game. With larger scenarios it is hard to see all the action that is going on. You can rely on your AI but this also takes some of the fun out of the game as you may miss some great fights occurring on the other side of the map while you are otherwise occupied. There are alerts and unit logs so if you find your force ravaged you can decipher what happened but this is a poor substitute for seeing the action first hand.

The line-of-site tool is a thing of beauty and deserves comment. You can check LOS between any two points on the map. With a simple click and drag you get not only the LOS between the two end points but to every point in between including dead zones AND elevations! You have to see it to really appreciate it and again one wonders why we have never seen such a thing before. You can also instantly see all of the enemy units in LOS of a selected unit.

While you can micro-manage every unit if you wish, the design intent, and real beauty, of the game is to use proper military chain-of-command. Thus you can just give orders to higher level units (say at division level) and the AI will take care of handling all of the subordinate units. You can mix and match this and have the AI worry about less important attacks/defenses while you apply a more hands-on approach to more important areas. The AI is certainly respectable in this regard but of course, as with any computer wargame, the AI can always use some improvement. On the other hand, times when I thought the AI was making a poor choice it in fact was not or was reacting in accordance with unit settings I had made. This is a very elegant system and combined with the concept of `orders delay' probably presents the most realistic portrayal of WW2 operational combat seen in any wargame (board or computer) to date. It is far from perfect but as close as anyone has come yet.

Overall Airborne Assault: Highway to the Reich is a fantastic operational level wargame that puts you in the seat of an operational-level commander better than any other wargame to date. It DOES take some time and effort to learn the game -- and you will not appreciate it as much until you do because you will find all kinds of goodies as you learn -- but it rewards your efforts in spades with a rich wargaming experience.

Quibbles I hope to see addressed in the future: Ability for units to scale with zoom; ability to rewind to watch (although perhaps not intervene) other events; ability to see a regular TO&E diagram view for formations (both ideal and as currently implemented); better graphics, sounds, and animation; improved AI.

A Great Leap Forward for Serious Wargamers

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: April 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Alan Dale Daniel writes that this game is unplayable. He's dead wrong. Sure, this game is hard to learn and difficult to master. The best wargames are difficult to master because they are so realistic in terms of the detail that goes into them. I have played this game as well as Korsun Pocket, and while Alan says that Korsun pocket is similarly impossible to play, I found Korsun Pocket quite easy to learn and play. Perhaps Alan is not used to playing serious wargames.

AA:HttR is possibly the best, most accurate wargame ever designed. It requires more from the player because it gives more in return. Players of serious wargames will find that this game will stay on their hard drives long after the 'beer and pretzels' games have gone into the trash.

Gaming Philosophy

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: May 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As a veteran of Avalon Hill's classics from Afrika Korps to Squad Leader and Gary Grigsby's boardgame, War in the Pacific, I read the reviews here with interest. I purchased HTR last year, spent the requisite amount of time with the tutorial (and the manual) and played the game for about a month. In the end I found myself a bit frustrated and sold the game on Ebay. The game is no doubt a masterpiece of the orders process. However, it failed me in the fun department, which is no fault of the game, but I think it is overrepresented here, along with other modern computer versions of boardgames, as comparable to the venerable Avalon Hill classics. I have found the same fault with many modern computer boardgames, all of which are mechanically sound, but are lacking something the cardboard maps and counters provided: a philosophy that a game can be historically accurate, mechanically sound and fun to play. Often I have found, as with HTR, the first two of this trinity are available in great depth at the expense of the "fun to play". Fun to play doesn't mean the game player is a simpleton who can't master intricate mechanics and it doesn't mean a sense of strategic or tactical realism must be sacrificed. Talsonsoft produced two great tactical games in the East/West Front series and their Civil War series, but I have yet to find an operational level game that doesn't get bogged down, except maybe Gary Grigsby's earlier offering of the Barbarosa operation. I am still looking, World at War is my next choice.

No Good - Do NOT buy

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 25
Date: March 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is the second game I have purchased from Matrix Games, and it is the second game to disappoint. I have now spent nearly [$$$] for war games that simply can't be played.

The game takes the airborne assault in World War II named Operation Market Garden and makes game out of it. The screen shots and the web site for the game make it seem easy to play and full of flexibility. Instead the game is very hard to play and short on flexibility. And the game is expensive. [$$$] is a lot of money to spend on something that doesn't work.

In the game, which I have now spent several hours trying to learn, the Allies are air dropped into certain locations, just as in Market Garden, and given objectives that must be reached in a certain amount of time. As the commander of the either the air dropped troops or the German defenders you make your decisions based on the objectives which have been assigned by higher headquarters.

You then assemble your troops (and this is a real problem), click on a path they will follow to the objectives, and then tell them (by clicking on a button) how fast they will travel, what formation they will use, what they will do at the objective etc. Seems easy enough, but it isn't easy at all. Choosing troops and giving orders should be the easiest part of the battle. The hard part should be assessing the results and changing plans as the battle develops. And changing the orders should be simple as well.

But none of this is simple. Selecting the forces to send is almost impossible. The forces are stacked so it is very hard to choose one unit from another. And if you click on an HQ unit all the units for that HQ are chosen. Then you have to start all over again. Changing orders is nearly impossible, especially while the battle is underway. So once you have decided on a course of action that is about it.

The tutorials are just worthless. The instructions tell you to choose a certain unit, but finding that unit is next to impossible. The manual, supplied in the game box, is written in type so small that I have to read it with a magnifying glass. The manual seems to assume you have memorized the game rules as the step by step instructions to accomplish something often leave out important facts - and steps you have to take before you make the move or whatever. Whoever writes these tutorials is far to familiar with the game.

The real problem goes far beyond some of these points on difficulty to learn and play. What occurs in the game is the objectives are assigned by higher headquarters. The places that are to be attacked and seized, and in what order, are given to you when the game play starts. This limits what you can do as a player. In essence, the flexibility of the game is gone. In order to win you must commit your troops in a pre-set manner or else the timing of taking the objectives will be off. It is a points battle, and if you don't achieve the preset objectives you just lose.

So, like Palus at Stalingrad, you can't do anything except what Hitler (higher command) tells you. So you have a purely tactical situation in which your objectives and timing have been pre-determined. Thus, your options are highly limited and you must lock step to the tactics dictated by the game. No flexibility.

Some reviewers on other sites have said this is the most powerful game engine in existence but if that is true no game is worth buying. I have recently bought Korsun Pocket and I dislike that game as well. Both games are nearly impossible to play. One site reviewer estimate this game would take one hour to learn. Who are these people kidding. I can't even read the manual in one hour. The tutorials are poor and very difficult to follow. A total failure as a game in my opinion.

As I have said in my review of other Matrix war games, the game itself needs levels where most of the operational complexity has been removed so the new player can concentrate on learning one aspect of the game before others are thrown in. Trying to learn all of them at once is just impossible. And no fun.

A game should be fun. This one isn't.

Only for hardcore grognards

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It takes patience and a love of the genre to master this game. Defense or offense, enemy AI is unusually clever and makes you pay brutally for every mistake. This game engine will test your abilities even after you overcome the learning curve, translating into a high replayability factor Definitely a keeper.

I just ordered it

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: July 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I havent even played the game yet, but the reviews have been great from every source I've checked. I agree with the two other reviewers that said this game is not for you if you are looking for fast paced shoot em up action. In fact, I would add that if you have any doubts, then this game probably isnt for you. I remember a time before ISPs and the world wide web, when a series of similar games from a publisher called Atomic Games, kept me up all night saying "Just one more turn, and I'll go to sleep." One of the best games in that series was Operation Market Garden. I loved those games so much that a few years ago, I dusted off the CDs and built an old school DOS machine out of spare parts, just to play it again, since it wouldnt run on windows box. Another thing I remember is having to upgrade my video card RAM chips from 512KB to 1MB in order to play it. Now my video card has 256MB, wow have times changed. Ever since then I have kept searching for an updated version of the same type of game that would run on a windows machine, and now its here. Woohoo! cant wait for it to arrive. One last thing, if you like these types of games, I recommend that you also check out "War in the Pacific" by Matrix games.

Take the time to learn it...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: April 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Take the time to learn the game system before trashing it. The printed manual (which is getting increasingly rare these days) clearly states that new players should spend about 2-3 hours going through the tutorials.
Do not buy this game if you're expecting flashy graphics. Do buy it if you want a game to truly challenge you.
My only complaint(s) with the manual are the very dark illustrations & tiny printing. Otherwise it's well laid out & pretty well written.

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