User Reviews (1 - 11 of 15)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Hasbro?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 10
Date: January 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

OK, new name, but Hasbro is Hasbro & that means wiennie games! Computer can't win, it stops playing, takes it's baseball & bat & goes home crying. Over $100 for Hasbro (now Microprose)? Yeah, sure!

OK, but you can get it much cheaper

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Game is fun, if older. LOL, you can buy a surplus CD online for $4.95 and use the electronic manual.

Nice interface, poor AI

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: December 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've owned this game for several years, and the previous installment from Hasbro. The interface in the game is intuitive and vivid. It's a blast watching territories change colors as you march across your enemy's nation. Whoever designed this part of the game deserves kudos, and I'm sure they've gone on to bigger and better things.

It's a shame, then, that this brilliant interface goes to waste on such a poorly designed game. If you have cats or small children, you'll find this game useful for when you have friends over to play and do not want to set up the pieces. This game will help you speed through the game. And, since you all know the rules, you won't have to worry about anyone placing or moving units in ways that violate the rules.

If only the same could be said of the AI. Bugs plague this game, and the AI constantly does things it should not be able to do, such as land planes in territories it just captured. The sad part is, the AI cannot even take advantage of it's cheating ways. If you've played this game at least once against a decent human opponent, you'll crush the AI. If you're an advanced player, challenge yourself by removing all the units of one of your countries from the board, or adjusting the price of all the AI's units to 1 I.P.C. - not that it matters, the poor AI still purchases units as if the normal I.P.C. values applied, buying tons of infantry instead of deeply discounted power units. The only difference between Iron Blitz and Hasbro's first release of A&A is that I.B. includes the last patch Hasbro ever put out for this game, a few scenarios which are relatively un-fun (especially since the A.I. still plays the scenarios like it was playing standard A&A), and a pretty extensive mod tools, if you like playing around with the map, yourself.

I've not been able to get the online multiplayer connection to work consistently, so I can't report on the quality of this part of the game.

Hasbro stopped supporting this game as soon as they released it, as best I can tell. So don't expect any improvements.

Disappointing artificial inttelligence

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: June 07, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Should I start with the good or the bad news...

The bad news: For anyone who has played the board game, saying that the software has artificial intelligence is a compliment. Ok that's harsh, but my 9 year old son has no difficulty beating the computer. And I have not sweated once even when my allies are at the weakest setting and my opponents at the highest. Also, the code is bug ridden. The user interface is good but could use some polishing. I have not yet tried to play over the net, but I have found intimidating instructions on how to get around the various difficulties one may encounter in doing so.

The good news: My 6 and 9 year old kids absolutely love it. They learned the rules of the game very fast. To teach kids with the board game requires a lot of time and patience, something that my computer has in larger quantities than myself. Using the game, my kids learn geography without effort and I pitch in some history by answering their hundreds of questions.

I also like the new scenarios in the Iron Blitz edition. The various options allow one to fine tune the rules to one's taste, like getting rid of the technologies.

In conclusion: Until Hasbro Interactive puts some more intelligence in the game, it is a game to be played by kids or against other human players.

OOOO Boy

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: June 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game really pissed me off. While its true that A&A is the best strategy board game since chess, this game still managed to aggravate me. Whenever I would try to play, the game would slow down after a while. It would run great for a while, but after about 10 minutes there was a 1 or 2 second delay on every click that I made. And after 45 minutes it would just crash. If anyone has any suggestions on how to stop the slowing, then e-mail me at StubbsMcGriff@yahoo.com

Until I get this fixed, I won't be playing much Axis and Allies on PC.

Bugs...what else?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 16
Date: March 10, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is the ultimate Axis & Allies, but boy is it bug ridden. I love playing, esp. with friends online, and I keep trying the added scenarios, but have never finished one of these due to some glitch or crash. There is no patch for Iron Blitz yet that I have seen, so if you're the type who loves A&A but hates bugs, wait for the patch!

Too easy and too many bugs

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: August 18, 2000
Author: Amazon User

First of all we'll start with the bad news. The game has entirely too many bugs, for example. On the board game when a player uses a battleship to bombard land units and scores a hit the selected unit is not suppose to defend, not in the case of the computer version. Another is when performing an invasion of an unocupied enemy territory it is not necessary to use air units to assist land units in doing so. For some reason the computer feels it is necessary to clog up ocean territories with defensless transports to prevent an amphibous invasion, rather than concentrate on building a defense and then an offense. This allows the human player to spend some cash on a shot at long range aircraft and heavy bombers which will wipe out transports in no time at all. Finally, the battles (against a computer) are too predictable, I won't go into detail because I could write a novel on this area. You'll just have to see for yourself. There are many other bugs in the system, too many to list. If Hasbro could compile a list of everything wrong and start from scratch you would have the ultimate WW2 game. The positive side to the computer version is you can research different strageties to use against human player on the board game. I have checked out other players strageties on A&A websites, and there are some good ones too, and have discovered ways around just about all of them. Some say the Allies have an advantage over the Axis and vice versa, but it all depends on the player and the dice rolls. You also have to keep in mind the computer controls all dice rolls and can do whatever it wants to balance out the game. Where as on the board game you control the dice and the fate of the battle. Overall the game is very entertaining and I can't play it enough. The games creator states that if you are an average A&A player it will steam roll you right out of there, well if you are an average axis and allies player it will build your confidence and intelligence of the game because even on the hardest setting a novice will hammer the computer on any given day. I give the game four stars only because for the [money] I spent on it, it is an excellent research tool, and expierement tool for the boardgammer, and will turn an average player into a force to be reckoned with, and it is loads of fun if you can tolerate the bugs.

Sponsor Needed!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: November 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game has the premise and potential for one of the greatest PC games. It was abandoned by, well, let's call them, less-than-motivated programmers at Hasbro Interactive and then MicroProse. The bugs have NEVER been addressed: Ships pass through the Suez when they shouldn't, aircraft suddenly go AWOL from a carrier sometimes landing on a nearby continent, and the lock-ups that won't go away.... but enough with these known and apparantly insurmountable bugs.

What absolutely ANNOYS me the most is the way the game takes control of what is supposed to be a 100% random number generator (16.666% chance of throwing a one, on a six-sided die) and yielding PREDICTABLE results in certain conditions that the game engineers must have felt were conducive to enhancing the "give and take" of the global war. The game will, at predictable points, take a look around and "enhance" the number generator for the person/team currently getting hammered. Certain key situations are almost SURE to fail, though the odds might be heavily in your favor. For example, how many times has THIS happened?: You systematically deliver blow after blow, when suddenly, a single transport shoots down three of your bombers! There's a ton of strategy that can be levied in this game, but inevitably, there will be several points were STATISTICS and pure randomness can be tested. So you put yourself in that condition 50 or 100 times, and do the math to see that a favorable outcome should result 78% of the time, for example. Record the results. Plot the results.... Sadly, time and time again, it is clear that conditions that should go one way 80% of the time are going 60% the other way, over 50 to 100 tries! Now, my "A" in statistics was a few years ago, but I think I still remember enough to know this is a tad OFF! Certainly with that kind of sample size, it is clear that the games randomness was "tampered with" on purpose.

The unfortunate wresting of control of the pure statistical aspect of a strategy game by software engineers (or was it management?) who felt this was a substitute for legitimate random number generating belies the professionalism of the program authors, the engineers, and the parent company. Hey, if one side is winning, the odds of three tanks against one infantry should be the same as if that team was losing!

I have had people tell me I am imagining this, but until they have played both board game and PC game several thousand times, there opinions do not stand up to my testing. If you arrange a key situation and play it over and over, for example, you will agree with me.

So I am calling for a daring company or programmer with some guts to buy the rights and market a FIXED game.... I refuse to believe it can be THAT hard....Why did people turn away from this game? The BUGS? I think not. I think most are like me and got absolutely frustrated with the excuse for randomizing and destroying the continuity of a well-planned campaign that has a properly documented success rate on the board game (with real dice), and absolutely no chance on the PC.

Any takers? Anyone with enough stones from Hasbro Interactive or Microprose wanna give up the rights to programmers who would purify the math and let the players have more fun?

Solution to the game being slow

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: February 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I think I've found the solution to the game getting slower and slower - if you turn the music volume in the game to zero and maybe do a restart of the game, you will not have that problem anymore, and the game will be running very smoothly.

Jesper

Needs polishing, but who cares?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 23 / 24
Date: May 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Despite the problems of this game (dim AI, some bugs), it is still the best strategy game I've ever played, next to chess. I've spent countless hours over-the-board, but now I can play with friends in about half the time with out all the mess. We used to constantly run out of chips, or scatter the pieces with the dice, or we'd argue about the rules.

The game has many new choices, including marines, destroyers, paratroopers, kamakazis, etc, and also the option to edit the pieces' or territories' statistics. Don't bother playing the computer, unless you're new to the game, because the only challenge is to see how quickly you can win. You can play multi-player from one computer, with a network card, or over the internet (MSN Zone). There are a few bugs, but save often and you won't have too many worries about it.

The game is out-of-print and Hasbro Interactive sold the rights to Infogrames, so your best bet is put in an "auction alert" on amazon and wait until you receive an email telling you that someone is selling it.

Review Page: 1 2 Next 

Actions