Strike Logic

I shared a lot of the feeling of this podcast - the game is frustrating with a lack of care and attention, but once you get past that, very playable. It makes a really bad first impression - the little tutorial you play has boring design, bad artwork (the images of the voice actor's face) and bad audio (gunfire that sounds like a muted typewriter). Then you get to the main menu which is so poorly implemented it manages to have bugs. Bugs! I've never seen a main menu that has bugs before. I have put a decent amount of time into it, but what the podcast didn't really take the game to task for, is that basically all the best bits of this game, like the visual effects, balance between different units, territory control etc. - all the stuff that makes Company of Heroes what it is - has already been around since the first game. As said on the podcast though, this entry basically adds nothing new that's good, all the stuff they added either conceptually doesn't work, or they've screwed up stuff they did better before like the audio. They're just coasting, but it looks like this game has already been financially successful. That sucks. But I'm just going to add a little rant here - I'm really irritated there's no Italian faction. I'm surprised none of the reviews or this podcast commented on this. It's a game half set in Italy during WW2! There are two German factions and no Italian faction! What the hell! For so long WW2 games have been obsessed with Normandy, then maybe the Ardennes, then there's a handwave, and the game is over. It's a total disservice to one of the most important eras in human history. It's frustrating seeing a review of this game call this part of the war "what's left to do in WW2." I think people who play games have a really warped sense of how WW2 actually happened, and I hoped this game might just nudge people in the right direction. But to not even include an Italy faction in a game set in Italy is just bizarre. Why is it that whenever WW2 comes up, people just want U.S. rangers shooting at German Stormtroopers in a hedgerow, and absolutely nothing else? Please, please, please give me more big budget WW2 games about the air war over Germany, the Norwegian resistance attacking German heavy water sites, the Burma campaign, China vs Japan, the Abyssinian campaign, the U Boat war, the Winter War, spies and double agents, the home front, actually feature other Axis powers (Romania alone sent over 1 million men!), Bletchley Park and code breaking, the Soviet/Japan clashes, or literally anything else. There's so so much rich material here!

I'd love to hear some examples of Real-Time games in this subgenre, if there are any. I know it was covered a little towards the end, but I think the main issue was missed: once you remove full control from the player, they'll blame the system anytime mistakes happen. Imagine a real-time XCOM - if a trooper took a stray bullet because they moved because of another soldier's path-finding, would you care? But when you order the move in XCOM, then you feel the consequences as they happen. One of my biggest issue with the current turn based model is the time investment. Someone mentioned 400+ hours on the podcast. In my experience, turn-based games often lead to longer playtimes and repetitive turns. Should it really take that length of time to get the full experience in Darkest Dungeon? Or could we manage to deliver it in half or even a quarter as long? If we could, this would have tremendous benefits to both designers and players. But another issue was also mentioned in the podcast - once turn based, there seems to be an inevitable shift to a puzzle-like gameplay, but that personally does very little for me. Elegant puzzle games are all well and good, but there's a wealth of experiences you can only get in real-time. I feel a sense of dread in XCOM, but it rarely feels frantic like a chaotic gunfight should. I think there are ways to resolve this issue. I haven't seen any fundamental problems with a real-time concept. But I haven't seen many medium/big games attempt it. The only one that comes to mind is Total War (if you count it) and that continues to have ongoing mechanical issues 15+ years after the first game came out. Are there any others? P.S. I share Rob's uncomfortable response when the discussion of "rage quitting only to return tomorrow" comes up. Games that encourage this end up relying on addictive mechanics that we should be moving far away from, and never looking back to.