This is a textbook example of why EA games don't age well. Back in the day when the graphics were cutting-edge I could see this being an exiting experience, but now? Meh. This is a garden variety FPS, and not a very interesting one. The level design is simplistic, almost oafish. There are several levels that can only be beaten by trial and error which means tediously dying by sending yourself into ambush in order to locate the enemy positions. If you like this kind of thing, good on you. I have better things to do with my time than save/load the same level a half dozen times. I completely lost interest in less than a week. It wasn't even an old-school rage-quit. I just abandoned it out of sheer boredom.
Look, if you're a real-time strategy buff this is THE game. Great unit selection. Massive map. Realistic movement, fire, moral, critical hits, logistics, command and control, fog of war... It's all there. If you're just a gamer who doesn't have 80 hours to dedicate to learning the game and practicing with the interface? Not so much. DO NOT buy this title if all you're looking to do is a run-through of the Single Player (or as they call it, "solo") game in your spare time. It's a shame really. European Escalation could easily be be fixed by adding a pause button to the solo mode. Better AI would also help. Your units will stupidly follow every order you give them even unto certain death. They won't even stop to return fire if attacked. Because your unit commanders are completely incapable of demonstrating even basic battlefield initiative you have to micromanage every unit every second. With no pause function. It's sad to see such an amazing game fall victim to the laziness (or hubris) of it's own developers. Such a simple fix would broaden the appeal of this title many fold. Sadly, that's just not the case, here. Wargame: European Escalation is a first class modern warfare sim with a fatal flaw. I do not recommend this title to anyone other than fanatically dedicated RTS fans.
This is one of the most entertaining games you will ever play. I am not qualifying this with words like "point and click adventure game" because that would be a disservice to the game. This game is quite literally one of the funniest most richly conceived narratives you will ever see in this media. As an adventure game it does shine. The artwork is extraordinary. It has a polished art deco/steampunk theme predating bioshock by decades (and without all the corpses and junkies mucking up the view). The puzzles are challenging but not impossible, although I played it before the age of the internet walkthrough so I imagine nowadays that's not really so much an issue any more. What makes this game stand out, however, is the story and characters by legendary author Douglas Adams of Hitchhikers Guide and Dirk Gently fame. The puzzle challenges are as absurd as the are clever. Where Myst, the point and click standard of the day, might having you find new worlds, power up rockets, and make otherwise epic changes to your environment, you will find yourself spending a great deal of time trying to figure out how to get your bed open in your cabin or convincing the elevator to bring you down to the bilges so you can rummage through the trash. And this brings us to the characters. Every character you meet are Douglas Adams originals. The limitations of the games engine are brilliantly sidestepped by making them all... well... ALMOST all robots in various states of disrepair. Adams' signature sense of humor permeates every nook and cranny of this game. On more than one occasion I found myself laughing so hard there were tears streaming down my face, yet the game creates a very real sense of tension. I only wish I had the words to recommend it highly enough.
I really hated this game. It's only redeeming feature is Patrick Stewart's voice-overs. This is a completely linear 3d slasher. It's basically an SP gauntlet with combos. The controls are awful, the combos are boring and entirely unnecessary (you can easily button mash your way through the entire game) and team management begins and ends with level-ups. I mean seriously, who uses WASD movement in combination with a Left Ctrl jump key? It's just idiotic. Look, this may be a decent slasher. I couldn't say. To me it feels like a typical Atari quick-and-dirty cash grab but I don't like slashers so maybe I just don't get it. I love D&D, though, and this ain't D&D.
