CCS
£12.95

Somehow, by early December 1944, Hitler had achieved the near impossible. He had, from defeated and disarranged armies, constructed a new army group on the Western Front. A Group that was not only constructed to hold the front - but to punch a hole all the way to the English Channel. What followed was the largest, and most daring, armoured counter-offensive in history.

Complete with 20-page manual, CCS's interpretation of the battle also includes a few interesting 'what ifs' such as having the poor weather remain throughout the battle, not allowing Montgomery to be appointed as Commander of the Northern shoulder and delaying Patton during his 90 degree upward turn of the southern battlefront. Other pre-start options include an Allied/German computer player, a two-player option, levels of difficulty and deployment options (historical or player-set).

The on-screen map and units are well designed and easily interpreted. Placing the cursor over any unit brings up its stats including unit morale, supply level, movement points, etc. Orders are easily despatched and into found by the find key which hops around the map, cycling through your forces.

The game follows the standard order/movement phase-type play. Giving any unit an order turns it light blue. Orders include Move, Road (an excellent, timesaver, order that requires the unit to follow the road to the destination), Bomb (artillery fire), Construct/Demolish (for bridges) and Sabotage (for the two American supply depots).

Initially, considering the bad weather, aircraft support was negligible. Sensibly, though, some air attack/recce is available on a limited basis. On the whole, Battle of the Bulge is an excellent game -although I'm slightly foxed as to the 128K version on side two of the tape as I couldn't see any 128K enhancements and no mention was made of this in the manual.

CCS have not included a modifier for the German undercover commando team that caused some disarray in their American uniforms by scaremongering, rumour spreading, etc. I would have liked to have seen this included as they did have limited success. American troop movements were delayed, some high ranking US officers were arrested/delayed on suspicion of being a spy, etc. Even with my minor gripes, I still enjoyed Battle of the Bulge. CCS once again show they have the Spectrum wargame market by the short and curlies.

I never Was a great fan of war games (probably 'cos I'm completely crap at them) so why I got lumbered with reviewing this one, I don't know. Oh dear. But it gets worse - this one's based on an incident from a real life war (the Battle of the Bulge from World War Two, no less) and guess what?Yep, I'm crap at history as well, so I haven't got a sausage of a clue what it's all about. Oh well, only one thing to do in this situation - use my brilliant reviewer's 'talent' and improvise. (It always works).

The Battle of the Bulge, according to Jonathan (oops, bang goes the improvisation) was apparently one of the last bits of the Second World War where Britain and America got very cross with Germany in some part of Western Europe or something. Anyway, as I've said, this one really goes out of its way to re-live that memorable experience, so everything's true to the real thing - all the units start in their historical locations on the map of the playing area and so on..

You take the side of either Germany or the Allies (or alternatively two people can take a side each) and you sort of, erm, fight each other until everyone dies or until the Germans reach Antwerp or something. Of course, you have to do all this 'strategically' by moving lots of tanks, guns and people around. Fun eh? Other 'highlights' include blowing up bridges, air attacks and more. Each player takes it in turns to move his (or her) party or parties of people and guns and things around until they meet with the enemy - then the real 'fun' begins. Depending on your tactics and morale and so on, where you can play the game pretending other things had actually happened even though they didn't really happen in the real thing, if you see what I mean. For example, you could 'pretend' that it was foggy all the time so all air attacks'll be out of the question. And what if British troops had chickened out at the last minute leaving poor old America to handle all the action? What a pickle you'd be in there 'cos you'd have less people, and more of a chance of losing. Well, that's the thing in theory, but how does it play? Well, it's all nice'n'simple with one key presses and things which no doubt you'll have under your belt in no time. Of course, the tactics of the game take a bit of time to get into - to discover what possibilities this little babe's really got to offer, like where the enemy units start, what the best attack formations to use are and whatnot - but that's just how it is with these type of games. Okay, so it's nothing extremely exciting to some of us, but for those of you really into this sort of thing, it could be your lucky day.