REVIEWS COURTESY OF ZXSR

Their Finest Hour
by John K. Wilson, Nicholas Palmer
Century Communications Ltd
1985
Crash Issue 26, Mar 1986   page(s) 119,120

Producer: Century Communications
Retail Price: £9.95
Author: Nicholas Palmer and John Wilson

In the wake of PSS's highly acclaimed Battle of Britain, Century Communications, better known for their series of computer handbooks, have published an icon driven simulation of this famous conflict. The game was programmed Fourth Protocol style by John Wilson, but designed by veteran board wargamer, Nicholas Palmer, author of the definitive The Comprehensive Guide to Board Wargaming. The result is the most fascinating computer wargame yet to appear on the Spectrum.

It's hard, in fact, to know exactly where to start praising the game as it excels in so many areas. The packaging is medium format 'bookcase' style, containing a cassette and instruction leaflet. 'Leaflet' really fails to do justice to the excellent rules slip. From a potted history of events that led up to the battle, you are taken systematically through the different rules and given guidelines on play at each stage. Diagrammatic summaries of the icons used in the game make the straightforward play techniques even easier to grasp for the beginner. Finally, a section of notes from Nicholas Palmer explains the philosophy of game design used.

On the other side of this 'leaflet' is a map of the southeast of the UK and part of occupied France. The map shows airbases, anti-aircraft installations, radar stations and ports, as well as major cities the Luftwaffe might attack. This supplements the map presented on the screen during play.

The game has a pulse rate feature used to set the speed of the game. The rate can be varied between 1 and 255, meaning the game can be finely tuned to individual taste: it can be set up to suit a wide range of tastes from those of the player who likes to analyse a game in fine detail as if it were a solitaire board game to the player who wishes to test personal reactions and ability to make fast crucial decisions. The clock can be paused for necessary breaks in play when the game doesn't need to be saved, or temporarily speeded up during certain times of relative inactivity. Once the pulse rate has been set it remains the same for the greater part of play.

As with its obvious competitor, Battle of Britain, Their Finest Hour allows the player to select single day or campaign scenarios. The single day option is perhaps the best start point for the beginner. Once the instructions and nature of play have been thoroughly digested, the player can progress to the full campaign and decide how best to set the pace of the battle. In the one day scenario, victory is assessed at nightfall when the attacks have ceased. In the campaign game, at the end of each day's fighting you are summoned to Winston Churchill's command bunker where he assesses your progress. It is possible (though very difficult) to deal a crippling blow to the Luftwaffe during a single day, in which case victory will be yours. If you have managed the forces particularly badly, Churchill asks for your resignation. Otherwise, he merely assesses your progress so far, and play continues the next day. You may decide to quit at any point during the campaign game, and victory is given to whichever side has performed best.

Intelligence reports are crucial for planning the initial defence. The type and number of aircraft available to the enemy are detailed at the start of the game, and although the numbers may differ each time the game is played, subsequent RAF losses are always measured against this first intelligence report. The Luftwaffe has ME109 fighters, ME110 fighter bombers, HE111 and JU88 heavy bombers and the medium DO17 and JU87 bombers at its disposal. British air defence is made up entirely of squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes. The author acknowledges that Beauforts, Defiants and the like also had a small part to play, but for the purposes of the game he chooses to ignore them. This has no detrimental effect on the game as a simulation.

Whilst monitoring incoming enemy attacks the player has the option of setting the level of flak, and can order different levels of alert for pilots. Alerts can be made locally or set to bring an entire region's interceptor force into action. Seriously fatigued pilots may be sent to Scotland for rest while new pilots are brought in. More experienced pilots are worth treating as well as possible under the circumstances, as they have the greatest effect on the enemy when in battle. Repairs may be carried out on those airfields which have suffered an enemy attack. If these repairs are intensive, they return an airfield to operative status quickly, but during the day that repairs are being carried out the field is vulnerable to attack.

When a German airborne unit is successfully intercepted, the player is asked to supply an aggression factor. Minimal aggression causes the RAF pilots to break off the attack before casualties are suffered, whereas a high aggression factor results in relatively high losses on both sides. If an enemy squadron consists entirely of fighter aircraft, it's best to save your pilots and break off the attack. If it's mainly a bomber formation, then the opportunity to damage it as severely as possible should be taken. Germans gain victory points with successful raids on ports and cities. Successful Luftwaffe strikes against radar bases eventually result in severe blind spots occurring in the defensive network, which can lead to your downfall.

Forces may also be moved to respond to differing strategies from the Germans. On some occasions, the Luftwaffe might make sporadic, small attacks on varying targets; alternatively they may try to smash your opposition in one fell swoop. The variety of strategies that may be employed by the computer make this one of the most compelling games I've ever come across. Having now played the game several times, I have not yet been able to anticipate more than the simplest of actions on the enemy's part.

The way in which the icons are used is very neat. All the possible actions are clearly set out before you. Pressing the wrong key doesn't always lead to a major mistake - you can usually get out of it without any particular problem. Sometimes a message appears such as, 'Already in flight, Sir!' if you try to scramble an airborne unit. Full combat results appear in messages which list the numbers of each type of aircraft lost by each side in a particular engagement.

The game lacks the optional arcade element present in Battle of Britain and is inferior in one or two aesthetic points (such as the way the radar screen could be scanned in the PSS game) but instead the player has a brilliantly implemented simulation which does full justice to the historic events it represents. The talents of John Wilson and Nicholas Palmer have been used to the greatest effect. To my mind, the combination of their abilities has resulted in the finest wargame currently available to Spectrum owners.


REVIEW BY: Sean Masterson

Presentation88%
Rules94%
Playability92%
Graphics94%
Authenticity96%
Value for Money95%
Overall96%
Summary: General Rating: Sheer brilliance.

Award: Crash Smash

Transcript by Chris Bourne

Crash Issue 26, Mar 1986   page(s) 93,94

Producer: Century Communications
Retail Price: £10.95
Author: Nicholas Palmer & John Wilson

Their Finest Hour is an icon driven strategy game out of the same mould as Century's previous release, The Fourth Protocol. That game was based upon the best seller by Frederick Forsyth and this game has an equally auspicious background as it finds its setting amongst the brave World War II pilots who inflicted Germany's first defeat of the war in the Battle of Britain.

Game design was by Nicholas Palmer, author of 'The Comprehensive Guide to Wargaming', and he has brought his love and knowledge of the genre to the computer screen with true military precision. The game is eminently playable and as your interest in the heroic exploits of these flying aces increases so you find yourself becoming more and more absorbed with the task of halting and eventually turning back the northward advance of the Luftwaffe over southern England.

This game scores on all fronts: design; looks and playability. Design is centred around two map scales one a small-scale map showing southern Britain where dots represent radar stations, air bases and nine ports, and the other providing large-scale maps showing much smaller areas (eg Devon & Cornwall) where dots inside squares are air bases from which you launch your aircraft, anchors are ports, and five dice-like dots are the radar stations which scan the skies for the approaching German air force. Around the edge of the map screen are the main icons such as anti-aircraft flak, plane allocation to the ten air bases, and repairs to installations at the inning of each day.

You can alarm bases and direct planes during the day which leads you off into sub-menus where relative strengths can be increased or decreased. For example, the Alarm Sub-Menu gives the choice of putting the crews of an air base on hut, cockpit or plane alert where each represents an escalation in readiness for the approach of Goering's forces from the south. The computer knows which air base you wish to alter by an ingeniously simple method. A cursor glides over the map screens and you place it over the air base, radar station or port you are interested in. You can then use the icons around the sides to alter flak cover (which starts at two anti-aircraft guns per site), plane allocation to bases, or alert status for bases, or you can just request information via the information icon. This last feature is a very useful one as in such an involved game constant updates on information on both your own movements and those of the enemy forces are vital. Reports on enemy aircraft are not just plonked into your lap; a strong thread of strategy runs throughout the game and in this case the accuracy of reports on enemy movements is governed by weather conditions and the watchfulness of the radar crews and ground observers.

This is certainly a good-looking game. The maps are geographically accurate representations of southern Britain while the icons for such diverse operations as tape, keyboard/joystick, plane allocation and repairs are pleasing to the eye and reveal delightful detail. The icons are driven by whining a cute pointing hand around the edge of the maps with the SPACE key and selecting with ENTER. Sub-menus and bulletins are flashed up onto the screen in a very neat fashion in keeping with the looks of the game as a whole.

Not only is the game playable, it also has that rich blend of strategy which will ensure it is played long and often. Right From the start you can choose how fast time passes by selecting the clock icon and selecting a pulse rate between 1 (impossibly fast) and 255 (where every move can be scrutinised to the last). 30 is thought an expert's speed and 150 time enough for the anxious.

The attacking German forces are made up of ME109's, the main German fighters, ME110's the fighter bombers, and the HE 111's, JU 88's, DO 17's (Flying Pencils), and the JU 87's (Stukas) which are the (progressively lighter and faster) bombers but the heavy HE 111's and JU 88's do the most damage. The numbers of these aircraft types will vary each time you play and so you will look afresh each time at the initial Intelligence Assessment with its superb picture of Winston Churchill (his picture on the loading screen must be the best I've seen on a Spectrum). The battle begins on August 12 and can continue until September 21 when the British forces win if you haven't already been defeated. After each day's play Churchill calls you from his bunker to inform you how the War Cabinet assesses your progress. If your losses are severe Churchill asks for your resignation.

There are many strands of strategy running throughout the game. Well rested pilots are more then a match for the Luftwaffe, so early interceptions of the enemy forces should be on the highest rating of aggression (ie 6 from the choice 0-6). An aggression factor of 0 on your part sees your pilots intimidated by combat and they return to base. If the pilots are tired, and its worth noting that when in the air they tire very quickly, it is probably better to avoid combat unless the enemy force is composed more of heavy bombers than swift fighter craft.

After lunch each day your pilots will be tired and you should recall the most exhausted to base. Squadrons at the end of their tether should normally be rotated to Scotland, especially if the weather forecast is bad, making enemy raids less effective. You may decide not to alert some squadrons in the morning so as to keep them fresh for afternoon interceptions. Care must be taken to ensure German raids do not catch RAF planes on the ground. Squadrons on cockpit or runway alert can get themselves into the air quickly, but unalerted or hut-alert bases run the risk of being caught hopping. However, the higher the alert the more tired the pilots will become so it is not such a good idea to go on too high alert too early.

The Luftwaffe goes mainly for radar installations and airfields at first, trying to crack your defences before they attack the ports and soften them up for invasion. Because of this it may well be a good idea to harden up defences (via the flak icon) along the southern coast radar stations, as it is these which give you the earliest detection of the advancing forces. Needless to say, should all your south coast radar stations become damaged, you are almost blind to the advancing forces, save the occasional ground observation. Your best planes are the Spitfires; they are slightly faster and more effective than the Hurricanes.

As with all complex games this one has its fare share of bugs. At one point in a game I had more planes destroyed during combat than actually existed and this resulted in having P762 planes left. Also, on destroying an entire German force, I was then constantly attacked by zero planes. The way the game stops whenever a message is up on the screen is, to me, a negative point as it gives valuable thinking time during which the players can collect their thoughts and coolly work out the best strategy. This is a luxury not afforded the strategists during World War II. Perhaps the combat algorithm is just that bit askew. During battle you can have the situation where one Hurricane (slower than the Spitfire) holds at bay a considerable German fighter force. The rate at which the pilots tire is a great cause for concern. During just one morning pilots become tired and can actually reach the end of their tether. All the while the advancing German pilots seem to keep remarkably fresh and just keep on coming at you!

Nicholas Palmer wanted to devise a game which gives the player the claustrophobic feel of crouching in a command centre struggling with insufficient material. He has constructed the game so that the computer controlling the German forces, far from being a passive opponent, exploits weaknesses in your defences intelligently. The strategy element varies from game to game, from day to day, and from one battle to the next. The one day option is very useful as the main option takes a long time to play. Because the strategy element is so pervasive the game becomes really absorbing and can hold your interest for a considerable period of time the one game can last days or even weeks. I think Their Finest Hour is a superb strategy game and a worthy successor to the popular Fourth Protocol.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: choice of pace
Graphics: excellent
Presentation: excellent
Input facility: icon-driven
Response: fast


REVIEW BY: Derek Brewster

Atmosphere8/10
Logic7/10
Addictive Quality9/10
Overall8/10
Summary: General Rating: Very good.

Transcript by Chris Bourne

Your Sinclair Issue 3, Mar 1986   page(s) 33

Century Communications
£9.95

Nehvah, in the field of Spectrum wargaming, has so much been put into so little. Century surprised everyone with the flash icons and ease of play of its Fourth Protocol and it's used many of the same techniques to make its Battle of Britain simulation one of the most playable and realistic wargames ever. Unlike the bulk of the genre, Their Finest Hour plays smoothly and is all action. There's little of the tedious taking turns to alter this, allocate that, update the other and whatever.

You play in 'real time', the action only stopping so that you can read reports and the constant stream of mostly abusive memos from the Commander-in-Chief or respond to questions such as the way you want to handle particular dogfights. The speed of play is adjustable by setting a pulse rate - set it slow and you get more time to consider your options than they did in 1940, set it fast and it all happens so quickly, it's almost an arcade game. Even better, holding down the S key hurries the game along so you can rush through the 'boring' bits and take more care over the crucial battles.

The game's high on realism - the lads even get tired and careless if you leave 'em up too long. You've got to spread the load throughout your forces and make sure those the front line are getting their fair share of rest, repairs and support from other squadrons. But the simulation is scaled down from history - you've only got Spits and Hurricanes. As it is, you're gonna have to play loads of one-day games until you've got the map fixed in your head and don't have to think about which dot is where before you can attempt the real thing.

It may not have 3D graphics, the rattle of machine guns and thunder of ack-ack guns. But it does have the claustrophobia and almost impossible odds of 1940. I lost again and again; I still can't beat off the might of the Luftwaffe. And I still don't know how they did it in 1940.


REVIEW BY: Max Phillips

Graphics7/10
Playability9/10
Value For Money8/10
Addictiveness8/10
Overall9/10
Award: Your Sinclair Hot Shot

Transcript by Chris Bourne

Sinclair User Issue 44, Nov 1985   page(s) 30

Publisher: Century Communications
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Kempston

It's wizard flying weather but we're in for a stormy ride. Goering has despatched the Luftwaffe and it looks as if the Battle of Britain is about to begin.

You must take on the task of organising Britain's air power. Churchill will be depending on you and will summon you to his bunker every evening expecting good results. If you lose the battle of the sky you will also lose your job.

Before the start of the game an icon driven menu is provided for the selection of joystick, keyboard and pulse rate. The pulse rate governs the speed at which the game plays and is entered as a number between one and 255. You must choose whether you want to play the one day option or a longer game. One day in the hot seat is best for the beginner who has to juggle with the duty rosters for all air bases in Britain, keep an eye on reports from radar stations and organise the positioning of flak guns.

Only then can you scramble air bases to take action against the enemy as they fly in over the coast.

A map of Britain is displayed and you can zoom in for a detailed look at any of the air bases under your control, by placing a cursor over the area in which it is located and pressing the fire button. An exploded view of the map will appear together with a status report which gives the type and number of aircraft at a base and the feelings of the pilots stationed there.

You can scramble a base by selecting the alarm bell icon. If aircraft are already flying you will be told so by the base commander but if not he will simply say: "Yes Sir!"

When a confrontation is imminent you will be prompted to enter an Aggression Factor ranging from one to six. That determines the ferocity of the fighting and the lengths to which your pilots and gunners will go to drive off the Germans.

After the smoke clears you get a status report from the base commander showing the number of casualties on both sides. A local alert, to bases in the area, combined with a high Aggression Factor is likely to cause severe casualties. Luckily, you can alert all bases on the south coast to aid a beleaguered area. That action, coupled with good flak support and an Aggression Factor of four or five should give the enemy plenty of trouble while keeping allied losses low.

As air crews are likely to get physically and emotionally worn out you will have to keep a fairly strict duty roster to keep them happy. They can reach the end of their tethers in just one day so imagine what a prolonged campaign could do to them.

You do not have to annihilate the Germans in order to win the game. Churchill will commend you for your strategic measures even if you destroy just a few of the enemy but keep them at bay. Winning is difficult but the first time you defeat the German armada you will feel that you have done something worthwhile. You will also feel exhausted.

Their Finest Hour is a strategy simulation which uses the same icon techniques as The Fourth Protocol, also from the Century Hutchinson stable. The package contains a booklet describing the war in the air together with a large scale map - everything you require to take you back to 1940.


REVIEW BY: John Gilbert

Overall5/5
Transcript by Chris Bourne

C&VG (Computer & Video Games) Issue 57, Jul 1986   page(s) 46

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Century Communications
PRICE: £10.95

The Battle of Britain looks like a conjuring trick. A German force of over two thousand aircraft which had fought three victorious campaigns, including seven hundred excellent single-seat fighters, contested the skies of southern England with half that number of British planes, of inferior design except for a few Spitfires, flown by mostly inexperienced pilots using obsolete tactics. And the British won.

Many factors, including luck, played a part in the victory, but the key was the organisation of Fighter Command through sector control stations, linked to radar, and it is these which are the focus of John Wilson and Nicholas Palmer's excellent game. The player controls the squadrons of Ten and Eleven Group (Twelve Group in the north being too distant to help) as sector-sized units through the early days of August 1940 against computer-controlled German raids. As casualties mount, depleted squadrons are replaced by novices, who, if they survive, become veterans in their turn. Limited warnings, becoming more limited as the radar stations are hit, and a variable game speed which requires instant decisions in the midst of the battle recreate superbly the atmosphere of the time.

Each day of the game takes about forty five minutes to play, at the end of which the player is summoned to meet Churchill, and either applauded, told to carry on, or more likely - fired. The program is rather too ready, in fact, to tell the player he has lost, apparently on the basis that if three German raids get through the damage is too great. Unfortunately there are exactly four types of raid which cannot be stopped no matter what you do to them, including the fifty ME109s without bombers which I chased all the way to Wales (drop tanks?) where the last surviving six caused "crippling" damage to Swansea docks (with their machine guns?). This is sad, because on the rare occasions that the game goes beyond its first few days it presents a real challenge to strategic planning.

The virtues of having an experienced wargamer like Nicholas Palmer design this game are apparent in its subtleties and attention to detail.

The program also has a small bug which means that some is care is required when saving the game.

Despite this, Their Finest Hour is undoubtedly one of the best wargames I have ever played.


REVIEW BY: Dr Stephen Badsy

Graphics9/10
SoundN/A
Value9/10
Playability7/10
Transcript by Chris Bourne

Your Computer Issue 11, Nov 1986   page(s) 50,51

GOING TO BATTLE

War simulations are becoming ever more popular Tom Courtenay examines some of the best.

War games have come a long way from the time H.G. Wells wrote Little Wars at the turn of the century. He wrote it as a result of trying to regulate the battles on the Kitchen table against his friends involving a handful of pained tin soldiers. These days, war-gamers revel in the complexity and realism of their simulations - ify ou call it playing soldiers they would be very upset. Any game worth its salt will involve tape measures, dice, sets of tables, vast numbers of troops, or even cardboard counters representing regiments or divisions.

So it is scarcely surprising that the home computer was welcomed by the war-gaming lobby with open arms. Two approaches were taken: either the computer could be used to referee a traditional war game fought on a table-top in traditional manner, or the whole thing could be transferred to the computer.

The pioneer of the latter approach was Lothlorien, which began to produce war games written in Basic on the Spectrum. Obviously they look primitive by today's standards but they attempted to be accurate representations of historical events. To the mainstream games enthusiast, they played slowly and you could not kill anything.

The first truly modern game was Nato Commander from Microprose. It takes place in northern Europe and features that almost constant American obsession, the Reds pouring over the border and trying to take over Europe. The game covers the most critical period, between the initial invasion and the U.S. getting huge reinforcements to the front. Thus, the Nato commander is severely outnumbered and is fighting a delaying action, trying to hold on to as much ground as possible, and possibly inflicting significant losses on the Soviets.

However distasteful you may find the scenario, it is a very good game. Success depends on falling back in stages, each rearguard action allowing time for the forces to the rear to dig in, then fall back, and so on. In that way, the steam is taken out of the Soviet advance. Any Soviet forces not in contact with friendly forces may disappear from the map, depending on how many aircraft are flying reconnaissance missions.

Aircraft can also run air superiority or ground attack missions. It is important to keep open supply lines and make the best possible use of terrain. The computer opponent is fairly intelligent, although by following particularly outrageous tactics it might be very confused.

Microprose recently followed this with Decision in the Desert and Crusade in Europe. They are a real tour de force. Covering two famous campaigns in WWII, they are about as near to a board game on a computer as you are likely to see. Almost everything is there, the different strengths and weaknesses of units, use of terrain, supply - in both strategic and tactical senses - fog of war, and a two-player option.

Again, the computer could be a little lacking in the old grey matter, especially when called on to defend, but the two-player option is what the game was about. Both games feature several different scenarios which portray different battles within the campaign. Although the games can be long, the speed of play can be varied to slow things when things become difficult. Orders are made in real time - the battle does not stop while you input orders. Tactics are very subtle. All-out effort rarely works; you will just run out of supplies and exhaust your troops. It is all about probing for weaknesses and then exploiting them quickly. The games are on C64, Atari and Apple.

Microprose recently capped even that success with its chart-topping Silent Service, in the same three formats, with ST, Amstrad and Spectrum versions promised. It is a superb simulation of submarine warfare in the Pacific. Almost without being aware of it, the player is subject to many rules about sighting, detection, firing and hidden movement. It knocks spots off all the board games devoted to the same subject - and you can shoot things.

You command one submarine on patrol in the Pacific. After a convoy is detected, a quick squint through the periscope to see whether its worth the risk - how heavy is the escort? Then check the time. Should you wait until dusk? Check the speed and course of the convoy. What is the best attack course to evade detection? A little on the slow side for the shoot-'em-up fraternity but a superb and exciting simulation which will take some beating.

That is not to say British programmers are not starting to get their acts together. Particularly Robert Smith, who has produced two fine simulations, Arnhem and Desert Rats, published by CCS on the Spectrum and Amstrad.

Another company specialising in this field is PSS. It has attempted to popularise the genre by including an arcade element in most of its games. Unfortunately that tends to mean the realism of the game suffers - precious memory and development time is lavished on a rather tedious shoot-'em-up.

Neither is the company a stranger to controversy. Its titles include Theatre Europe, all about the jolly little subject of a European war escalating into a thermonuclear holocaust. The scenario is much the same as Nato Commander but the addition of a complex air war, the arcade sequences and the thermonuclear option has left in its wake a rather dull land game.

The game falls between four stools. Falklands '82 was another landmark of good taste. It features the Argentinians and the British locked in a struggle to save their respective governments from the wrath of the electorates. The game stayed mainly with the land campaign, and it aroused much anger as it demonstrated the possibility of the British losing - something fairly obvious to anyone of even a semi-rational disposition.

Possibly the company's best game to date is Battle of Midway, about the decisive carrier battle in the central Pacific in the middle of 1942 which effectively ended Japanese chances of winning the war. The player controls the American task forces in an attempt to seek and destroy the Japanese aircraft carriers protecting an invasion of the American base at Midway island.

Although the tactics employed would make most military historians turn pale, it is not a bad game. The player has to find, identify and then shadow the enemy task force as, his strike aircraft close in from his carriers. Naturally, the enemy is trying to do the same, or even get to grips with his surface units. The player must plan his raids, try to evade the enemy, and control the strikes, making sure they find their targets and have sufficient fuel to return to their carriers.

The same system was developed further in the PSS Battle of Britain. It covers the Luftwaffe attempt to destroy the RAF in the summer of 1940. The main pre-occupation of the player is to preserve his fighters, taking on the Germans only if he can do so on favourable terms. There are problems; after each interception the fighters must land, re-fuel and re-arm. The nightmare is that a German raid will catch the fighters on the ground. The campaign is fought through several turns, with the British meeting raiders as their losses permit. It is a long game, of slightly dubious accuracy, but a fascinating struggle.

On the same subject, Their Finest Hour from Hutchinson is a flawed attempt to be a real simulation of the battle. Although highly-detailed, some of the mistakes are almost laughable. First, defensive flak can zip from target to target as if on wheels; ME109s have huge fuel tanks, along with the Spitfires which also have inexhaustible ammunition. Time and again, a squadron can shoot down 200 aircraft and usually the Luftwaffe is defeated on the first day. It is a pity, because it had the makings of a fine game.

The most recent PSS game returns to the Western Desert, Tobruk, on the Amstrad, features an exceptional network option where two Amstrads are connected using the joystick ports so that two players can battle with highly-realistic Fog of War. Neither can see each other's pieces. The game design is a little artificial, with the British having fixed supply dumps and the Germans being able to zip around at will but it is a fine game which is great fun to play.

Most of the games have been set in WWII. If you crave for the age of the horse and the cannon, there is a grave shortage of quality material from that era. The Lothlorien Waterloo and Austerlitz are not bad. Although they lack detail, the games go some way to recreating the Napoleonic era, but if you are looking for dramatic cavalry charges, forget it.

Possibly the best thing Lothlorian has done to date is Jonny Reb, a semi-abstract simulation of tactics in the American Civil War, seen in retrospect as the transition from the Napoleonic to the modern era. As firepower became more formidable, so the only way to stay alive was to take cover. The infantry charge became a rather rare commodity. That is dealt with very well in this game. The Confederate army's job is to try to take a bridge from a small force of troops before a large number of Union reinforcements can arrive.

The tactic is to move up men with covering fire from artillery, then open fire with the infantry. If that does not work, send in the cavalry as a last resort - demoralised troops will tend to run rather than face a cavalry charge. Endless variations of troops and terrain can be tried with a kind of battlefield designer.

The major criticism is that such a complex game has completely inadequate instructions. The terrain is placed there with little explanation of its effects. Despite that, and the usual monumentally thick computer opponent. It is a game which will reward plenty of experimentation.

Computer war games have progressed a long way from their humble origins but they still have some way to go before they reach the level of accuracy and subtlety of most board war games. Perhaps the new generation of 68000-'based machines might just fulfil that potential.


REVIEW BY: Tom Courtenay

Blurb: ADDRESSES CCS: 14 Langton Way, London SEb 7TL LOTHLORIEN: Liberty House, 222 Regent Street, London W1 MICROPROSE: 10 Henniker Mews, Chelsea, London SW3 P.S.S.: 452 Stoneystanton Road, Coventry, CV6 5DL

Transcript by Chris Bourne

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