world-war-2 posts

The Europa Universalis series is one of the deepest, most impenetrable collection of games to ever be graced upon humanity. Paradox Interactive knows how to make games that appeal to those who want to sit and fiddle with knobs. However, nothing exceeds the amount of depth and complexity of Hearts of Iron, Paradox's continued series of sequels set in World War 2 times. Their latest release, Hearts of Iron 3, maintains this complexity while greatly increasing overall playability and accessibility. It's certainly not a game for everyone, but if you want a game of epic strategy, you can't do any better.

I was moved to make this the topic of this week's Big Ideas column after reading a review of Call of Duty: World at War. My first reaction was "Haven't we mined this genre by now?" Looking at a Wikipedia list of over 150 World War II-themed video games made me realize that this could very well continue on for years to come. My second reaction became "Why haven't gamers (and developers) gotten tired of the WWII setting?" Clearly, there is a reason these games keep iterating, and a reason players keep buying them.

That led me to my third and instigating thought: "Do we, as gamers, need the real-world setting to enjoy a game more?" Perhaps the continuing popularity of WWII as an environment is the real draw to these games, despite any innovations in actual gameplay mechanics. If this is true, I can only presume that players respond emotionally to the events contained in that war -- events that they themselves as a whole could not have experienced directly. This leads me to ask "How would a veteran of World War II respond to Call of Duty: World at War?"

We've already seen some screenshots of Treyarch's Call of Duty 5 -- err, Call of Duty: World at War. You might be wondering "where's the footage" though, right? You can't judge a game by a video, it's true, but you surely can get a better sense with a video than with still images.

Well, it turns out the wait will be a short one. GameTrailers TV -- which first airs on the Spike TV cable channel, and later appears at www.gametrailers.com -- will debut World at War footage during this Friday's episode. The show airs at 1:00 AM EST (so, for many people, we suppose it'll technically be Saturday, but whatev). Check it out if you have any interest.

Better yet, just wait for it to pop up online. Let's face it -- this is a World War II shooter. It's hard to get excited about those anymore, no matter how much "reinvention" is promised. The modern desert setting is getting just as tired, though, so ... what next?

[Via Kotaku]