“What if the 2nd & 3rd Panzers had continued onto Moscow in August?”
Facing down nested menus and the Wehrmacht in STEEL DIVISION II
In the tension between childhood in the WWII-mad ’70s and having German relatives, I developed a life-long horrified fascination with the whole thing.
Not for me are the superficial delights of Battlefield- style shooters though. I need huge, sweeping simulations of the Eastern front, dripping in appropriate misery. My brain hums with counter-possibilities. What if the 2nd & 3rd Panzers had continued onto Moscow in August? And I want receipts.
So, I see a game like Steel Division II and I want it. I want to be good at it, I want to have time for it. It’s the kind of game that I acquire during a Steam sale, carefully hoovering up all the DLC… then never, ever play.
Because I hate base-building, I hate resource management, and fear the menus. Give me a few good men, or something and let me get on with it. The problem is I’m lazy, or at least, I have issues with my concentration. Yet, I have 525 games on Steam that I haven’t even installed. I decided that a random number generator would select my next game and Steel Division II was the winner.
The strategic level is relatively simple, if you auto-resolve the engagements. It’s a straightforward numbers game with modifiers. My head could get round this much. I’m not creating barracks, or researching technologies for fear of fielding inadequate tanks. It did take me a while to realize that I should ignore the retreating Germans and take the
Red Army round them. I love a circuitous outflanking maneuver, but usually I’m still blundering across a distant hillside as the battle ends.
ALL OUT
Anyway, I finally get a Katyusha. I know all about this scarily-effective multiple rocket launcher. She devastates my advancing enemy in the most exhilarating way possible and in a few short seconds. Then she’s out of ammo… and nothing happens. Turns out the game hasn’t seen fit to offer me a supply truck yet.
But another minute has passed. I have more points, and the enemy has probably spent theirs. Tanks! Tanks are good, right? But I’ve used them all. A huge column of my armor was picked off while I fiddled with something else. I begin shoveling support units and trucks onto the front line as it ripples towards me, each destroyed on arrival. I am sacrificing the cream of Soviet youth for nothing more than the slightest chance to stave off the fascists… I suppose I wanted historical realism, and there it is.
I KNOW ALL ABOUT THIS SCARILY-EFFECTIVE MULTIPLE ROCKET LAUNCHER