C&VG


Battlefield Germany

Publisher: PSS
Machine: Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Computer & Video Games #70

Battlefield Germany

This is one more from the PSS Wargamers Series, which now includes a very wide range of games, some good, some not so good.

There are already enough World War Three games on the market, all set two years in the future and some showing their age as the future becomes the past.

Battlefield Germany, covering a familiar scenario of a Warsaw Pact assault across the Inner German Border in 1989, would have to have been really spectacular to have made an impression.

Battlefield Germany

In fact, I find the game completely unplayable. That isn't an exaggeration, I can't find a way of playing it. On either one or two player option you are presented with a main screen showing the immediate battle area, with top right a smaller screen showing the whole of Germany and the overall strategic picture.

Unfortunately this screen is so small that there is no way of matching it to the battle screen and working out what is happening.

It was also very confusing having half a dozen units all called nothing but "Sixth Shock Army", and having the Western Strategic Direction treated as a fighting unit, not a headquarters.

So I abandoned the Warsaw Pact forces and opted instead for NATO against the computer. After all, the game was only six moves long so it shouldn't be a problem. I selected the options and waited. The computer began to move Warsaw Pact forces across the battle screen, at times bleeping to itself excitedly.

Occasionally it would ask me which unit I wanted to defend with and then ignore my instructions by attacking another. It kept on, switching from one map to another, playing the game by itself and occasionally tolerating my interference. For 37 minutes. It then asked me if I wanted to make my first move. By that time, no thank you, I did not.