SSI has heard the call of General-wannabes everywhere and has rolled out the next in their
General series, Allied General. This second release in what looks like it's going to be a long line of games
also covers World War II, but this time lets you play the campaign game from the vantage point of the
Allies. The core game system from Panzer General seems to still be here and play was virtually the same.
While we hate to focus on a game's interface and related features in a review, much of what's new
in Allied General seems to be in the interface area. Obviously, Windows gives the game something of a
different feel û many displays which were different screens in Panzer General are now separate windows
that can be moved, resized, and minimized in whatever way you see fit. The game will now play in even
higher resolutions û 800x600, for example, gives a much larger map area, or more room to arrange the
secondary windows as you'd like. The Windows flexibility comes at a price, however û the game requires
at least a 486/66 (Pentium recommended) and 8 megs of RAM (12 recommended). I could play it on my
486/33, but only under Win 3.1 and it was very slow. Even on a P-60 (with 8 megs) the game
played slowly unless it was the only program running û then performance was fairly snappy. The main
map window no longer scrolls automatically when you move the mouse pointer to its edges, something I
wish they'd been able to keep.
Two new features that should please both wargame grognards and those who liked the (dare we
say it?) role-playing aspects of Panzer General are the dossier and history functions. With the dossier you
can create a general and then assign this general to scenarios or campaigns (American, British, or Russian,
or all three!). A complete record of your wins and losses is kept for all to see. The history feature gives
you the ability to record events (all the events) of a battle for future reference. You can look at this history
during gameplay or look at the text files afterwards.
Instead of the single campaign of Panzer General you get to choose from three primary Allied
campaigns in Allied General: the Brits, either starting in North Africa and continuing on to Europe or
starting right in Western Europe; the Americans with some action in Africa but focused on Europe; or the
Soviets on the Eastern Front. Some of the Western European scenarios are covered in both the American
and British campaigns, but play is still different û your Core units are of your nationality, and you can only
purchase units of other nationalities as Auxiliaries.
As for how the game plays, you'll probably either love it entirely, or like it a whole bunch but be
irked by parts of it. As I mentioned, the game plays almost exactly like Panzer General, and therein lies the problem. I really liked the game system, but was (as a wargamer) unhappy with some of the liberties taken. I really dislike the vague scales used in both games û is a unit a division or a corps, is a hex 40 kilometers across or 100? This changes from scenario to scenario and lowers the utility of the history function û how can you keep an accurate history for one of your Core units if its size is variable?
For the most part I'm not a grognard who can rattle off orders of battle down to the squad, but
even I could see the historical looseness both games play with. As a test, I played the Soviet invasion of
Finland from both. The end results were surprisingly realistic (the Soviets found the Finns a very tough nut
indeed), but only because of inaccuracies during gameplay. For example, in Allied General the Finns were
given much more artillery than they had in the actual conflict, and it was only by using this imaginary
artillery that I could keep the Soviets from breaching my lines.
I'm not sure if it was because of this imbalance, but when I played the Soviets (against the
computer) I found it wasn't a cakewalk û I got further against the AI than the AI did against me, but it still
seemed to put up a pretty good fight. Computer opponents are never strong, but the design of Allied
General may make up for any deficiencies (if you don't mind the inaccuracies the design causes).
Overall, if you enjoyed Panzer General you're going to love Allied General as well. If reasonable
historical accuracy is something you demand, then you might want to wait for the upcoming Fantasy
General û same great game system and no realism to worry about.
