In the world of war games, there have been a lot of games that have had some qualities that I really enjoyed, but there hasn't really been a war game that grabbed my attention and said, "Hey! Get to know me!". Aegis: Guardian of the Fleet, from Software Sorcery, doesn't have every element I would ever want to see in a game of this type, but it does have one outstanding factor that was the big hook for me. I am a member of the newly labeled "Generation X" and I have absolutely no idea what it was like to be alive during World War I or II or Korea and Vietnam is just a blur of TV images from my infancy.
Aegis is a naval warfare simulation based on operations aboard a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, which you command. Your ship is state of the art and, this is the clincher folks, it covers scenarios that we have all come to know and love from all those late nights glued to CNN watching the latest installments of such classics as the Falklands Follies , the Desert Storm Dancers or Fun with Ronnie & Mo; this is certainly not to mean any disrespect toward the military, on the contrary, the "nintendo" technology is what kept so many of us glued to the set for so long. Aegis covers major naval involvements from the Falklands conflict of 1982 to Operation Desert Storm and two fictitious scenarios based on possible outcomes of current events. These scenarios have two things going for them right off the bat. First, most of us would start one of these scenarios with a patriotic motivation driven home by all those news videos and sound bites. Secondly, most avid news watchers are at least familiar with the technology used on a ship of this type; even some weapons, like the Tomahawk missile have had significant exposure and the Phalanx Close-In defense system came under fire when the USS Stark was hit by an exocet missile in the Persian Gulf.
In keeping with a growing trend in our armed forces, your ship is extremely versatile and is responsible for defending against a variety of threats from land, air, sea-surface and sub-surface. While the cruiser protects other ships in a task force from hostile threats, it can also play an aggressor role. During the Libyan air raid in 1986, the cruiser was partly responsible for taking out radar installations along the coast to pave the way for the F-111's to do their thing. It is equipped with two varieties of surface-to-surface missiles, one type of surface-to-air missile, two anti-sub missiles and the Close-In-Weapons-System.
Most of your operations will be centered around the Area of Operations map, which can be adjusted to cover a wider or smaller area. The handset is your means of traversing the various systems in Aegis. Once you've determined the proximity of any threats in the area, you switch to your Combat Information Center. From there you can access your tactical plot map, which is extremely visually attractive; you can view the battle area from any angle, at any magnification and, most importantly, you can adjust the real-time setting from 1 to 32. You also have your SLQ-32 passive radar, passive and active sonar and active radar, electronic counter-measures and your fire control center. The fire control center is the heart of the ship. It is here that you hook, or select, your target, declare general quarters and launch whichever type of weapon you have selected. When you launch a weapon, in addition to digitized voice responses to your commands, you are treated to an audio/ visual sequence of the type of weapon shooting out of its respective tube. One great feature about a warship sporting this kind of technology is that, if you are fired upon and you are quick, you can target any incoming air missiles with a SAM; torpedoes require a drastic change of course as soon as launch is detected. All enemy launches as well as your own will appear on any radar or map functions. At the end of a mission, you are given a detailed briefing of all weapons launched, including times, what they hit and whether or not it destroyed the target.
Two very helpful features in Aegis are the James' warbook, which is a comprehensive encyclopedia of modern weapons, systems and warcraft. When a target is hooked you can select James' Warbook for a detailed description of the object, what it carries and its capabilities. The other great feature is the on-line help which is available anytime from anywhere. This is an especially helpful as the manual is extremely tedious reading to the point that it could scare away an otherwise enthusiastic newcomer to this type of game. The manual makes Aegis seem much harder to operate than it really is; I found it best to read through the manual once, even if it doesn't all seem to sink in. Once in the game, you should be familiar enough to start playing missions and what you don't know, you can look up in the on-line help. The James' warbook should be consulted upon entering a mission to size up all threats and potential threats in your area of operations. You should also zoom out as far as possible to see even those targets that are way out of range. I also found the time adjustment to be real handy for handling in-coming threats; I'd slow it down when I was vulnerable, lock-on and fire, then speed it back up to inflict damage quicker.
I'd love to see a sequel to Aegis, perhaps in the same vein as Great Naval Battles, only using modern machinery and technology, like the Aegis, but being able to control a task force, or a whole fleet. I had a lot of fun playing Aegis; it's easy and quick to learn. Aegis is also bound to appeal to the patriot in all of us; with a primarily middle-east mission base, this game even comes with all the motivation you need to give the other side the High-Pro glow.
