Gary Grigsby’s World at War Review

I feel so emotionless when I play WWII games. Like so many other reviews, all I can suggest that developers move out of the WWII idea and onto something else. Surprisingly, this game is a little more addictive than most WWII games, or strategy games in general.

I’d like to note that this game is a turn based strategy game, and it plays like a board game. Players can play as Germany, the Western Allies (America and Great Britain), Japan, Russia (back then, the USSR), or China. The game starts in 1940 and ends in 1946. A turn for each player takes 3 months in this game’s timeline. The player will be responsible for managing their army around the world, creating new units, and researching combat technology.

There are 19 units for each group. Like most strategy games, these units can be broken up into land, sea, and air units. While a normal gamer would think the most important thing is to keep strong on all three categories, an expert player would increase the strength of one category dramatically and simply mask his two weaknesses.

Also, the art of invasion is also important to learn. It’s pointless to invade a region that doesn’t have any strategic advantage or any resources (invade areas that have both first). The AI plays smart, but this game allows the player to use some real ingenuity. Not to brag anything, because I know a lot about the geopolitics back in this era and I am a rather good strategy gamer, I beat most scenarios in under a day.

As far as graphics go, it’s mediocre. Not the best, not the worst. It feels like a board game, and on the bright side, this game works with older computers. The sound is also mediocre. Again, not the best, not the worst.

While this game is addictive, its creativity only goes so far. As a self-proclaimed expert of WWII and the Cold War, diplomacy took a huge role in the Allies’ victory. Diplomacy has been omitted in this game, which really kills all hope of this being a creative game. When I play this game, I felt that as if I played it before. Nothing really original here.

This entire game’s length is based on how many friends who have this game and how good you are at strategy. World at War’s multiplayer mode allows up to five people to play, with one or two controlling the Axis powers and up to three players controlling the Allied powers. The game has a Play By E-Mail feature, which is good. Expect a good 10 hours out of the single player, and expect a good amount of time in the multiplayer if your friends have it (which is very rare). I got around 7 hours with 4 rather intelligent friends, and then we got bored.

WWII will be a romanticized war for a while, especially when we see so many WWII games which boast the Allies’ victory (which really isn’t a bad thing), but the fact that all these WWII games do it in the same fashion, any experienced gamer will get bored quickly. Gary Grisby’s World at War is an interesting and addictive game, involves a good amount of strategy, except that it’s not that creative. I highly suggest you get this game at a very cheap price.