Time of Fury is Coming

<strong>[ Announcement ]</strong>

Wastelands Interactive is working on what Slitherine is <a href="http://www.slitherine.com/news/item357" target="_blank">calling</a> "the definitive WWII wargame": <a href="http://www.slitherine.com/games/time_of_fury" target="_blank"><strong>Time of Fury</strong></a>.
<blockquote>In World War II every single aspect of war was crucial: from troop movements to supply, from logistics to diplomacy, from innovation to careful use of terrain. Many games have tried to replicate the depth and complexity of this global conflict and only a few have managed to give an all around experience to players.
 
Today Slitherine and Wastelands Interactive are proud to announce a new game that will truly replicate all these aspects. The developers of the highly successful Time of Wrath are back to the European theater of war with an ambitious project that will allow players to truly experience what it was to be a decision maker of the period.
 
Time of Fury spans the whole war in Europe and gives players the opportunity to control all types of units, ground, air and naval. Not only that, each player will be able to pick a single country or selection of countries and fight his way against either the AI or in multiplayer in hotseat or Play by E-Mail. This innovative multiplayer feature will give player the chance to fight bigger scenarios against many opponents, giving the game a strategic angle that has no equal in the market. The game uses Slitherine&rsquo;s revolutionary PBEM++ server system.
</blockquote>Sign up to be a beta tester <a href="http://slitherine.com/beta_test/time_of_fury" target="_blank">here</a>.

 

I'm not hardcore on any level, yet I cannot accept a wargame as serious if it looks like Panzer General. How can you be into this particular sort of game and not vastly prefer counter-esque military symbols?

This just means I'm old, doesn't it?

 

...and it will be distributed by Matrix Games, and cost at least $79.99.

Can't wait for the first >$100 war game, for that price it will be guaranteed to be amazing...right?

 

How much does this:

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/351 ... 's.Edition

(boxed version) cost for $ customers? The site displays my country's currency and it seems quite close to $100 (but not there yet).

edit: nah, it's the same as War in the East.

 

The price of the game will be moderate.

 

Graphics are for graphics whores, right

 

Not really my point. I just don't see the appeal of completely incongruous pictures of like 20-mile tall infantry, tanks, and planes splattered all over a map of Europe. The pictures of giants are supposed to symbolize military units, but we already have symbols for them that work a lot better and evoke the feeling of actually planning military operations and the feeling of actually reading about military history.

I certainly understand why a game like Panzer General ditched the symbols to broaden the appeal (to people who've maybe never even seen such symbols and don't want to have to learn them), but if you're talking about a serious wargame, I don't get it. What, are you going to have animations for combat too? When the armor division overruns the infantry division you can have the little tank drive over those two guys and leave swatches of blood the size of cities. Awesome. But you're still not going to fool the so-called "beer and pretzels" crowd into playing the definiteive WWII wargame.

Anyway nevermind. The world just seems stupider and stupider the older you get. But it's not it; it's you.

EDIT: And actually, I'd love there to be graphics. A real, 3-D map (can't you get one of those from google these days or something?) and representations of military units that look like the units seen from 1000 feet in the air, spread out, dug in, in a column, etc. depending on their posture at the time. That would be graphics whoring, and it would be awesome. Giant pictures of two guys to simulate a division of 10,000 is just. Nevermind.

 

Don't worry Yeesh you can play with counters instead of sprites. It's a toggle in the menu.

This is just a kind of 'Gold' version of 'Time of Wrath' which I think is quite a good little game, apart from the abstract and confusing naval combat part.

The REAL game that this Polish dev is making is called 'Bitter Glory' and it will be a competitor to HOI. Time of Fury is just a stop-gap to keep funds rolling in and to test out ideas I guess. I still prefer it's TB to the real-time of Bitter Glory and HOI though.

 

If my memory is right I believe that this developer has yet to turn out a single game with decent A.I. And if you look carefully you see the word multiplayer everywhere, but not a single time the word "AI". They not even try to fool you, a clear indicator that the AI is really really bad, and they don't have the money to hire someone who make it better.

But other than that I find this stuff appealing, with better (i.e. sharper) graphics than the previous games, and about the same map scale like Panzer General. In theory almost a dream for any fan of PG and grand strategic games. People like myself who found Strategic Command too abstract and stale in terms of tactics.

As to what Yeesh said, I think he makes a logical argument, but the people who buy this will mostly be people who also played Panzer General, and not the grognard wargamers. Everything about the "ultimate wargame" is of course PR hogwash.

I can live with not using NATO counters, especially since there are a lot of games of this type that use them. But the graphics should be smaller and more varied. Right now I see almost only T-34s and Panzer III. Not at all like PG where almost every unit looked a bit different and every screen looked interesting because of that.

I will keep an eye on this. Wastelands may turn out something really outstanding, once they have a real budget. But it does look like they still somewhat of a shovelware developer. Like practically everyting you find on Matrix or Sliherines site.

 

Yeah, Wastelands are still learning and scraping up funds I guess. AI isn't up to much, maybe with that Bitter Glory thing they'll make something good, but I think that it will be Bitter Glory 2.0 or whatever that will finally have a decent AI as it seems too focused on scale and graphics at the moment. Still, considering Paradox these days is just churning out ever buggier games with crappier AI despite having a decade head start and a lot more money, it's not like Wastelands will have to work hard to make a decent rival to HOI with that 'Bitter Glory' game.

Right about the Matrix and Slitherine sites being shovelware for the most part, though there are a few gems there among all the recycled stuff and dubious remakes of 90's classics.

 

We have a lack of alternatives and we will be mainly discussing Matrix etc. games in this forum, for a long time. I just wish in the future they put more money into really outstanding titles instead of this inflation of mediocre ones. I mean how many WWII games do they have? 10% of that number would be enough.