RF Generation: Features

It's been a while since I wrote one of these. With another Call of Duty on everyone's radar and various holidays all over the world celebrating the brave sacrifices of those who fought for our values and freedoms in armed conflicts generation after generation, I thought it appropriate that as a former soldier and a gamer, I offer my own salute to those brave men and women past and present.

So this List 'em is all about games based on world wars and multi-country conflicts from the last 150 years or so. As usual, feel free to list as many or as few as you wish. With a genre certainly showing it's age after so many games being released in a short span of years there are certainly plenty to choose from!

In no particular order:

Medal of Honor - PS1: Not only is this one of my favorite shooters and war games, it's also high on my list of favorite PS1 games. I've played every "MoH" title and have tried ports on just about every platform, but this one that started it all has a special charm unlike it's successors. The attention to detail, the narrated black and white WWII footage between missions and it's incredible audio make this a fantastic game. It's also one of the first console FPS titles that really showed what a dual analog approach to shooters could offer with exceptional smooth control that remains virtually unchanged nearly a decade later. To top that off, great AI, graphics and gameplay made this one helluva package, even if the multiplayer portion was lame and insignificant.

Secret Weapons Over Normandy - Xbox/PS2/PC: This is a fun WWII flight game that sits somewhere between arcade and sim that has a good deal of realism. A very complete game in terms of the experience and the audio is superb! Nothing beats the spit and sputter of a realistically sounding Merlin engine in a Supermarine Spitfire while hearing Messerschmitt Bf 109's coming at you from all directions in Dolby 5.1! This game recreates many famous air battles of the war and offers over 20 aircraft to choose from, all of which were painstakingly recreated as realistically as possible. If you question the quality of this series, know that is was developed by the same team responsible for the X-Wing/Tie Fighter series!

Super Battletank / Battletank 2 - SNES/Genesis/Game Gear/GBA: These two are identical and nearly interchangeable but awesome games nonetheless. They present tank combat in the Persian Gulf War from a first person perspective inside the cockpit of an M1 Abrams tank. Gameplay consists of mission based objectives where you have a large map and have to navigate different parts of it destroying targets both land and air based. For a 16-bit game (SNES/Genesis) it's very detailed and very sim-like in it's presentation. Anyone remember the collectable card craze during the early 90's? There were Gulf War sets that really went hand in hand with these games as they really brought the war to the attention of children like never before. I still have a lot of fun with these games on all the various systems they were released for. The game was also recently ported and renamed for the GBA under the name "Operation Armored Liberty" and retains the fun of the original.

Silent Service - NES: This is one of my all-time favorite NES games. I have many fond memories of playing this game well into the early hours of morning while we tried to keep quiet because we were supposed to be sleeping! It's a submarine simulator that also appeared on pretty much every home computer system of the 80's / early 90's. You hunt convoys, patrol enemy waters and basically try to sunk anything you see. The level of realism was unmatched for it's time. I couldn't count how many times I cursed because of a dud torpedo on a guaranteed kill shot, or because I was chased underwater by depth charges and enemy destroyer fire. This is an addictive fun simulator that while requires a lot of patience, is very rewarding especially for an 8-bit game.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - PC: The last in my top 5 was a bit harder to pick. When the trend for war FPS games exploded a few years ago, so many flooded the market it quickly overwhelmed and saturated the genre. So many franchises like MoH, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Brothers in Arms etc. etc. and most have defining features that make them all good in their own right. The reason I choose this one was the impact it had on me when I first played it. Remember the first time you played the Omaha Beach landing? How incredible and visceral it was? Very gritty and surreal for a video game. Also the audio was fantastic, always a finer point for game reviews for me personally. Those of you who haven't had the pleasure, compare it to the beach landing during the movie "Saving Private Ryan". The console port MoH: Frontline comes close, but it still doesn't compare to the PC version. After raising the bar so high, the series never quite seemed to reach that pinnacle of quality again. A shame that, maybe Call of Duty: World at War will bring the "wow" back to WWII titles once again.

So that's my list folks, sans tasteless background music. Now it's your turn! But before I do, let me list a few more titles that I hold in high esteem, either for their realism or gameplay value:

Sniper Elite, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 3, Medal of Honor Underground, Silent Hunter III, Triple Action (Tank Battle), Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf.