Making History The Calm & The Storm

It's really interesting to see how some games come to be in existence. Making History was used by college professors to teach their students about the Second World War, with the main aim of making the whole learning experience more interesting. It has been successfully implemented in over 150 schools with many more apparently taking interest. The software has now evolved into a turn based strategy game, but luckily for you and I the boring lectures have been left to one side.

The end of the world as we know it

Making History is about, well, making history. The game allows you to play different WW2 scenarios to see if any interesting historical outcomes occur. Imagine a war were Japan never attacked Pearl Harbour and didn't bring the USA into the conflict, the policy of appeasement was dropped after the taking of the Rhineland or Germany never invaded the Soviet Union. You're probably not going to get definitive answers from this game, but you do get to have some fun with the alternative world you have created. One of the main reasons you don't get definitive answers is down to the AI. It is strong in many areas, but its diplomacy is all over the place. Alliances break up and reform every couple of turns for no particular reason. The UK and its Commonwealth countries are mostly affected by this. It can be especially annoying to see Canada and Australia break away to form their own alliance and then merge that alliance with the UK a couple of turns later.

The game allows you to play with any nation that existed between 1933 and 1945. The game world is shaped depending on what scenario you choose. The earliest you can begin the game is in 1933 were every nation is recovering form the Wall Street Crash and your main priority is economic stabilisation. If that doesn't appeal to you then you can skip all that and start in 1941 when America enters the war. Once you start a scenario then everything you have learned in history class is thrown out the window. My main gripe with the scenarios is they are too short. Each turn represents one week, but they are processed rather quickly so some of my games only lasted a day. Hardly fitting for a conflict that lasted six gruelling years.

One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is statistics

When you do take control of a nation you have a lot to maintain. Your country is divided into cities and territories. Cities can produce goods, weapons and troops while your territories produce resources like oil, coal, steel and food. Your nation also has to deal with world trade. You need to import what you lack and sell what you have in excess. The key to economic success is balance and prioritising. In fact, without a basic knowledge of economics you may struggle at first. You also have to establish trade agreements, research new technology, upgrade territories infrastructure and defence as well building an army. This sounds like a lot, but it isn't at all. The only thing that makes it difficult is the interface. When playing as the Soviet Union I had to check every territory myself to keep an eye on production. This is a hard thing to do as I can't just click a button to bring up all my territories to conduct my business, but have to manually scroll across Russia trying to find the territories I'm specifically looking for. It forced me to do the same upgrade for every territory so I wouldn't get confused. On top of that, when war finally does happen, trying to conduct your domestic policies and wage war can really drive you to the drink. An auto-mange system for your territories and cities would have been very helpful in this game.

As stated above micromanagement can become a problem later in the game, especially when your country goes to war. When things start to go south with your economy you have to individually go to each coal mine and oil field to set specific orders for each. This can get very tiresome. The game also lacks any sort of drama, tension or action. When you do declare war and invade a country the battles that take place are rather disappointing. The game doesn't allow you to do any tactics so you're basically going to war hoping for the best. The only tactics comes from your diplomacy and invasion route. With war being such an integral part of the period I would have liked to have seen more time spent on it. This game can also become quite tedious when you're not at war. I spent the whole period of 1933 to 1945 as a neutral country, only because war would have crippled me and because nobody attacked me. There will be large periods in the game were you are rebuilding your economy and researching new technology and the endless clicking that goes on for hours at a time (depends on your situation) can be mind numbly boring.

Lebensraum

The game's graphics aren't going to push many computers to their limits. The level of detail on the 3D map is just about passable. It doesn't contain much detail, such as geographical features, which in the end makes it look rather plain. Battle graphics are also pretty nonexistent and the games sound is poor at best. The in-game music doesn't really suit Making History's theme of war and I ended up using iTunes to listen to my own music instead. The sound of battle didn't make me believe a massive conflict was taking place. The pathetic rifle sound can really can suck the atmosphere right out of the game at times.

Despite some glaring problems I enjoyed Making History at times. When everything falls into place it can be very addictive with the one more turn issue creeping its way into your head. Fans of the strategy genre will feel right at home here and once you get past the micromanagement it can be quite fun. For the majority of the game the interface is clean and simple and you shouldn't have too much trouble navigating around the vast array of options you have to improve your nation. For those looking for a strategy game that matched the Second World War in intensity then you may wish to look elsewhere as Making History fails to storm the beaches of excitement and in the end is driven back into the sea.