Developer: Random Games Inc.
ESRB Rating: Teen
Genre: Tactical Simulation
Platform – PC
Publisher: MicroProse
Release Date: 10/25/2000
What is Squad Leader?
Squad Leader is a tactical combat simulation set in World War II. It is similar to X-COM UFO Defense in that you have a squad of soldiers that you control in a turn-based fighting environment. Unlike X-COM, Squad Leader focuses primarily on the combat aspect with less in the way of squad management or other macromanagement.
What does this game do well?
Well the true mark of a game is whether it is fun to play, and I must say that I enjoyed playing it. I love tactical sims, and this one was set in World War II, the biggest war ever. So there were lots of vintage guns and it had a neat feel to it. The very first mission is the invasion of Normandy, so you get to storm the beach with your soldiers and take out a German pillbox.
The different difficulty modes do an excellent job of making certain games harder than others. If you play on the hardest difficulty, you can only save your game once, and if any of your characters die, the game automatically overwrites that save so you cannot reload to a point where he was alive. It’s like playing hardcore mode on Diablo II.
Another nice feature of the game is that all of the statistics are contained in .txt files which can be edited to change the soldier’s hit points or movement rate, etc. So if you don’t like the way that the game is programmed, you can change all the values to make it more to your liking.
What could this game have done better?
Unfortunately there are a lot of things that make this a poor game. First of all, the graphics are pretty bad for a game that was released in 2000. Although appropriate, the are about 5 years out of date, which seems odd for a game that you see on Walmart shelves.
I think the biggest complaint I had was mortar and artillery. When playing the single player campaign, the enemy would shell your guys without being able to see them, and the artillery was devastating. In a game like this, there should not be devastating indirect fire, because that takes out the tactical aspect of the game. Basically whenever there is mortar or artillery, the game boils down to attrition.
Other than losing 80% of your squad to mortar, most aspects of the game are ok. The light and heavy machine guns are nearly worthless as is the flamethrower, but if you were able to set up the right set of circumstances you might be able to use them. It was my experience that if you gave every guy a tommy gun you would win.
One other note, when you highlight an enemy, it gives you a chance to hit %. So if the number says 86, then you should have an 86% chance to hit the guy, right? Wrong. The numbers do not even come close to your actual chance to hit. I honestly have no idea why the numbers are even there, unless the chance to hit was being calculated incorrectly or due to some other programming error.
What this game really lacks is polish. The game feels like it is in mid to late beta stages. The character movement is not smooth, and there are bugs that need to be worked out. For instance, the game runs extremely slow, even on a modern computer system. This may be due to inefficient programming or a memory leak, but it really kills the immersion when it takes so long just to move a guy from one square to another.
Should I buy this game?
This game is not worth $50 by any stretch. My roommate paid $20 and I played it for about a month while I was unemployed. He may have gotten ripped off, but I paid the right price. I really think that it had a lot of potential, but the game was just unfinished. However, if you read the credits, it was really more of a ‘game built in some guy’s garage’ than a polished Microprose title. So I must say that for a bunch of guys getting together and putting together a game, it’s not bad. It’s just not a game that you should see on store shelves. However, if you like tactical sims (and I LOVE tactical sims) then you will probably get some enjoyment out of it.
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