Customer Reviews

Squad Assault: Second Wave

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For the avid wargamer, Squad Assault Second Front (SA) was released with little fanfare in 2005, and many of you may have missed it, as I did. Luckily, it is now available here for as little as $6! I've paid $50 for lesser games than this one.

SA takes the best of the legendary and latest versions of the Close Combat series and Combat Mission titles, although it is closer to the latter, which is a good thing. Flexibility is the word here. If you want real time pressure, you got it. If you want to pause and give orders, that's okay, too. However, the Command & Conquer cretins who are used to mindlessly building cannon fodder units, lassoing them and rushing the enemy, might be overwhelmed. I never could understand that genre anyway.

Even for a three-year old release, the system requirements are bare bones. Imagine getting away with a 16 meg video card these days? Disk space is a bit over a gig, but worth every megabyte. The printed manual is excellent, and covers the three tutorials in exceptional depth. However, veterans of the CC and CM series can jump right in.

In addition to a ton of battles, operations and a handful of campaigns, the game comes with a powerful and easy to use scenario editor, which is also nicely documented. There is no random scenario generator, but those with the knowledge and motivation can pretty easily create a 30-battle campaign. If you're lazy, you can just shuffle around the existing scenarios and tweak the campaign a bit for a whole new experience. Heck, you can even edit a saved game, which is an innovation I haven't seen in the 100 or so wargames I own.

The game features more than 100 tank types, plus the usual assortment of infantry, guns, etc., as well as off-board support. It's all here, although the graphics are not outstanding, but functional. Similar to CM Beyond Overlord.

For $6, you'll be playing this for months. As an aside, my second sleeper hit of the decade is Supreme Ruler 2010. All I can say about that one, is don't judge it by its silly name.

Yes I AM 50yo but I am playing my games on a 52" TV/Monitor. EVEN SO, everything required waaaaaaaay too much management to get things done. Figures were tiny to say the least. My problem is that I bought CODENAME PANZERS 1 & 2 first; I think they did the VERY BEST with this genre. Everything else seems to have just been leading up to the gold standard set by those games. I'd avoid this game.