BLITZKRIEG
And now Mission Kursk for Blitzkrieg.
Tags: BLITZKRIEG Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Mike Morgan on Mar 31st, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| BLITZKRIEG (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Strategy | No | ||
 |
On July 4th 1943 launched Operation Zitadelle (Citadel in English) or otherwise known as The Battle of Kursk. Kursk is also known as the largest armored assault yet, employing a total of 6,200 tanks, 2.1 million infantry and 4,400 aircraft. Taking into account all of that, the Russians still managed to come out on top with a strategic victory and defended the Motherland, go ruskies. Seems like a pretty tall order to base a game off of, so lets take a look at what worked and what caused the Germans to stumble… perhaps it was poor production values? Hmmm.
 |
Another “Unofficial” expansion to Blitzkrieg, Mission Kursk takes us a little farther down the war and to another battlefield less seen in historical games. Graphically you get the same as the standard Blitz, but there are some tweaks here to tell you it is indeed a mod. One of the large things you will notice right off the bat is the fact that the map overview screens are less plasticized than Mission Barbarossa, which is a very good thing. This expansion boasts 40 new models of tanks and aircraft, 25 new buildings (which don’t show up too often) and additional sounds. It all meshes together really well and continues the general feeling of the game.
 |
Unfortunately Kursk has a few issues which hamper the enjoyment of it a bit. First off when you are going to start the game you have to move an officer unit to one of three points on the battlefield to select where you will go first. Its pointless and something that could have been completed by a simple click on an overview map. In addition to that pretty useless level, every level has been labeled a Chapter. It gets pretty monotonous after every level to get the “Congratulations, you’ve completed the chapter!” message. They probably should have fixed that. Its dang crazy.
 |
The game suffers from some serious pacing issues. There is a rigid way that you have to go about the missions to complete them and it seems that every level is stacked against you, so you have to practically crawl your way through to preserve your units and complete the level. Because the maps are so huge and packed with so many units you are looking at about two hours of play per level. All just hunting the packets of soldiers. It can get pretty dang slow and somewhat boring.
The game does have an excellent array of sounds to accompany your far too long battles though. You lose the standard “pop pop pop” of the machine gun to something a bit more appropriate to the field, which is nice. The tanks and other machinery sound good as well and the infantry units have their fair share of decent sayings too.
 |
It seems also that the Russians never push an attack. You are always pressing forward and not defending really. I’d have liked to have seen missions where you are attempting to hold back the Red Tide as it were and see how well you can defend rather than push the attack. During the real war the Germans lost at Oryol, Belgorod and Kharkov in the summer of 43. It would have been nice to see that in the game. All told, Kursk is falling into the “More of the Same” column rather than the “Decent Expansion” column which is kinda sad. Its another lesser known story of the War and it feels kinda phoned in.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Further untold stories of WWII + Many more units to play with + A huge array of sounds |
6.8 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Perhaps they spent too much time on the sounds and not enough on game play... or proper level/chapter separation. - Horrid pacing - Wasted game potential |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Kursk is fine, but not stellar. If you are looking for more tanks and huge... slow levels this is probably for you. But I would probably avoid it. | |
[ Post the first comment | View related posts ]
Tags: BLITZKRIEG
Posted by Mike Morgan on Mar 31st, 2006 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
