WarGame: Red Dragon Review

I can’t help but feel that, as a franchise, Wargame is in a bit of a weird place right now. The third game in as many years – Red Dragon – takes the action from Europe to the China Sea, where old favourites like the UK, USSR and the Eastern Block duke it out against China, Taiwan and North/South Korea. The big feature for this game is the inclusion of Naval Units, and new maps to reflect this new area of battle. But if you really stop to think about it – nothing's really changed, and this far in it could start becoming a problem.

Adding in the new boats, and the Jets that came with AirLand Battle, obviously comes with various gameplay tweaks and balances. Some units are now amphibious as well, and there have been some other changes, like how infantry interact with buildings, along the way. But basically you’re playing the same game every time you purchase a new version. If you’re good at it, you’re going to remain good at it, and if you’re like me and struggle a little bit, well... you get the idea. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, although I do think it makes the game harder for newcomers to get involved in with each iteration. Not only are they having to deal with a battle hardened, veteran community, but they’ve also got to learn a game with three wildly different unit types and try to figure out how to do well. It’s not easy.

The campaign interface is as slick as ever, and you have a lot more control over things than you used to. With MP down to a T, I’d like to see more development here now.

Ultimately, Wargame’s biggest failing as a series is its feedback – there’s no real way to tell why you lost the way you did, why your group of tanks lost out to another group of tanks. Sure, stats have a lot to do with it, and you can intuit certain things, but half time I find my stuff just blows up, and I’m not sure why. In general, I’ve always found you're more vulnerable moving towards your enemy, but even if you try and turtle up and defend, sometimes you find that you don’t do as well as they did when the situation was revered, and again there’s no real way to find out why. Wargame is a wonderful, engaging strategy game, the kind of strategy game that I’ve always wanted... but I’m not that good at it, and it can seem quite impenetrable sometimes.



The very fact that there have been few ‘grand’ changes to the formula however means that Eugene has three years of development experience behind them when it comes to developing Wargame – and it shows. The game is as well designed and as well thought out as it’s ever been. The improvements to the campaign mode alone make it the best example of a dynamic campaign since the Close Combat games. You can move naval groups as well as land armies, your jets can strike from airbases, and of course there’s the political point system that allows you to summon in reinforcements where they’re needed. There are four campaigns on offer at the moment, and the only thing I would ask for is more variety perhaps – one of the big draws of Wargame is that you can customise your army along national lines if you want, and there’s a limited amount on offer if you carry that desire into the single player, but that’s just a minor thing.

The Naval element itself is pretty interesting. On hybrid maps with both sea and land elements, they become just one more dimension you have to look after, but there are a few sea-only maps as well, which I wasn’t expecting. Last time I checked, Eugene told us they weren’t going to be doing sea-only maps, so I guess they must have changed their mind. A welcome surprise, at any rate. The sea-only battles are actually pretty fun – there are less variables you have to keep an eye on than with land battles, so everything is actually a lot simpler. Plus, some of the bigger battleships are quite strong, and it’s quite satisfying to watch them tear through entire flotillas of smaller ships. You have to be careful though – new anti-ship jets and helicopters can put serious dents in your hull. Again, the only downside is the lack of variety In the units – BluFor and Redfor factions seem to have access to the same pool ship types and names, so there’s no national flavour to them that I’ve seen so far, a minor thing, but again since part of the game allows you to theme your decks as such, seems a bit silly not to extend that to the naval part of the game.

Where you’ll spend a lot of your time. You can guess as to what constitutes good stats, but translating that into winning gameplay... this is where the game could help you more, I think.

To round off the rest of the game – Deck building has been improved again, and there is a wider deck customization options, and plenty of units as well to go with them. I had problems with the deck building as it was in ALB, but it seems to have been largely fixed here. The new maps are pretty awesome, although they’re more themed around water and coastal zones over ALB’s mountainous Scandinavian setting – a lot of different terrain types as well as the game is meant to be set in Asia. Jets are still a bit weird, but less so than in ALB, and 10 vs 10 battles are still an amazing cluster-bomb of cluster-bombs. All in all, it’s Wargame.

So, Wargame: Red Dragon. If you’re a fan of the series, you’ve probably already bought the game before you even read this review. It’s more of the same, but better, which was to be expected, and I have enjoyed playing it a lot. But I do feel we’re at a critical juncture now, and I have to ask the question – will this keep working? It probably will, but I don’t see the community for Wargame getting much bigger after this, and a thriving community is what keeps this game fun. Newcomers beware, this game can be a bit punishing to the new recruit (and generally those who aren’t amazing at it), but I hope you hang in there like I have. At the very least though, I know I can look forward to a truck-load of free DLC from Eugene to support this game. Hopefully some of Red Dragon’s specific weak areas will be shored up.

I love rolling with infantry-themed armies. They have a lot of disadvantages, but it’s a great feeling when you air-lift commandos behind enemy lines and really mess things up.