From: seurer@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Bill Seurer)
Subject: Patriot: New Design in Wargames
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 15:00:53 GMT
Reply-To: BillSeurer@vnet.ibm.com
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM Rochester

As part of a special deal from Electronic Arts last year if you purchased
2 PC games from them you could get 1 free.  Thanks to Christmas presents 
I got 2 games and sent in for Patriot.

Patriot is a new "battleset" wargame, a base game for which different 
battles  will be available later on.  The first battleset is Desert Storm.
The scale is regiment/brigade though some things are done on division and 
even corps levels with 15 minute "intervals" (they're not turns!).

Meanwhile I have seen some pretty horrible reviews on America On-Line and 
elsewhere.  "It can't really be *THAT* bad!" I thought...

Well, it arrived last night (only 3 weeks since I sent for it!).  And at first 
glance it's as bad as everyone says.

First things first.  The thing takes LOTS of memory.  4 meg!  It came on three 
1.44 meg disks but I didn't notice how much harddisk space it took. 
 Installation was easy though it wouldn't let me pick a target directory (a 
pet peeve of mine).  You have to use a mouse and need a VESA compatible SVGA 
(software drivers for many kinds of cards are provided).  There was some 
statement about it not working properly on XGA and that "IBM and 360 were 
seeking to resolve this".  A few other problem video cards were mentioned.

The manuals aren't very good.  Not the worst I've seen by any means but 
certainly they could use improvements.  A few screen illustrations would be 
nice!

On to the revolutionary parts.

UGH!

Just as advertised there is fog of war, lack of knowledge of your foes, and 
limited control over your units.  In fact, there is too much fog of war (so 
that unit has 36 M1A1 tanks, 36 M3A1 APCs, etc.  How tough are they? 
[actually, from other games I did have a rough idea of the capability of the 
units]), too much lack of knowledge of your foes (so those guys are the 4th 
regiment of the republican guard.  How tough are they?), and too little 
control over your units (you set objectives [sort of], the boundaries between 
areas controlled by different units, and the posture [offensive, defensive, 
travel, etc.] and formation [front line, reserve, support, etc.] of units).

Actually, playing around with the zones controlled by various units is a neat 
idea and was pretty easy to do.  The interface is overall pretty easy to use 
in fact.  But the map display when units are on it is horrendous 'cause they 
overlap and are impossible to see.

After you set a few things you select "start" and sit back and watch while the 
casualty reports roll in.  Only you can't tell what units are reporting and 
whether each "subfight" was successful.  This might have been because I was 
doing the intro scenario which only had a few units  The clock ticks by in 15 
minute intervals about once every 3 seconds (unless there's a casualty 
report).

I played the introductory scenario which just involved a few hours fighting 
near the end of the war.  As advised I just ran it as is without changing 
anything.  After seeing about a hundred (honest!) reports pop up I turned them 
off so I could hopefully see what was happening on the map.  The time ticked 
by and tah dah!  I was victorious!  Only nothing much happened on the map.

Well, let's check the casualties and see what happened.  Wow!  The Iraqis sure 
fought better here than they really did.  They only managed to destroy almost 
150 armored vehicles of mine including nearly 70 M1A1 tanks.  Only 2 of those 
were lost in the WHOLE actual war.

So not only is it a poor game but it's a poor simulation too.

Now I am willing to give it another crack, but I am not very hopeful.  If I 
hadn't gotten this for free I would be EXTREMELY disappointed instead of just 
VERY disappointed.  Compared to the recent superb V for Victory games from 360 
this one is a real dog.

Oh yeah, there was a letter of apology inside from 360 that basically said 
their beta testers made suggestions for all kinds of improvements but they 
didn't want to make us wait for this fantastic new game so they were going to 
send out updates to all registered users.  How nice.

- Bill Seurer     Language and Compiler Development      IBM Rochester, MN
  Internet: BillSeurer@vnet.ibm.com    America On-Line: BillSeurer@aol.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games