Storm Across Europe

1990 SyksyYet again, for a change, a slice of the Second World War has been baked into computer form, but this time the cake plate had better be a couple of sizes bigger than usual. Served up for munching is the entire war in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and, as a hugely influential factor, the Atlantic convoys brought about by the Lend-Lease agreement. Land forces alone won't make this dough rise; into the oven go all the service branches, industry and raw material reserves. Naturally the picture is shaped by the region's three great powers: Germany and its allies, the Soviet Union and the Allies.

The designer has been diligently playing Colonial Conquest, since the similarities between the games are obvious from the very first glance. There are a whopping number of additions, though... SAE takes a bold grip on its subject and crams all the main features of the Second World War into the machine.

All the service branches, that is the land, sea and air forces, are represented. Many games stop at this stage, but SAE's take is cleverer. The land forces, for example, are divided into five different sub-types: infantry, motorised infantry, armour, paratroops and support aircraft. The navy has been chopped up along the same lines, but the air force serves up a jolly little surprise. Besides anti-aircraft artillery, fighters and bombers, it also includes V-missiles and the atomic bomb.

Strategic thinking may be an important factor in achieving victory, but more important still is industrial production. If you have no factories, you won't build a single rifle. Nor will you if you're short of raw materials or manpower. Then again, the quality of the weapons is a significant factor too. Try a duel between a Panther tank and a Sherman and you'll know the difference. Here SAE has made an effective generalisation: no separate new models, but a technology level for the whole weapon type. At the start of each year you decide, within the limits of your production capacity, how much of what will be produced over the year. While you're at it, you can throw materiel at know-how, fortification and knocking together new factories.

In SAE the ideas haven't stopped at the basic design. The playability, too, has been polished to greatness. In the C-64 version everything is handled neatly through the joystick, but on the Amiga it's not quite so handy any more. You can use the mouse, the keyboard or both, which I at least found best. The graphics are also clearer on the C-64, but in other respects it lags behind. The Amiga doesn't load as often / as long, and doesn't sit thinking for ages or slow down when your conquered territory amounts to something like 3/4 of Europe.

Thanks to all these features, waging war is a real party. Take France in three months, feel the warmth of the African sky on your face as you march on Alexandria, or throw your life away before the Urals. A month or two rolls merrily by as you try out Germany's various routes to winning the war, but then one teeny-tiny detail starts nagging at you: in single-player you have to play as the Third Reich. That's understandable on the C-64 - an AI for Germany would be quite a mammoth job - but from the Amiga I did expect more...

Storm Across Europe is literally the best strategy game of the year. If it's possible to do much better than this, then how on earth? Amid all its versatility, SAE is also so simply put together that anyone can learn to play it in no time. Even the manual is starting to look like a pointless ornament...