Games Beaten 2023

[marurun]

Bomberman hipsters, amirite?

[Limewater]

I mean I know that people either do or don't like it but hardly anyone ever says they're a fan.

That's because everyone else is following the first rule of Bomberman Fan Club.

[REPO Man]

Too bad that rule doesn't apply to people who put pineapple on pizza.

[RobertAugustdeMeijer]

Am I crazy or am I the only one who can honestly say they're a Bomberman fan? Seems like at best everyone else can honestly say they enjoy playing it but hardly anyone seems to go to bat for it.

I play Bomberman every year as part of my birthday party : D

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

1. Void Destroyer - PC
2. Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights - Switch
3. Raging Blasters - Switch
4. Citizen Sleeper - Switch
5. GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon
6. Hands of Necromancy - PC
7. Project Downfall - PC
8. Chasm: The Rift - PC
9. Cultic - PC
10. Kirby Super Star - SNES
11. Kirby's Dream Land 2 - GB
12. Kirby's Dream Land 3 - SNES
13. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards - N64
14. Fire Emblem Engage - Switch
15. Mechwarrior 5: Rise of Rasalhague - PC
16. Kirby's Epic Yarn - Wii
17. Kirby's Return to Dreamland - Wii
18. Mega Man 7 - SNES
19. Mega Man 8 - PS1
20. Conquest: Frontier Wars - PC
21. Theatrhythm Final Bar Line - Switch
22. Octopath Traveler II - Switch
23. Last Call BBS - PC
24. The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure - Switch
25. Dread Templar - PC
26. The Great War: Western Front - PC
27. GrimGrimoire OnceMore - PS5
28. Haegemonia: Legions of Iron - PC

Haegemonia is an obscure space RTS that pulls some elements from 4X games and bears some similarity to Conquest: Frontier Wars. There's a reason for its obscurity; it's very mediocre with a lot of unrealized systems and needless complexity that gets in the way.

The game is divided into five acts. The first act is a war between Earth and Mars; you can choose to side with either one, which gives you different missions for the first act. After the war humanity is united and goes and explores the stars, which is act 2. Act 3 is encountering your first alien rate and beating them into submission. Act 4 is the second alien race and discovering they are a huge threat, while act 5 is defeating all threats. The story is not very well told, to be honest. It feels trying to tell the entire story of Starcraft plus Brood War in half the amount of missions, so everything feels far too compressed and events tend to jar.

The game has full 3D movement, but like every other game that does so it ends up not actually being worthwhile. Your main view is of a planetary system, and you can zoom all the way out a la Supreme Commander. Because planets are on an ecliptic, moving around above it doesn't actually buy you anything. Adding insult to injury, building defense stations tends to put them above or below (as they are constructed above/below the planet) and makes it really hard to get them to effectively defend things like warp holes; you have to remember to manually pull them down to the ecliptic.

A game consists of one or more systems that are connected by wormholes, which is something we saw in Conquest: Frontier Wars. It ends up being the same level of adding complexity without any real gain. Your economy comes from colonizing planets, and this is where it's a bit more 4X-y. You send a colony ship to a colony planet, and then you start building population. Population generates taxes and can produce items. You can build planetary improvements that do things like rank up ships that are built or produce things faster, and when you run out you can turn on a policy like "more taxes". You CAN build mining ships to grab resources from asteroids, but those are limited and you won't use after the first few missions, as planets produce money far faster. You also will research tech in a tech tree with points you get every mission (they carry over) and it competes with production for the attention of your population. You won't get nearly enough points to research everything, so be choosey.

Where the game really misses the mark is in the unit cap. The game has a very low unit cap; somewhere between 6 and 12 military ship squadrons depending on the mission. Fighters come in squadrons of seven, corvettes are four, cruisers are two, and battleships come singly. The thing is, though, that every larger squadron can handily defeat the squadron type below it, assuming equal numbers of squadrons. So the obvious play is to only run the biggest ship type you can. This is assisted by the ability to bring forces forward from previous missions (though not all of them). By the end of the game you're just streaming veteran battleships and steamrolling everything in your path. It really reduces a major component of strategy.

Overall there are a ton of better RTS games than this one. It even ends on a massive "the REAL threat is in the sequel" cliffhanger that doesn't actually get realized because the game didn't do well (and to be honest, didn't deserve to do well). Steer clear unless you're a completionist.

[elricorico]

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles(Arcade)(XBONE)
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:Turtles in Time(Arcade) (XBONE)
3. Kirby Super Star Ultra (NDS)
4. Metal Slug II (PC)

5. Odin Sphere Leifthrasir (PS4)

I finished Odin Sphere this morning, getting the "true" ending after about 33hours of play time. This was my longer game I was playing for the past few months when I had bigger chunks of gaming time.

This is a Vanillaware action RPG that is a remaster of its PS2 version. It has beautiful art and the action is fast. Controls are pretty solid, though there are a couple of button choices that I wish they had re-thought. It doesn't really take advantage of all the possible buttons, as an example the jump button is also a talk button when you are close to an NPC, which is painful in areas requiring jumping that are a bit crowded with characters. In battle though, that isn't an issue, and you'll mostly find yourself naturally picking up on how to manage your attacks, blocks and dodges. Bosses get pretty massive and they can be challenging, but if you explore thoroughly you will generally be well levelled to manage the enemies capably.

The story is played through the eyes of five different characters. Each visits all of the main maps in the game, though in different orders and with different tasks to do and bosses to fight. There is a fair bit of repetition though, in areas and enemies. By the time you are playing the fifth character there is very little new going on. The story itself is fairly over-the-top fantasy with god-like characters, dragons, mages, undead kings etc. Sometimes a bit much, but it all fits in with the art style work well.

This was a game I wanted to play for a long time and it did not disappoint. It isn't perfect, but it was well worth my time. For me it is likely a top 5 PS4 experience so far, and I'm happy to have it in my collection. I may put the time in to go for platinum on this one, I don't think it's too onerous a task once the main game is done.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2021 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
* indicates a repeat

1. Super Hero Operations (PS1)
2. Lil' Gator Game (PC)
3. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut (PC)
4. Dragon Quest VII (PS1)
5. Dragon Quest III (SFC)
6. Dragon Quest VIII (PS2)
7. Dragon Quest Monsters (GBC)
8. Mario Party 6 (GC)
9. Last Bible 3 (SFC)
10. Mario Party 4 (GC)
11. Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)
12. Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (SFC)
13. Chrono Trigger (SFC) *
14. BoxBoy + BoxGirl! (Switch)
15. The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog (PC)
16. SaGa (GB)
17. Wario Land 3 (GBC) *
18. Sutte Hakkun (SFC)
19. Kane & Lynch 2 (PC)
20. Burger Time Deluxe (GB)
21. Super Mario Advance 4: World e+ (GBA)
22. Bomberman GB 2 (GB)

23. Mario Party 5 (GC)

Continuing to play a bit more Mario Party in the evenings to unwind and indulge in some nostalgia, I played through a bunch of Mario Party 5 over the past couple weeks. This was the first GameCube MP I had as a kid, and I remember not liking it nearly as much as my N64 ones. Until replaying it now, I had always chalked that up to the orb system just being bad compared to the old item systems. However, with how much fun I had with the orb system in MP6 a few weeks back, I knew that couldn’t truly be the only flaw between the GameCube and N64 games. I did my best to set aside those childhood biases and go into this with a fresh mind. I played through story mode and then a few maps (as many as I could stand ^^;) against normal and hard CPUs before I called this one beaten. I played the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.

The conceit of MP5 is that it’s all taking place in the realm of dreams. Therefore, the star spirits from the first Paper Mario are (strangely) here to guide you through it. The story mode consists of doing miniature versions of the normal boards, competing in mini-games against mini-koopas and trying to rob them of their coins to knock them out of the match and keep Bowser from destroying that dream (the board) that the map takes place in. It’s another conceit that’s more than fine enough to get the job done, and while it’s a little stronger than MP4’s birthday party theme, it still don’t quite approach MP3’s “drawn into a pop-up book” theme.

The mechanics though, ohhhh the mechanics. You may’ve noticed in the intro that I said I only played *some* maps of normal party play instead of each of them at least once like I had with Mario Party 6 and 4, and there’s a good reason for that ^^;. While I have certainly confirmed that the orb system is not the only reason that MP5 was less fun than the N64 MPs when I was a kid, I got so, so much more than I bargained for. Starting a bit positive, the mini-games are once again quite strong. I’d say they’re easily stronger than most of MP4’s, and even a good few of MP6’s, but a few too many of them are a bit too random for my liking (and the hard mode AI cheats a bit too much, be it in mini-games or die rolls), they’re one of the strongest points of the game.

Getting into more explicitly negative stuff, it’s honestly hard to pin down just one thing to start with because so many issues relate so heavily to the others. If I had to summarize it as quick as I could, though, I’d say the principle problem with MP5’s design is that money simply doesn’t matter. This may come off as a bit odd of a statement, given that money to get stars is the whole point of Mario Party, but I’ll do my best to explain why in a shorter answer than I so often gave friends who asked why I was so frustrated with this game while I was playing it XD.

First, let’s get into the orb system. As I explained in my MP6 review, the orb system replaces the item system used in earlier games, and this is the first iteration of it. You get orbs from capsule machines placed around the board, but you don’t get to pick which one you get. You just get a random one (which isn’t necessarily a problem in and of itself). The bigger problem is that orbs are kinda useless the large majority of the time. In later MP games, using orbs that have hostile effects mark territory as yours. It’s your space, so if you land on it, nothing bad will happen, but if an enemy lands on it, then the bad thing will happen. In MP5, there is no such system. In MP5, you either spend a fee to use the capsule on yourself immediately, or you can throw it on the board up to ten spaces in front of you for free. If someone lands on that space, then the effect of the orb happens to them.

Though it’s kinda cool that you can either use on yourself OR throw any capsule in the game down on the board (including ones you’d never do that with, like mushrooms for more die to roll or a Flutter to take you straight to the star), it’s ultimately an awful system because there’s no reason to use so many of them. It’s an incredible gamble to throw down an orb with a negative effect, because you might land on it that very turn, and there’s no guarantee an enemy will *ever* land on it. There are far too many orbs and far too many of them are flat-out useless like this, so it’s ultimately a really poor replacement for the old item system. There are also no shops to buy orbs at in the game, so the money you spend to use your randomly acquired ones on yourself is really the only “cost” associated with this orb system, and since the large majority are ones you’d never want to use on yourself, it’s pointless.

And that’s a nice segue into the board design of MP5, because in a word: It’s awful. But it isn’t awful in the way MP3 and 4 have awful board design. It’s honestly kinda fascinating how this is a whole new way to make boards just as awful and pointless-feeling. As stated before, because there are no shops, only random orb getting points, the only thing to ever go for on the board is the star. There’s no reason you’d ever go anywhere else, and there are no alternative game modes for acquiring stars dependent on the board (as MP6 introduces), so the boards are really just a challenge to see who can roll the highest and get to the star. There’s no strategy present of any meaningful sort.

The orb system also has a knock on effect that they contain basically ALL normal board effects (from chance spaces to coin & star-stealing chain chomps to even the koopa bank), so the boards themselves are incredibly barren save for a few boring happening spaces. And these boards are also HUGE and very cumbersome to get around. If you’re rolling low, you’re not going anywhere, since you can’t even buy a mushroom in a shop to get a boost of speed or something (since there are no shops where you’d do such a thing). These massive, barren boards have nothing to do on them but chase the star, and that’s why money is so useless. Even if you’re running the table and winning every mini-game, what does it matter? Even just the blue spaces your opponents land on between the vast distances between themselves and the new star location will likely be enough to buy the star when they get there, so the fun mini-games end up feeling utterly pointless too. Why even try in them if the money they give matters so little?

You could say that you’d want to do them to get coins for the bonus stars at the end of the game, but that’s also a pointless-feeling exercise. This is the first (and mercifully last) MP game to not just have a mini-game star (most coins won in mini-games) and a coin star (highest maximum coin total in the game) bonus star awarded at the end of the game, but to also have the coins you win from battle mini-games count towards the mini-game star. In earlier games, battle mini-games (where everyone has to put in a bunch of money and the first and second place winners of the game get to split the prize pool) could be a fun equalizer for people a bit farther behind. In this game, since battle mini-games aren’t even spots on the board, they just randomly replace 4-player mini-games at the end of a turn, you simply get huge, game-altering (often RNG-focused) games that can far too radically alter the outcome of the game. You have so little agency in the board game part of the game, that those bonus stars at the end matter a LOT for who is going to win, and it feels pretty bad to have one or both of the mini-game & coin stars snapped up by someone who happens to win a huge prize pool on the very last turn even though they’d been doing poorly the rest of the game. MP5’s boards are lousy for different reasons than MP3 and 4’s, but the source is the same: Players have too little agency to affect the outcome of the game, and that makes it a boring and frustrating experience.

Presentation-wise, this game is thankfully at least in this regard a step up from MP4. Gone are tracks of spaces floating above ugly masses of 3D with vaguely-themed textures. Now we have proper 3D spaces that hold these boards, and it makes the whole game so much more appealing to look at as well as making each board just feel that much more like a real space (or as much as a Mario Party board can feel like one, at least :b). The music is also once again very nice & Mario Party-ful. No real complaints there.

Verdict: Not Recommended. Mario Party 3 has sat at the bottom of my ranking list of console MP games for a long time, but I think MP5 has just about taken its place. MP5 is a bold new direction for the series in many ways, and it’s trying a lot of new things. Heck, it even brings back duel mini-games! But it fails so aggressively in implementing these new systems that it makes for a frustrating and boring time whether your game is 35 turns or only 15. You can do better than this with virtually any Mario Party game, so if you wanna get your retro Mario Party on, you’re better off looking just about anywhere else.

-----

24. Klonoa: door to phantomile (PS1)

I cannot count how many friends I have who are into retro games and just absolutely adore Klonoa. It’s a game I’ve had recommended to heck and back, and with the recent remakes of the first two games, it was a series back on everyone’s lips. It’s also a game that’s pretty darn rare in English, but it’s also pretty darn cheap (if a bit uncommon) out here in Japan, so I set out to pick up the first two games a couple weeks back. This weekend, I finally sat down and played through the first Klonoa on my PlayStation to see what all the fuss was about. It took me about 5.5 hours to play through the whole thing, rescue all the captured lads, and do the extra final level. I played the game in Japanese on real hardware.

The story of Klonoa is the story of the titular Klonoa and his friend Hyupo. A strange ring carrying Hyupo crashes down in the forest one day, and Klonoa comes across and saves him. They play and have fun all the time until one day, another strange force descends from the sky. The evil Gadius and his henchman Joker are bent on destroying the world, and it’s up to Klonoa to stop him! Along the way, you’ll meet a lot (and I mean a *lot*) of colorful characters on your quest to save the world, but the story is overall still very simple. It reminds me a lot of a 90’s family film, where the overall vibes of the adventure are more important than character arcs or larger themes. This isn’t a bad thing, as the game is so short yet packed with so much personality that it’s able to carry itself just fine, but it left me wanting more and didn’t leave much of an impact on me in the end. It’s not a bad story by any means, but I think it’s a tad too overambitious for its own good, and narrowing its scope a little and/or focusing itself a little would’ve paid dividends.

The gameplay of Klonoa is a 2.5D platformer that reminds me a bit of the original Kirby’s Dreamland than anything else, and that is absolutely a good thing. Klonoa can run and jump, but he can also grab things with the power of Hyupo and his special ring. This inflates enemies big and round and places them above your head. You can then throw these enemies out in front of you (or even towards or away from the screen! Ain’t 3D crazy ;b) or throw them beneath you as you use them as a double jump. You can even grab another enemy mid-air after you’ve jumped or thrown the enemy you’re already carrying, meaning you can do some really technical maneuvering through stages (and they’ll make you by the end, believe me). Klonoa is pretty short, with only 12 levels and a final boss stage, but those stages are pretty long and also pretty darn tough. If you’re not quite experienced at platformers, you’re likely going to have a pretty rough time making it through to the end of Klonoa. It’s a fun and well-polished experience, but heck if it isn’t one that’ll make you work to see that ending XP

The presentation is incredibly well done and charming. Klonoa’s design is immediately iconic, and the pre-rendered 3D assets turned 2D (think like Donkey Kong Country) create a beautiful world and super fun characters to have your adventure along with. The way the game messes with 3D space to make levels and areas loop through and around themselves is also quite neat, and it very rarely actually gets to the point where it’s confusing to try and point or aim a shot due to how the 3D is working. The music is super fun, as is the sound design. All of the characters have this almost-real-language voice acting that is nonetheless incredibly effective. It does a remarkable job of communicating the emotions of the character’s text without actually going to the length of giving proper VA to every line. With just how many of my friends who like Klonoa love to shout “Wahoo!” just the way he does, there’s no doubt in my mind that the voice work is no small part as to why this series has captured so many hearts over the years.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is a really excellent action platformer on the PS1! It’s not one of my favorite games ever, like I know it very much is for some folks who’ve played it, but it’s a super fun and charming time either way. It was far and away worth what I paid for it, no doubt. If you like platformers and like the way the game looks (and don’t mind a bit of a challenge), then this is absolutely one to look into acquiring digitally or snagging the remake that came out recently. You won’t regret your choice~ ^w^

[Jagosaurus]

1. Sonic Adventure (DX HD)
2. Goldeneye 007 (Remaster)
3. Panzer Dragoon Remake
4.Halo 5 (Heoric & Skulls Replay)
5. Policenauts (PS1 English Translation)



I beat Snatcher for the first time back in 2020 and thought the hype was real. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I jumped into Kojima's follow up with the PS1 Policenauts translation, but ran into some issues using PCSX on my older Windows PC. I had some audio popping, occasional slowdown, and successfully testing disc 2/disc swap was intermittent. With how cinematic the game is, I didn't want to taint the experience with audio issues.

I even had 2 modded PS1 consoles ready, with hopes of running burned copies of this one... but my CDR burning setup gave me fits as documented on RB threads lol.

FFW to 2023 & I recently got emulation running on a HP Chromebook... I ran into similar audio pops testing Policenauts within Chrome OS RetroArch PCSX cores (even after lots of tinkering), but the game ran great in DuckStation. I've heard the credits (miss stinger after) also crash in PCSX. I recommend DuckStation from my experience.

I went from casually testing emu on the cheapo Chromebook to sucked in ... 12 hours later being blown away by Policenauts.

I honestly can't recommend it enough. I do suggest you play Snatcher first so you'll appreciate some of the nods to its predecessor. While I give Snatcher the slight edge (as a big Bladerunner fan), Policenauts is literally a mix of a visual novel meets interactive movie. The production value is incredible.



You'll easily find the "SlowBeef English translation" of Policenauts on the web. I DLed a pre-patched version so nothing complicated needed. You'll need to obtain the PS1 BIOS file.

I opted for PS1 as I didn't think my cheap Chromebook setup would handle the Saturn port well.

Also, look up m3u method for disc swap/eject/insert. This will make your saves file naming scheme simple too vs multiple .cues.

I do recommend testing disc swapping within the emulator before getting to end of disc 1 ... when putting in disc 2 early, you should get a please insert disc 1 message. Then you're on right track.

Now ... think I'm going to revisit Snatcher

[Markies]

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2023!
***Denotes Replay For Completion***

***1. Dragon Valor (PS1)***
2. Breath Of Fire (GBA)
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (NS)
4. World Of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse And Donald Duck (GEN)
5. XIII (GCN)
6. NES Remix Pack (WiiU)
7. Dr. Mario (GBC)
***8. Bully (PS2)***
9. Dragon's Crown (PS3)
10. Bangai-O (SDC)
11. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
12. Destruction Derby (PS1)
13. X-Men Legends II: Rise Of Apocalypse (XBOX)
14. Vice: Project Doom (NES)
***15. Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm (PS2)***



I completed Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm for the Sony Playstation 2 this evening!

I used to have a New Year's tradition where I would use the Fortune Cookie to randomly selected an Unfinished game from all of my consoles to be the first games I played in the new year. I used this as a way to beat my backlog and play some games that I didn't have a huge desire to play. After beating my Backlog, I still do that tradition, but I choose the games now. I wanted to keep the Fortune Cookie spirit alive and I decided to use it on buying a new game, beating an Unfinished Game and completing a Beat Game. I thought this year was a rousing success as I bought Roadkill(PS2), beat XIII(GCN) and now completed Atelier Iris 3(PS2).

I only beat Atelier Iris in July of 2020, so this is a relatively recent game that I went back and replayed. I absolutely loved Atelier Iris 1 and 2 as they are some of my favorite PS2 JRPG's. The humor, art style, characters, battles and alchemy made them incredibly enjoyable. Atelier Iris 3 takes a different turn, but I still enjoyed the experience. The game is described as a RPG mixed with a Metroidvania. You have 5 dungeons that you are constantly exploring and every now and then, you will make a little progress in them to discover a new area. It's a nice trail of bread crumbs, even though you are exploring the same areas constantly. The battle system is quick and snappy as you can win in mere minutes, but deep enough for a strategy during boss fights. The main characters are fairly simple, but I love the side stories of the other characters you meet. They grow and change throughout the game and it is fun to watch them grow. With beautiful sprite work and lovely music, I still enjoyed the game quite a bit.

Besides the constant backtracking, the game goes on for quite a long time. By the time the Final Chapter rolls around, you are ready for the game to be over with as you no longer are experiencing anything new. The game packs in another 20 hours compared to the previous two and it shows.

Overall, I still really enjoyed my time with Atelier Iris 3. It is a unique twist on the JRPG system and one that I have never seen before. I don't enjoy it above the first two games, but I would say the trilogy is up there for my favorites on the system. It is an interesting take and one that I think people would be interested in playing, despite the trying commitment.

[Ack]

1. Northern Journey (PC)(FPS)
2. Hatchpunk (PC)(FPS)
3. Might and Magic IX (PC)(RPG)
4. Star Wars: Empire at War (PC)(RTS)
5. Chasm: The Rift (PC)(FPS)
6. Real Heroes: Firefighter HD (PC)(FPS)
7. CULTIC (PC)(FPS)
8. Consortium (PC)(FPS)
9. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (PC)(FPS)
10. Forgive Me, Father (PC)(FPS)
11. Teomim Island (PC)(FPS)
12. Regions of Ruin (PC)(Action RPG)
13. Void Bastards (PC)(FPS)
14. Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad - Single Player (PC)(FPS)
15. Quake: Scourge of Armagon (PC)(FPS)
16. Quake: Dissolution of Eternity (PC)(FPS)
17. Bioshock Infinite (PC)(FPS)
18. Chop Goblins (PC)(FPS)
19. Ravenloft: Stone Prophet (PC)(RPG)
20. Halfway (PC)(Tactical Strategy)
21. Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood (PC)(FPS)

Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood is the second of the WW2-based tactical FPS series, releasing the same year as Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30. The two are deeply entwined, incorporating the same characters and at times alternate takes on the same battles. With the same style of graphics and art design, most of the same armaments, and relatively small tweaks to AI and level design, Earned in Blood ends up feeling more like an expansion than a proper sequel.

What's changed? Well, not the core gameplay. You still control a couple of squads or a squad and armor. You still direct your men to suppress your enemy so that you can flank and wipe them out. Squad combat is still the name of the game, but you will still likely do a lot of the assaulting yourself.

But the enemy does now react more. If they're suppressed and see you coming, they will attempt to retreat to a new position or take you on directly. And levels are a little more open, thus giving new ways to progress based on how you prefer, as opposed to the way Road to Hill 30 felt like a more linear puzzle to understand. This means you can sometimes end up in a big area where foes are fleeing back and forth until you finally finish them off.

There is also a much heavier influence on enemy explosives. Mortar teams will devastate you. 88s will follow your movements. Soldiers armed with panzerfausts will happily hop out and take pop shots at you. While the game praises you for getting through levels without losing a man, it's not always a guaranteed result. I had entire squads get wiped out from sudden artillery fire while trying to cross between cover that had been cleared of enemy infantry. Hell, in one level I had an entire squad get run over by a German tank that entered as part of a scripted event. The tank was, I mean. The soldiers being there was not. I turned around when everyone died and realized what happened. Allied AI is not always great about self-preservation.

Still, I liked Road to Hill 30, and I liked Earned in Blood as well. Both are fantastic games, and they combine directly for one great experience.