Strategic Studies Group, a developer based in New South Wales and responsible for a vast array of strategy war-games since 1992, have announced along with Matrix Games that the newest addition to the collection, Battlefront, is now available via the Matrix Games online store. It can be found here.
Quoted from the press release:
Based on the design philosophy of SSG's previous award winning release, the Decisive Battles series, Battlefront presents newcomers and Decisive Battles fans alike with an entirely new system specifically designed for battalion-level combat. Players will have the opportunity to take part in historic battles like Saipan, Market Garden, Novorossisk, and Gazala and relive tough real-world combat decisions involving command and control, sighting, and supply. The scale of Battlefront has been tweaked to perfection so that players will have realistic control over their forces while at the same time making a telling difference in the strategic picture.
For veteran players of the Decisive Battles series who already have a good idea as to what to expect, they will be pleased by the multiple new features for in depth combat and battle management. To that end, Battlefront has innovative provisions for direct and indirect fire, air strikes, and special, historically-accurate combat modes (such as Japanese Banzai attacks).
In addition, Battlefront gives the player a say in the arrival of off-map reinforcements as well as refitted unit. This new layer of 'off-map' strategy adds tremendously to the strategy in each Battlefront campaign.
Awesome! I love the SSG games.
Scott.
This is not a good game - it reminds me of the SSG games they made in the mid 90's, so many very poor UI problems, and it just plays and looks horribly dated - even movement, attack and such is so clunky compared to more recent games (last 5 yrs). There are many better playing mil-strat games around than this. Im really disappointed by the UI though, its poor, and no campaign, a measly number of limited scenarios (the ones mentioned are single maps), and some pretty average battle dynamics. Games like Operational Art of War (made almost 7 yrs ago) are way superior in every way. Imho.. not a good mil-strat game at all.
Im sure people will buy it just because of the SSG name. But as an avid mil-strat gamer, there are many better things to play nowadays and SSG needs to move on a little bit - you can only do the dos like interface and game for so long before people wonder why they are buying a rehashed version of the same game. Even some of the free games (like SPWAW - also about 5 yrs old) make SSG's gear look completely backward.
Come on Aussie developers.. is this really top quality gaming? I see alot of games coming out of Aus, where the Aus developers think they are amazing, but in reality .. they are less than spectacular - Heatseeker is a great recent example (another game that looks 5 yrs+ old)... wheres the high quality titles people keep going on about? DAH2 and the total war series is about it.. as far as Ive seen yet. Most others are just more of the same average quality games...
SSG seem to be stuck in the mid 90's. Their tech, graphics and gameplay are from that era, and they have failed to evolve ever since - why they are no longer in the news that often.
Warlords was great, but that was then... what about now?