Reviewed: January 22, 2006
Reviewed by: John Bowlin

Publisher
Strategy First
1C

Developer
G5 Software

Released: November 20, 2005
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1-8
ESRB: Teen

5
6
5
5
5.2

System Requirements

Cuban Missile Crisis really doesn't have a lot to actually do with said historical event, except that in this game, JFK did not handle the crisis correctly and as a result, a limited exchange of nuclear weapons occurred, violently hurling the planet into World War III in the shadow of a mushroom cloud. New York, Washington, Moscow, London, Paris, Berlin, and a number of other large industrial cities in Europe, Asia, and the US were wiped off the face of the earth. The world's communications systems and infrastructure was in ruins.

After this the history of the game world is radically different than the real world, and not really in such a good way. It was pretty difficult to figure out what the story was supposed to be but there is one in there, sort of. Almost all existing governments were gone, wiped out in the nuclear devastation. The new governments that arose in their stead were all very anti-nuclear after the near-destruction of the planet, and anyone even considering using nuclear weapons was shot by their own people.

But the war was not over. Instead each nation struggled to protect and gather as many natural resources as they could, to keep their armies running. Four new major powers evolved out of the aftermath, the USSR, the Anglo-American Alliance, the Franco-German Alliance, and China.

Cuban Missile Crisis mixes a grand strategic turn-based game with a real-time strategy element for handling the details of battles. There are four grueling campaigns to trudge through, one for each faction. The game also supports a limited LAN multiplayer mode, but only for the RTS portion of the game, not the strategic turn-based overhead map. There is no Internet play supported for the game.

The learning curve for this game is relatively steep. Be prepared to start your campaign over multiple times until you get the hang of the RTS part of the game, because if you lose too many units in a skirmish you're going to be screwed for the overall campaign. Every unit counts. The AI in the strategic mode of the game is competent. It knows how to exploit weaknesses, cutting off supply lines, or capturing your critical bases. The game does offer several "difficulty" settings, but all they do is vary the amount of damage your units do against the enemy and vice versa.

When you encounter an enemy battle group on the main strategic map, or if you attack an enemy base, you will be shown a situation report, mission objectives, and can allocate resources for the battle. If you allocate too many, you could end up losing too much, or if you don't allocate enough, you could fail to accomplish your mission. Unlike most RTS titles, you do not have any means of producing additional units during the battles. What you start with is all you get, so you better plan to bring enough firepower unless you plan to lose.

One of the actual nice parts about the game is the attention to detail done for all of the various 1960's units. The tanks are all realistic, and you might have a combination of older World War 2 surplus units plus more modern units. Each faction will have their own types of units. Units have armor for each of the four sides and roof. As your units get damaged you can watch the little green bar above them slowly diminish. The aircraft units are especially nice, but you only get access to those after you complete the first chapter of a campaign.

Artillery units can fire different kinds of ammo for different effects. In addition to standard shells you might have smoke rounds, anti-personnel, anti-armor, etc. Artillery units have very long range and are excellent for defense, and can often be very difficult to handle if you're on the offensive. Infantry units can occupy buildings or entrench themselves, giving them much better defense. You can use engineers to repair or build bridges, or to lay mine fields. You can also command snipers to take out units from afar. If you run into some irradiated, contaminated areas, your units can die. But there are also decontamination units you can use to clear a bad area.

While on the situation report screen before a battle, you have the option to use auto-combat resolution. This makes the strategic game go faster, but you can end up losing your most experienced units, which can really hurt you in the long run. But this can be very handy for mopping up later in a campaign.

The interface for the turn-based portion of the game is very simple and clean, and works well. The RTS portion of the game has a very complex interface with tons of options, especially considering the variety of units and various orders you can give. But really the worst part about the RTS portion of the game is that the game is plagued with the same tired old problems that have plagued RTS games since Dune 2, that is, poor path finding and crappy unit AI.

Try sending a group of units across a bridge and you might find half of them on one side while the rest wander off in another direction. Units will wander right into the line of fire of enemy units and just sit there getting pounded. Be prepared to baby-sit your units and micro-manage to the extreme. You might have trouble spotting the enemy units with all the foliage and obstructions to view, but don't think for a minute that the enemy AI has any problem seeing and firing on your units the split second they are in range. It's so bad, in fact, that you end up having to send lone, disposable infantry units scouting ahead so you can watch where they get shot from and know where not to send your more critical units.

Another problem with the game is that unit balance isn't. Infantry are far too effective against armor units, And the seemingly only way to get rid of them is with either your own infantry units or by running them over. Artillery units are absolutely devastating and don't have the typical weaknesses found in other strategy titles except for a lack of mobility. And since you're usually on the offensive, you will encounter a lot of artillery, with long range, ready to snipe your big tanks before they even get close enough to see them.

You can select resolutions from 640x480 up to 1600x1200, and the game runs fine on any modern rig even on the highest settings. The terrain itself looks pretty good, but as your tanks roll over the landscape rather than running over a tree and seeing the crushed trunks and limbs, you see a little poof and then it magically disappears; same thing for some buildings or other obstacles.