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GAME REVIEWED: 101: 101st Airborne in Normandy
RELEASED BY: Empire Interactive
PRICE: £39.99
REVIEWED BY: Cheezy Knob
REVIEW: -
101 is a cannon fodder style game that is set in Normandy 1941. It is based upon the paratroopers of the 101’ST airborne regiment of the US army. The game portrays the hardship and perks of being a paratrooper well and gives a good impression of d-day for a paratrooping regiment. The game has a very user-friendly interface and is quite easy to get into after you have read the manual. The game has good top-down graphics and quite good video sequences. It also gives you good control over your stick and their weapons and equipment. The easiest way to give you an accurate account of the games good points and bad points is to take you through the first sequences that you do. So here goes then, wish me luck!
When you load up 101 you get to the main screen where you can alter the game preferences, load games and start new games. When you start a new game you get to Army HQ in England where you get ready for the invasion. The first thing you have to do is select a mission from the mission building. You can choose from around 15 different missions to carry out but this is just the starting point as after you can still carry on fighting the war. After reading the mission briefing you exit the mission briefing and you scroll along the animated screen to the barracks. There are two types of barracks, the enlisted barracks and the officer’s barracks. From the officers barracks you choose the leaders of your stick (battle group) and the second in commands etc. From the enlisted barracks you choose your ordinary foot soldiers or private first classes which form the main body of your stick. Each soldier has his own strengths and weaknesses. This helps you to get the right men for your mission. Another good thing about the game is that, if you cannot be bothered to pick all the men which is quite a chore you can get auto select which selects all the men for you and gives you the men best suited to the job.
The next thing you have to do is select the equipment that the men will take with them. You can do this yourself or you can get the standard issue, which is usually sufficient. One option on this screen though is to get all the equipment available, which is not a good idea because it weighs down your men very badly which affects their performance in battle. After selecting what equipment you are going to take you have to select your guns and ammo. This is the same format as selecting the equipment and men so I will not go over it again.
After this you can train the men on a mock battlefield which corresponds to your mission or you can go straight to the airfield which gets you to Normandy.
Once you are in the plane you will see all your men jump one by one and what happens to them in the air and landing. There are several different outcomes after the men have jumped, they can land safely, land in trees, get shot in mid air, be returning fire, be under fire and their parachute not deploying. When everyone has jumped you get a screen which shows you who has landed safely etc. So great, now it’s time to get fighting then, well no, first you have to get your parachute off which seems to take quite a while and the you have to regroup. Each player has action points which getting the parachute off takes up. These action points also are used up when anything else is done.
After all this you can start fighting, you make your way to the mission objective and the blast the hell out of some Germans. I will not say much else because it will spoil the game for you but the action really does get pretty good after a little while spent strategically planning your troops.
The rest of the game is pretty good and you really get addicted to it in the later stages but there are to many little niggles like the action points, which I really don’t like, to make it a viable alternative to something like Populous 3 which is a much better bet for a strategy type game. Overall though this game is a good twist on the Cannon Fodder type genre which will keep you playing for ages
SCORE:
82%
MINIMUM HARDWARE REQUIRED:
CPU: 133+
RAM: 16MB
250MB HD Space
Windows 95\98
6x CD-ROM
LINKS: www.empire.co.uk