14 DAY TRIAL // Any video game, even the most open and indie-focused, has rules, and they are incredibly important to the genre because they define the limits that allow player to exercise their power and the way the entire world of a title is built.
Rules need to be learned, in every release from Tetris to GTA to Starcraft, in order for the gamer to be successful, and, even if the process is often subtle, we tend to remember video game rules long after they are no longer relevant to our experiences.
I still remember how dual classing works in Baldur’s Gate 2 (or was it Icewind Dale 2?) even if I have never done anything similar in recent role-playing titles, and the recent launch of Wargame Red Dragon has shown that rules can still govern my gaming behavior even if they are no longer actually that relevant to the experience.
The previous title in the series, AirLand Battle, was the best military-themed real-time strategy title from last year, and I spend close to 200 hours playing against both the Artificial Intelligence and other human players.
Apart from the mechanical limits of the Eugen Systems-created title, I learned general rules for survival and success, including that scouting is crucial, tanks only work when they are properly supported, and that helicopters tend to be criminally undervalued during the late game.
The lessons that I learned from Wargame AirLand Battle were, in many ways, the core elements of the doctrines that both NATO and the Warsaw Pact planned to use in the event of a big European conflict during the `80s.
Red Dragon moves the action to South East Asia and brings it into the `90s, which means that, at the moment, I find myself using a bunch of internal rules that are a little outdated.
Scouting is still important and can decide battles, but there are moments when a solid tank push, especially coming from the numerically superior North Korean deck, is all but impossible to stop even if they do not have support.
One of the pleasures of playing Wargame Red Dragon is the fact that I am often confronted by the cognitive dissonance created by moments when my old rules get broken by other players in innovative ways.
I have suffered quite a few defeats already, and I enjoy re-learning how to play and win against well-drilled human opponents.