Battleground Europe (AKA WWIIOL)

When it comes to realism in a world war two game, nothing else can compare.

It's been around for a while, but not well known. I freaking love it. There's way too much to the game for me to explain here, so i'll give you the gist of it:

They call it a combined arms sim - you have air force, navy, and army all working together to achieve the goal of winning the map. This means as you gain rank, you can use things like patrol boats, destroyers, fighters, bombers, tanks, anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft guns, trucks, and of course infantry.

The "map" takes place in central europe during the blitzkrieg (actual start date is may 1940 i believe), and consists of literally hundreds of towns, each with anywhere from three to thirty capture points. Once one side captures a certain number of towns and moves the frontline a certain distance, they win. The map is half-scale, so you could fly from one side to the other if you wanted, but it would literally take you hours!

This means maps last a long time - the current one is still going strong and started three months ago - in november!


The game uses very realistic ballistics and damage models - every tank and plane has historical armor thicknesses, ballistics, and internal components. What this means is if you can manage to penetrate a tiger's turret and hit one of it's ammo boxes, it'll likely blow up. If you hit it's fuel tank, it'll likely flame. If you hit it's gun, you'll likely disable it. If you hit it's tracks, they'll be destroyed.

Likewise, if you can lay enough rounds into a planes wing or tail or ammo box or fuel tank, you'll shoot a wing off, set it on fire, etc.



What this means is there's a tough learning curve. You can't shoot a tiger with a rifle and expect it's "damage bar" to hit zero and then kill it. There are no damage bars. You have to learn what guns work against what tanks and where to shoot them to get a kill. You have to learn basic fighter maneuvers to keep from gettin shot out of the sky. You have to learn to lead an enemy infantry running five hundred meters away with your rifle in order to kill him.

There's a TON more to the game: naval bases, paratrooping, high command, brigades, attack objectives, research and development (your high command has to research the tiger before you can see one on the battlefield), factory bombing, it goes on.

It's tough at first, no doubt. But once you get a hang of the game, you'll never go back to crap like call of duty or medal of honor

Best game i've ever played. and remember TBoMBeR told you