The "What Ifs" of World War II

Making History is more than a wargame; it's a grand strategic military, economic, and diplomatic simulation of the entire globe, starting in 1934, and going on until the end of the Second World War. If that happens, of course.

As such, it addresses one of the central failings of most WWII games; it doesn't lock you into a historical straightjacket, with Russia inevitably coming into the war even if the Nazis don't attack, and with the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor on inevitable schedule. Instead, you can play with all sorts of what-ifs: What if France had resisted the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1934? Or if Italy had gotten pissy about the Anschluss? Or if the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had stood firm behind Czechoslovakia in 1938?

Bomberman Updated

Mars Miner is essentially Bomberman with somewhat improved graphics, designed for PCs, and with pretty smart level design. Either this sounds interesting already, or else you have no idea what I'm talking about. (Or you didn't like Bomberman, of course.)

In other words, it's a top-view arcade-style game in which you fight enemies by leaving bombs behind and either darting away or ducking around a corner while they explode. Each level is non-scrolling, with some arrangement of obstacles you have to blow up to get past, and enemies of varying capabilities -- low level ones do damage if they run into you, but others can shoot, or spawn low-level enemies, and so on. In addition, there are a slew of power-ups that do things like increase the explosive force of your bombs, allow you to move bombs after placement, nullify bombs you've placed before they explode, etc.

Who Says Turn-Based Strategy is Dead?

1. Did you love old-school turn-based combat games like The Perfect General and Panzer Generals, and prefer games that reward careful planning and actuall strategy games over RTSes, which tend to reward fast action and mastery of interface instead?

Or:

2. Do you love real-time strategy, but chafe at the unreality of resource gathering and tech trees, which surely have nothing to do with the actual problems faced by military commanders? Would you prefer something where combined-arms tactics, use of terrain, and other concerns of actual military strategy dominate?

In either case, welcome to Massive Assault.

Defense is boring, right? Attacking is action, advance, and victory; defense is static. You sit there and hope for the best. No war was more boring than World War One--unmoving defensive trench lines for four long years. So a priori, you might think a game named "Master of Defense" would be, ah, less than scintillating.

Actually, it's quite cool.

You purchase defensive towers and place them on the map. Initially, you have a choice among three types: ones that attack walking critters, ones that attack flying critters, and ones that attack both but do far less damage. Each tower has arange of attack, which you can see as a circle about it by selecting it.