Airborne Assault Review

By Steve OHagan for PC Zone Magazine

Steve O'Hagan joins some British paras in action

Airborne Assault is a solid, hardcore World War II strategy game advertised with the challenge: "Do you have what it takes to lead 40,000 men into combat?" But more important than your ability to command a host of men is your desire to watch little squares shuffle across an ordinance survey map. Unless you're into cartography, this is one of the most visually unappealing games of the decade.

Airborne Assault simulates various aspects of Operation Market Garden, the ill-fated British paratrooper assault on the famous 'Bridge Too Far' over the river Rhine at Arnhem in Holland. The drama unfolds in real-time and each order you give is filtered down through a complicated hierarchy of headquarters to your units. The emphasis is on management and issuing the right battle plans in the first place, as changes to orders take time to reach the troops on the ground. A complicated equation of troop quality, terrain and equipment types determines who comes out on top when the firing starts.

Ammunition levels for every rifle, machine gun and artillery piece on the field are tracked, and every commander and formation in the battle has a biography. But despite this detail and research, it's the old bugbear of AI that lets the side down. The computer opponent will ignore crucial breakthroughs and important strategic positions, allowing you to waltz around his positions when on the attack, and to meet his advances head on from the finest vantage points when in defence.

As a simulation of strategic battlefield command, Airborne Assault is a fine piece of research and implementation. But as a game, it is a daunting and massively inaccessible experience.