Wargasm (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.3 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Marc Dultz
• Reviewed on: 01/28/1999
• Updated on: 05/02/2000
• Released on: 12/31/1998
• Originally published on GameSpot: Wargasm (PC) Review

After having forged a respectable reputation in the air-combat simulation genre, it now appears as if Digital Image Design - the makers of EF2000, F-22 Air Dominance Fighter, and Total Air War - is heading off in a completely different direction with the release of Wargasm. No doubt looking to crack the larger and obviously more lucrative mainstream market, Wargasm (WAR Ground Air Strike Mission) represents the company's first foray into the action/strategy gaming genre, a promising game bedeviled by several control problems and nagging design issues.

Set in the not-too-distant future, the nations of the world have supposedly sworn off the pain and anguish associated with modern mobile warfare and have instead decided to settle their collective differences in cyberspace via the all-new World Wide War Web (WWWW). The WWWW has been created by the world's top programmers to look and feel like a battlefield, a war zone complete with different types of terrain and real-world environments and dotted with all sorts of civilian installations, fortifications, and various military compounds.

Similar in many respects to Battlezone, Urban Assault, and Uprising, Wargasm is another entry in the hybrid action/strategy genre, meaning that it combines the tactical and strategic elements of traditional real-time strategy games with the frenzied gameplay of today's typical 3D shooter. So while you can command your forces from a top-down perspective, you can, if you so choose, watch the action unfold from the ground level by hopping into and controlling any of the ground and air units in your charge.

You begin each scenario by selecting your battle group from a finite number of units, deciding how many infantryman, armored personnel carriers, tanks, and helicopters will be placed within your "Webspace" in order to accomplish your immediate objectives. Next, you must then choose which predefined entry point will serve as your forces' starting location, taking into consideration the mission goals, terrain, and locale of each objective. Once the entry point has been determined, the battle group is deployed en masse at the entry point and, for better or worse, sometimes seconds away from an opening engagement with the enemy. While this heightens the overall experience and adds a sense of impending peril to every situation, I can't for the life of me figure out why you aren't given the opportunity to deploy your forces prior to the start of a mission or why you are unable to split up your forces so that they arrive at multiple entry points. Bear in mind that once a scenario begins it usually takes a couple of minutes to assess the battlefield and assign each unit its waypoint orders. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to issue specific orders to a unit - such as patrol a region or defend a critical installation - or have them seek cover when a firefight erupts. Worse still, the group command seems ungainly given the current state of game design, and because the units start out bunched together in a tight formation, oftentimes they require multiple orders before they set off in differing directions.

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