Is SPWaW the Greatest-Ever Tactical Game?

[Baneman]

SPWaW is a great game. I played SP, SP2, SP3 and SPwAW. Something keeps pulling you back - the mark of a great game.

Combat Mission also rocks, but you can't play anything like the numbers of troops in the field in SP.

Xcom was great fun and had possibly the best mood music to ever accompany a game. It got so you were afraid to order your men to open a door 'cos the music was giving you the willies ! The first System Shock was also very creepy.

But think about it - how many games that you first played 10 years ago still live ( essentially unchanged ) on your HDD ?
Not a lot.

'Nuff said.

This is probably a good place for this ... [&o]

[rich12545]

For sheer variety, SPWAW is the obvious choice and a wonderful game. But for gameplay on the small to medium plus battles, Combat Mission is better. No doubt about it. CMAK is way better than the original and is simply great.

Also there's Laser Squad Nemesis which is good although it's mainly multi-player, the new game from the makers of xcom. It's the tactical battles without the overview.

[hoo2004]

If you go to http://www.the-underdogs.org/ you can still get XCom (as well as many other classics). It might take a bit of work to get it running on a modern system though.

[Terminus]

Yeah, DOSBox certainly doesn't want to run it...[:(]

[DzrtFox]

As far as turn-based tactical wargames go, SPWaW is as good as it gets for me. I also enjoy SPMBT and SPWW2, but SPWaW just seems more advanced than those two.

When comparing tactical wargames overall, Combat Mission is my favorite. It uses a different system that is a hybrid of turn-based and real-time gameplay. You plot your orders for each turn, then the turn plays out in one minute of real-time. This allows for a more realistic game in my opinion.

The scope of the Combat Mission games is a little narrower so you don't have quite as much variety as you do in SPWaW, but the battles are awesome.

I still play SPWaW regularly though, and will continue to do so for a long time to come...

[RockinHarry]

SPWAW (and SP2WW2/SPMBT) is surely the best all time hexbased wargames ever! You can play it in most imaginable ways and if you don´t play much you surely have lots of fun modding it!

Combat Mission (BB/AK) surely won´t vanish from my computer that soon either! Very realistic, addictive and my prefered choice for PBEM since some time. ....oh and you can have lots of fun modding those too!

Oh..did I mention "Hearts of Iron" yet?

Now if I only could find a mod that removes the useless sleeping hours from my days,..or yet better add another 8 hours to get more wargaming out of them!

[Nikademus]

I'll put it this way. I've yet to install any tactical based wargame that has yet to knock Steel Panthers off it's pedestal. I even bought the first two Combat Mission games. Good games, but in the end i still end up booting up Steel Panthers, either WaW or SPMBT. Those two games are fun and the 3D battlefield is a nice change of pace but i still prefer SP.

Steel Panthers, in one incarnation or another is the only wargame i've ever owned that has stayed on my hard drive for 10 years and counting. Thats a record that may never be beaten.

[:D]

[Randy]

I agree 100% about SP (in all its variations). As I have pointed out in the past, this game is limited only to one's imagination. Combine SPWAW with SPMBT and you have over eighty years of armored warfare! You can play as small as an infantry squad to as large as a brigade. You can do historical recreations or "what if" scenarios, its all up to the player. Also, though I haven't played too many other games, the aspects of playing SP is very easy to learn. This game has been out for almost 10 years now, and we still play and react to the game as if it just came out. I think this game will be played for years to come.