The Wargamer

Back up the Imjin without a Paddle

The Korean War is known as “The Forgotten War”, coming as it did at a rather unfortunate time (for posterity’s sake) between a world war and Vietnam, and to this day most people I know can’t tell me what part Douglas MacArthur played in the war, nor even name one of the major battles of the war.

However, for all those who do know something about that not-quite-seminal-but-still-bloody war, well, err, this probably won’t help much, as its set in the near future, chronicling a rather sensitive and real issue in modern day politics: A second war to finally determine the fate of the Korean peninsula.

The game is set in the year 2010 specifically, and all the hardware on offer is fairly much the same as it is today, and it chronicles a pre-emptive strike by the western powers upon a naughty North Korean regime, beginning, funnily enough, on September 11th 2010…. Odd time to invade a country, but what the hell, it gives me something interesting to stick in the introduction apart from a dry “It’s the successor to Armored Task Force” (which it is, by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed.)

Nothing like a Wargame with a Big Manual to put the Fear of God into You

Raging Tiger is a mere 80MB install, and the game runs smooth as a polished wood panel; the area of difficulty for many may come in that the game operates its briefings through an internet browser, which can cause problems for those running tight firewalls not overly fond of OOB’s.

The manual is necessarily 130 pages and is crammed full of essential detail. Raging Tiger is a game which requires a very thorough read through unless one wishes to become completely and utterly lost from the first moment.

If you squint you’ll notice that we’re currently winning

Raging Tiger is not a game that looks or sounds even remotely pretty; it doesn’t even retain some sort of angular, militarily ugly beauty… instead, it looks like a game that I doubt even its mother could love. Tellingly, one has to reduce the normal screen colour depth before even loading up a scenario.

The maps look terrible, and it is difficult to even make out terrain by eyesight without consulting the terrain type box in the lower left hand corner of the screen. Unit counters are, depending on the zoom that is employed on the map, either impossible to distinguish or very difficult to control when they’re packed close together, as even on the optimum zoom factor of 1:25:000 unit counters are as dodgy as that chap offering free plastic surgery with a broken bottle down a back alley on Friday night.

The lame attempt made at sound is an insult on the ears, and the electronically synthesized sounds should be turned off at the first opportunity to be replaced with some soothing music to allay the frustration on attempting to get the tank platoon to go anywhere.

The game’s interface is not overly difficult to get to grips with, and is fairly simple… the problem arose when I had to figure out just what everything does, and then making them work correctly.