TOAW 3

Total score
Game play
Nuts & bolts
Bells & whistles

 

For anyone who's new to wargaming, or who's been living under a rock these last ten years or so, TOAW is the Operational Arts of War.  I don't know why the The got included in the abbreviation, I remember wondering that when it first came out, but it did get included, and it's too famous to change now.

TOAW was originally designed & built by Norm Koger, more recently of Distant Guns fame, but this is the game he's rightly more famous for.  Number 3 in the series is principally the work of Ralph Trickey. (Officially number 3, but there are a few more versions than three that have come out over the years:  TOAW Century of Warfare, TOAW Gold, and 1 and 2 obviously, maybe others, and now there's "3") .

I resisted TOAW 3 for a year and a half, but don't make the same mistake.  Each earlier sequel had seemed so similar to the last one to me, and none of them were really enough of an addition to be worth it, but eventually Matrix's Christmas sale offering the game up for just $35 Australian broke my puny willpower.  I imagine by now that most people who are likely to read this review will already have tried at least one earlier version of TOAW, so I won't go into the details.  The gist of the game -- the what's it all about, and the how do I do X of it all -- is not substantially different from earlier versions.

Ralph Trickey's  accomplishment here has been to take a game that was great already, and within the limits of time and budget (and possibly also the laws of physics for all I know) to fine tune things like the already very good AI, and to knock off some of the game's more annoying rough edges.  In terms of game play there are still plenty of oddities:  turns can end suddenly in bigger scenarios, and the theatre wide intel can stretch a little too far back into the Russian steppe; and in terms of the nuts & bolts of thing there are still those unmovable, un-resize-able dialogue boxes, though at least hitting a return key closes them now.  Maybe other things.  The underlying combat engine still probably has its quirks too, so I'm sure a wave of jeeps will still do unnatural things to a King Tiger, I haven't checked. And I haven't felt the need to this time around.  All of the annoyances just don't seem to matter that much when stacked up against what you get.

What this game has in spades is scenarios.  Folders and folders of them.  It's literally majestic in its scope.  TOAW 1 came with just (just!) fifteen scenarios, but over the years an active community has made hundreds of them, and there's a swag of them here (130+).  Ranging from pre WW1 to modern there are scenarios on most every battle you could hope for (and if you can't find one you can always roll your own). The quality varies, some of them were designed for different versions of the game and haven't it seems been tweaked all that much since.  The further you get from big unit combat in WW2 the shakier things start to get too, but boy, quantity, as Joe Stalin is reputed to have said, sure has a quality all of its own; and you can't get more quantity than this.

Runs fine in Vista.  What more can you want to know?

This is the definitive version of what is probably the definitive boardgame-like computer wargame.   Highly recommended.