Midwinter
| Developer: Maelstrom | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: MicroProse | Sound: |
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| Year: 1990 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Action-strategy | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
6/10 | |
“The nuclear winter is coming!” – Cpt. John Stark
2099. Following the impact of a meteorite, Earth’s temperature has dramatically dropped, to the point of becoming almost entirely uninhabitable. Mankind now occupies a small island called Midwinter. Two factions are fighting there: a military junta, commanded by General Masters (the villains), and a militia which you lead. Your mission is to wage guerrilla warfare against an enemy vastly superior in numbers, by recruiting partisans, sabotaging their facilities or preparing ambushes; and at the same time, prevent them from getting their hands on all the “heat mines” (the new energy sources).
What an ugly game this is! And absolutely incomprehensible unless you’ve spent a few hours reading the 200-page manual. Because nothing is explained … and you’re greeted upon arrival by missiles!
Right, don’t panic. Let’s recap. You’re a soldier in hostile territory. You have, as in Hunter, the ability to pilot different vehicles but in first-person view, which sometimes makes it difficult to understand what’s happening to you.
The play area is immense (more than 400,000 sq km of frozen land), but rest assured, you’ve been provided with top equipment: a map, a compass and a pair of skis!
You of course have an arsenal to defend yourself: grenades and a sniper rifle (to see missiles coming straight at you in close-up, it’s amusing).
The exploration and combat phases combine with an element of strategy (choice of targets, resource recovery, recruitment and management of a team taking into account your followers’ abilities and their enmities).
All this makes for a rich and ambitious game, but difficult to grasp due to a lack of ergonomics and dated 3D.
If snow’s not your thing, you can always try its sequel, Midwinter 2: Flames of Freedom, which takes place in tropical islands off the west coast of African coast…
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