Hello everyone. So while it might not look like anything has changed massively
you might be able to hear from the audio, we're in a new place!
We've now got our own little office where we'll be producing all our reviews from, bringing you
the latest games, hardware
and apps and
possibly putting on some new shows as well. So with our first inaugural game from our
new abode this is North and South.
I picked this game out particularly because it's an old classic title
that anyone over about the age of
20 right now might remember.
Certainly, if you're in your 30s and 40s
you will know this game. North and South tells the story
in a game form of the North v South war,
American Civil War effectively.
You may have first come into contact with this game on the Amiga, Commodore 64
I think it was also released on,
and some other systems as well.
But my first encounter with this was on the Amiga A500, and I believe it may have been
the very first Amiga game I ever bought on the A500 for that matter.
So, as you can imagine when this dropped up onto the Play Store I
was very very intrigued to see
how the conversion had worked.
No idea who owns the original rights to the game but the
guys that have developed this
have tried to do a faithful conversion effectively, so they've taken all of the old
gameplay elements that worked so well
the mini games, the
battles and brought them back up to date.
So let's have a quick look.
We always start on a giant world map
and here's our big world map.
I'm basically the north
and I'm these two guys here at the moment. You have to move around the map
trying to take over territories
setting up supply lines and avoiding the Indian and Mexican.
Bearing in mind this game was released originally quite a lot time ago and I'm sure
politically correct
would not be to have Mexicans sitting on the border trying to shoot people
or Indians running amok.
But this is a game that was very much a sign of the times as it were
and the idea, move your guys around.
It's turn based, on the world map.
Then the South gets to have a go.
And eventually we're going to meet and have to shoot each other.
So at this point you might kind of be thinking to yourself well this was all kind of very
turn based.
When you actually get into the battles they become a real time affair
although more limited in some respects than what you might expect.
Again, this is an old title originally, even with the graphics being brought up to date the original
game mechanics are
on the old side
so don't expect the most dynamic of battles. But do expect very interesting strategic
gameplay.
There we are, I've managed to get some supplies through and here we go
into a fight and you get these lovely little hand-drawn animations so this is
basically the battle stage.
We have a canon, we have a horse and we have infantry and the idea is that
units move across the battleground
and you've got
very limited amount of control over them
but when they come near to the enemy, you can just move these,
you've got to
start firing, there we go, just try to kill these guys and
at the same time my units are moving forward and off the battlefield
and they then come back on at the back
and you've got to then
tap forward tap
and attempt to
kill as many people as you can.
It is a difficult game, it's a tricky game it's not something that you're going to
instantly be able to
pick-up and do incredibly well at.
However once you get the hang of it, it's a very very dynamic game.
And there are some great strategies you can employ.
It's been so long since I last played this game I suck so badly.
The last time I played this was on the Amiga and, you know, you're talking 20 years ago I think.
They've done a great job at bringing it bang up to date basically keeping all of the
kind of flavor of the original,
great graphics
you know, even if they brought it up to date
the original graphics were no slouch as it were, for the time, they were some of the most
groundbreaking out there and
just fantastic gameplay.
If you like strategy games especially you definitely have to pick this title up.
If you're into retro gaming and played the original, you're going to want to pick this up.
If you want to see what games were like when they were
maybe a bit more simplistic
but more atune to
being brainworthy,
you want to pick this game up.
Ultimately North and South is one of the best titles to be released on Android this year,
and it's a classic,
absolutely fantastic. It will currently cost you about two dollars in the Google Play Store.