More bugs than dead soldiers at Normandy.

Now with the retinue of of RTS games, it's easy to forget that they had to come from somewhere. Before Starcraft there was Command & Conquer. Before C&C came Warcraft, and before that there were Dune and Panzer Dragoon. Before those were Panzer General and the other turn based strats. Even before those, there was Risk, Diplomacy, and Axis & Allies. A&A was a classic board game that provided for hours of entertainment...Literally. Games would span days sometimes. Well, now the genre has come back to pay homage to its ancestor and the PC version of Axis & Allies has been released. If nothing else, you won't have to put the pieces away in the proper little trays anymore, and no more worrying about people knocking down all the units with errant tosses of the dice. Also, there are two new units in Iron Blitz, the Marine, which has an amphibious assault rating of 3, and the destroyers, which are immune to submarine fire.

A&A is dubbed, "The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game." It's probably a deserved title, but still, arrogant nonetheless. In any case, you'll take control of one of the 5 major world powers during WWII. (You know, that war where the Americans were fighting to get Private Ryan back?) Control the Russians, English, Americans, Germans, or the Japanese. Everyone has their favorite country for their own particular reasons. In any case, your goal is to take 2 opposing capitals and hold them until the end of the turn. If you're on the side of the warmongering Axis powers, then you can win through economic victory. However, that way is wussy, and the Allied powers will be talking about how they could have beaten you and you had to win through a weenie technicality...so don't win that way.

In addition to not having to clean up the pieces, the PC version of Axis & Allies brings something else to the table that the board version didn't have. Namely, bugs. I was playing the US and as usual, the pathetic Russians were getting stomped by the Germans. So, I free Moscow. Yay Capitalism! Unfortunately, the Germans took it back next turn...and plundered all MY cash! That isn't the way the game works! I have no production centers in Russia, those aren't my people, I've merely liberated the capital, and according to the rules, actual control of the land belongs to Russia, as do the IPC points. So, the IPCs plundered should be the Russians, and not mine. In addition, the game has problems figuring where the fighters are supposed to be stationed if you land them on aircraft carriers. There was one point in the game where I have 6 fighters on Alaska, and couldn't move any of them, because the game didn't realize that they were mine. Boy was that irritating. Also bothersome is how you can't tell what tech you get by looking at the roll. It just checks the boxes that you get aftwerwards. What's up with that?! Those are just the major bugs, there are others that I can't recall right now, but a patch is in order...hopefully.

If you enjoyed the board game, then you'll probably like playing this against your friends. If you haven't played the board game, however, the AI is too stupid, even on the highest levels to put up anything resembling a fight. It shys away from the standard openings that have been established as the moves that you're "supposed" to take. In any case, this is pretty fun as a multiplayer game, and not really too much challenge any other way. It's a good way to keep those A&A games going after you split up into colleges across the US.