The Great War: Western Front Review

ign.com:

There are around a million games about the Second World War for every one about the First, and The Great War: Western Front serves as a pretty good illustration of some of the reasons for that. The brutal, grinding, attritional conflict spanning from 1914 to 1918, as interesting as it is from a military history standpoint, is difficult to turn into a fun video game with any sort of authenticity. This RTS adaptation tries to find a satisfying balance point between historical reality and enjoyable gameplay. And while I think it did about as well as anyone could have hoped, it can't fully smooth out the challenges of gamifying these shell-pocked battlefields.

The Western Front, with its teeming trenches and relentless artillery bombardments was an excruciating stalemate that took years to resolve, only breaking with the advent of new technologies and tactics much later. And The Great War: Western Front doesn't do much to sugar-coat that, both for better and for worse.

The first big adjustment I had to make was to the sheer deadliness of even a modest defensive position. One regiment of standard infantry stationed in a trench can hold off three times as many attackers, and maybe double that number again if they have the support of a machine gun nest. This is certainly historically accurate, as so much of the early war was spent with commanders on both sides fooling around and finding out why you shouldn't do things like this. And of the ways Western Front errs on the side of history, this one didn't bother me so much.

If you want to play a bit more offensively, artillery can be used to suppress enemy trenches, rolling barrages can kick up smoke and earth to give your advancing troops concealment, and if you have enough