The Great War: Western Front™

The Great War: Western Front is a well researched, designed, and executed game that provides players with a meaningful simulacrum of its historical namesake. Unfortunately, though, the Western Front of World War 1 was a terrible, repetitive slog. This provides a bit of a conundrum to anyone who would review, buy, or play this game. On one hand, this game is, though taking some liberties for the sake of gameplay as all historical games must, representing the core dilemmas and strategic ethos of the Western Front in WW1 while giving the player some freedom in what specific avenues or tactics/technologies to employ to break the various stalemates in the theatre. On the other hand, none of those things necessarily make the game fun or engaging to actually play. To be very clear, there is a lot of good here: the choices of where and how to focus resources (soldiers, supplies, and other materials) to find the right positions in the enemy lines to thrust and protect against their counter-attacks, where to focus on defence to try and drain enemy supplies, and how to direct doctrinal and technological advancements to best match your support your style and needs are all engaging and interesting strategic choices. Similarly, the tactical battles have a lot to offer: how to build trenches, position artillery, manage intelligence gathering, and pace attacks to adequately seize and defend ground are all a lot of fun, as well. Few games are better at showing the power of artillery as both offensive and defensive tool. The real problem emerges after six or seven turns, after you have launched some attacks, held firm against enemy counterattacks (or been over-run), you look at the stratgic map, and you realize...that nothing has really changed from turn one. Maybe you have softened an enemy position. Maybe you have taken a piece of ground. Maybe you lost some ground. In any case, unless you have been scoring Total Victory (the game's phrase to describe complete territorial over-runs) after Total Victory, you will see a map on turn seven or ten that looks almost identical the map on turns one or two. You may think to yourself: "I am making slow progress now, but I am about to unlock better siege guns, or better machine guns, or better airplanes, or more supply depots, or tanks, or a new wave of reinforcements from colonial nations. Certainly the tide will turn once I have this new technology/reinforcements!" You may think that, but you will be wrong. Eventually you may make a break through, but it will be because you have exhausted your enemy's supply in a key zone at the right time and exhausted their ammunition or manpower...or national will to fight. This game is indeed a slog, but to represent its subject matter it has to be, and those same hopes of technology or reinforcements or fighting spirit of your men being the key to victory were what drove the real commanders on the Western Front a century ago. Luckily now our disappointment is only measured in fictional blood and corpses. None of this is to say that The Great War: Western Front is an exhaustive historical simulation. Certainly not, and I already gave the caveat that it is quite fun to play, but it might not be fun to play for as long as you have to in order to win a campaign, fighting month after laborious month over the same patch of dirt in northern France. I finished a campaign in this game. I enjoyed it for both the gameplay and for the appreciation of how the game subtly incentivizes in the player the same acts of hubris that doomed so many on the real Western Front so long ago. But, since then I have barely gotten any campaigns to go past 1915, and I am not sure how much more I will play it in the near future. I think this game is worthwhile for what it offers, and I understand why it cannot offer anything more than or different from what it does. As much as it is a thoughtful video game, this game is an illustration of why thematic tactical games set in World War 1 are so rare and difficult to pull off.