Shattered Union

PC review by Matt Wadleigh, published on Tuesday 1st November 2005

I’ve always been interested in hex-based war games, but never enough to buy them. They seem like daunting experiences esspecially after hearing stories from players talking about 150 page must-read manuals and loads of stats you have to pay attention to. Suffice to say, the genre is pretty intimidating after hearing all these comments, so a certain reviewer (me) avoided it entirely until a copy of Shattered Union found its way onto my desk for review. I gingerly took the discs out of their sleeves and slid them into my disc tray. I thought that I was going to be subjected to a pretty painful and tedious game that I wouldn’t be able to write about. I was wrong.

Shattered Union is a traditional hex-based war game, like the ones you see occasionally in the back of magazines getting a paragraph-length mention. Instead of being top-down and graphically limited like many other games in this genre, Shattered Union utilizes an intense 3D engine that looks really great. The game’s plot is focused around the breakup of the United States following the election of the most hated president in history. The US has been broken up into seven factions that are all vying for control of the nation.

To put the nation back together, you have to take over the territory of the other factions through battle. The campaign mode opens up with a gigantic map of the United States, color-coded by faction. Each faction has control over a few territories (most start with four). From this screen, you can launch an attack on any neighboring area. Once you put your mouse over the territory you wish to conquer, the strength of it is computed for you on the side of the screen. Once you decide where you want to attack, you’re given the option of purchasing more troops, but where the game really opens up is on the battlefield.

When you attack a territory, you can sometimes pick which side you want to invade it from. What’s most important is that you’re also given the option of deploying your troops or allowing the game to do it for you. The deployment of your troops is vital as the game uses a scoring system to determine if you’ve won or not. If you take over a town, you earn points that go towards a total. You may need 100 or 200 points to win the territory, so sorting out your troops and putting them towards the right direction is essential.

Once you get on the battlefield you’re given full control over where you want your troops to go. As expected, you can only move them over a limited area over the course of your turn. Your units will move faster over paved roads and the like, but as in real life they’re slowed down when traveling through water and over rough terrain. This is another reason why deployment is important. It might seem great to put your troops as close to the enemy as possible, but if a mountain or stream blocks your way you may end up taking longer to get to your target.

To destroy your target, you’re going to have to utilize a mix of infantry, tanks, helicopters, bombers and a few special attacks you earn as you progress through the game, which include biological warfare and even nuclear weapons. It’s pretty impossible to win without utilizing a mix of your troops, so balancing your army is important. The developers were kind enough to allow you to not only keep your same army but in between battles you can also heal or repair your units, which cuts back on the tedium that would have set in if you had to purchase new ones every conflict.

In the graphics realm, the game looks pretty good. Zooming out gives you a great perspective of the entire battlefield but it isn’t zoomed so far that you can’t see where the hell you’re trying to go or what you’re trying to attack. On the other side of the coin, zooming in allows you to get a detailed, up-close look of your units which seem accurately designed (I don’t know much about military units, but they seem like they did it right). There are some nice flame and smoke effects to boot. The sound consists mostly of gunfire and explosions which seem a bit subdued, but are easily forgiven thanks to a great orchestrated score.

In the end, I’m glad this game came across my desk. I’m sure that Shattered Union it isn’t the best hex-based war game from the perspective of a “true” war gamer, but I think it makes a pretty good entry level game for the genre. It looks great, plays easy, and it even includes a skirmish mode where you can set your own rules for the battles, so you don’t even have to get into the lengthy campaign mode. If you’ve ever thought about trying out a hex-based war game, I wouldn’t hesitate to pick this one up to see what you’re missing.