But more to the point. Primarily, what I absolutely have to mention, is that the learning curve of this game is SO steep I thought I'd fall off it as I climbed it. And I only climbed about as far as from my chair to the door of my room, and, believe me, that's not far. The concepts are easy to grasp - but the techniques and amount of detail thrown at you are so vast that a newbie will get completely lost at it at the beginning. You can pick your squad (either from officers or enlisted volunteers), you can pick the equipment they will carry (i.e. jump suits (which you don't really have a choice of deleting, considering the squad deployment by paradropping) as well as water flasks, gas masks, jump boots, maps, compasses, field rations, first-aid kits, even cleaning patches (only to name a few). Your weapon choices aren't exactly Commander Keen's, either - the arsenal is so vast it makes war almost fun. Handguns (ie Colt M1911A), rifles (M1903A4, M2), submachine guns (M3A9), machine guns (M1919A6) even a bazooka - and there is usually more than one type of offensive weaponry per category.

The mosts blatant problem, if it could be called that, is the extensiveness of options you can select. There IS an 'automatic select' for every choice you have to make (squad selection, weapons selection, etc.) - but the button is so nicely blended into the background even THAT is hard to find. Apart from that, very extensive information is given for all choices, up to biographies of all the privates and officers, full description of just what exactly an item does, as well as full stats for the weapons. Those come in pretty useful, considering you'll have to figure out enough stuff by yourself - you wouldn't want to figure out what the difference between an M1 carbine, a M1 Garand and a M1A1 is. (Please, no flame mail - not everyone knows that.) For that matter, the realism level is astounding - but, perhaps, a bit overwhelming, at least at the beginning. As I never read any manuals, readmes, 'Read This Urgently.txt'-s, and the such, I was completely dumbfounded at the beginning. I mean, it takes you a little while to figure out that once your soldiers paradrop (and you lose a third to half the squadron while paradropping), you have to: a) take off the parachute, b) wait a few turns and c) realize you have two types of actions during a turn - one attack phase and one movement/attack phase. All that happens in slow motion, too - considering all I have is an elderly P200. More so, once you're done figuring that out, fire comes raining down on your troops, and I'll be damned if you think of 'Looking' around immediately. It would be nice, too if there were some training missions. That is, there ARE - but you have to know about them, as they're skillfully disguised as a black-draped door in a black wall in the dark corner of the room. But, as I later learned, though, 'Look'-ing doesn't do such a good job - for some reason, the enemies are visible only during the PC's turn. That doesn't end up working too well, considering that even under the strictest realism rules, once you know where your opponent is, lest should he move, you can safely assume he's at the same precise location. Well, you can't in the game - you have to fire blindly at the spot where you KNOW the soldier is. Sometimes you're rewarded by a death scream. Sometimes not. In any case, you'll probably end up being shot because an enemy will pop out of nowhere.

Apart from that, the game is pretty neat. The environment is destructible (Rebellion managed to kill a cow), and houses look like they can be entered - I never tried though, as my troops were dead long before they even approached the house. That makes me think - by laws of optics, if the enemy sees my trooper, my trooper can see him - and, considering my trooper is lying down and has the suspect building within visual range, I'm surprised at why the enemy can see me and I can't.

Another concept that takes some getting used to is the sequence in which your soldiers move. Since this is a turn-based strategy game (which is a welcome refreshment from the flood of RTSs we had lately), you cannot select a random soldier and execute his action sequence. They all take turns - and, in my view, it would be neat if I wasn't forced to select them all in order.

The graphics in the game are somewhat jaded. There are no vivid colors in it, and, albeit the load on the graphics card shouldn't be too excessive, I found the game to be very slow at times. The view is top-down, too - so one would think that it could be faster - and we got Commandos to prove that, even though it's an RTS. Troop movement, scrolling - all that was fairly lagged, and reminiscent of the good old C&C days on my DX/2-80. Does Empire deem a Pentium 200 to be equivalent of a DX/2-80 two years back perchance? Possible, I am no judge. Some of the objects are somewhat undecipherable, too - I'm still unsure as to whether they represented a cemetery, hanged bodies, cows, or enemy soldiers. I tried shooting them, and nothing happened - so, assumably, the latter option can be ignored.

Much as I would like to keep discussing this game, there is truly not much I can say - overall, it's a pretty good game, but, like I mentioned above, it's really for the believers. The newbies will get completely astounded, dumbfounded and flabbergasted, and all but the most patient and determined ones will most likely give up. There IS a game lurking somewhere behind the complicated, maze-like facade - but it's too far down for most people to look for it. The true fans will likely be delighted, but then again - true fans are a different breed, and negative reviews don't tend to change their mind about things. Case in point: Dune 2000.

Highs: Extreme realism, authentic representation of the era, incredible depth of customization options...

Lows: ... that so overwhelm you that you end up using Automatic, anyway. And the game is very slow. I still can't see the difference between 'Run' and 'Crawl'.

Bottom line: a decent sim, but only the diehard simnuts will stick to playing it. Most other people will probably find their fun elsewhere.

Graphics: 13/20
Sound: 10/15
GamePlay: 19/30
Fun Factor: 10/20
Multiplayer: 3/5
Overall Impression: 7/10

It appears to be more open ended, you get to pick and choose your missions so it doesn't really follow the "Campaign" idea most games do. You also have the option of training your men, which allows you to familiarize yourself with tactics and weaponry and get accustomed to the game.

You get quite a bit of control over the development of your squads. You build squads for each mission from a large assortment of enlisted men and officers, each of which has their own stats and skills. Units will progress from experience and get better as they go along (as long as they're not getting killed). I guess it's similar to Mech Commander in this aspect since you pretty much get to equip your men however you like and they will develop based on performance.

101 gives a wide range of weapons and equipment, including pistons, rifles, machine guns and even bazookas from the various factions including the United States, France, and Germany, realistic to that era. Each weapon has its own stats including the usual range/damage/firing rate categories. You also will need to equip your forces with parachutes (this IS Airborne after all) and items like rations and med kits.

If you couldn't tell already, you've got a lot of choices to not only make the game detailed, but also confuse the hell of out you. The game does provide a method of automatically equipping your units and it appears to do a decent job. Since I spent most of the time trying to figure out what weapons to use and wear certain equipment would be needed and what was required, it seemed to me that the computer was doing a pretty good job of auto-assigning.

The game looks similar to Close Combat, it's a topdown view and it's pretty square. It doesn't convey any distinct 3D views, thus following the typical turnbased mold. It isn't graphically impressive at any given point, but does the job of setting enough enviroment. You get modifiers from terrain although it's not the easiest to tell the difference in terrain since there's not a whole lot of difference to it.

The gameplay is quite slow. At first I thought it was something with my PC, but I've got a P200 that it ran at basically the same rate as my PII 300, so I guess the game itself is just slow. It tends to drag the game out significantly with little or no interaction with the enemy. My highlight of the first 45 minutes was killing a cow. It is pretty realistic though. For example, when you first land, you will need to cut off your parachute. This process will take you a few turns to complete. It may be somewhat boring, but it adds some realism, no matter how trivial. For me this made the game a low priority on my time management. I'm not willing to sit around at a game for long periods of time with nothing happening. However, wargamers are a strange breed and this may be just the game to get their feathers ruffled.

The game has nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary in the audio category. Just the usual gunfire chatter, and background ambience. It fulfills its objective by accomplishing what it needed to and not overdoing it.

101 does feature multiplayer. I can only imagine the hours and hours this game would take to play against another human. However, it does seem like it would do a great job as a multiplayer wargame.

If you're not a diehard wargamer, this game is most likely going to be way too slow and tedious for you. If you are, hmm, set aside a full day or so and have at it. I bet you'll either be addicted or be trading it in for Panzer General II or something that moves a little faster. As a wargame, it's not pretty, but it's realistic and detailed. As a plain game, you'll find higher entertainment value elsewhere.

Highs: Detailed and has a high level of realistic complexity Lows: Slow gameplay, steep learning curve

Graphics: 11/20
Sound: 8/15
Gameplay: 23/30
Entertainment Value: 10/20
Multiplayer: 3/5
Overall Impression: 6/10