Twilight: 2000

Twilight: 2000 description

As you know, the military experts of all countries in the late 1980-ies almost unanimously come to the conclusion that the last decade of the twentieth century and XXI century will be the era of local conflicts. Universal Third world war is not possible as due to the peculiarities of the military-political situation it is absolutely ineffective and simply do not need the leading world powers to achieve their goals. But - as follows from the plot of turn-based strategy game Twilight: 2000 - they are all sadly mistaken. Third world began in the spring of 1995, opponents of it was, of course, the countries of the Warsaw Pact and NATO. July 9, 1997, she turned into a nuclear war (apparently, the General staffs of both parties slowly realized two years and considered it a border incident, which is easy to handle without resorting to extreme measures). After a nuclear war, as usual, began chaos, anarchy, destruction and, consequently, nuclear winter. Of course, not all government agencies, military units and other groups of people were confounded, some of them began to fight for the restoration of order and fight with many emerging gangs and, in official language, "organizations of destructive orientation". However, unlike the vast majority of games, which takes place in destroyed by a global catastrophe the world, to fight and to fight we have not in the USA, and in Poland, which, however, equally affected all the above horrors.

So Poland, the first months after a nuclear war. Your main enemy is Baron Czarny whose plans included not only the seizure of Poland as... But to retell the plot of the game is not worth it. You with a small detachment of its fighters based in Krakow, will have to wage fierce war with the whole army, which was formed by Czerny, and perform many other tasks, in particular to take care of civilians, because they all left without any supplies and medical assistance on a hostile, unforgiving territory. The game has no specific scenarios, there is only a campaign, generally using the basic principles of X-SOM: a global map of the action at its base, outputs the job and, finally, tactical battles (although it would be correct to say that in X-com the same basis as in Twilight: 2000, as the last appeared three years earlier). The similarity ends; the whole point of the game is completely different. In Twilight: 2000 no scientific development and battles on the strategic map, but there is a well-designed system of communication and careful thought and preparation of EACH operation. Your squad is talking with others not only the language of weapons, but in ordinary language, or rather languages, because each person has such a natural (and rare in games) feature as his native speech. And if your group (each operation involves only four soldier) no soldier, saying, for example, in German, you will learn nothing from the character of the German nationality and, consequently, can fail the mission.

Special attention deserves the very beginning of the campaign. You can choose an existing team and immediately start the operations, and can (and is much more interesting, and more efficiently too) to create your. The formation here is not just a set, but you could say the whole way of life of each soldier, is presented as game in the game. Each of them begins this way at the age of 17 and could choose any profession and occupation, up to the criminal, thus developing the relevant skills and data. Every four years - the scale of the game in the game - stats of the character and his fate for the corresponding period of change; this change is also extremely realistic: graduate civil University can work in their field or to serve in the army for forty years some people lose their physical form, but gain a lot of experience in a particular area, and so on. After several such stages (their number is determined randomly) it is reported that the Third world war, and the character in the condition in which it was in this moment, is credited in your squad. Just want to say that when choosing equipment before the campaign newutility its soldiers "to stop", as each of them will carry pieces, ten machine guns and two quintals of different things; it is made especially to deliver items to the warehouse; afterwards, in the campaigns and battles - it is not, on the contrary, the load of soldiers will be relatively small. In any case, the extra weapons and equipment will not.

In Twilight: 2000 there are a number of games, in particular simulation of the car (on foot, or rather on the slopes, you will only move in the beginning of the campaign; soon you will have a car and a truck, and then something more serious), so to speak, orienteering: you can get to your destination, giving orders on the strategic map, and can also directly operate the machine or a soldier (which represents the whole squad out of combat), moving in the right direction on the tactical map, this variant is more interesting. And, in any case, the road to the place of operation is not just a consumption of time, and a certain kind of travel in which your people have to rest, eat (when foraging, for example, hunting) and to observe every precaution not to get ambushed.

The preparation of the operation, as mentioned above, is a very important stage, from briefing each job and finishing equipment of his squad. Need to think carefully about what items you need to be SURE what is necessary to take just in case (so you do not end up with machine guns and sniper rifles against enemy tanks) and what transport you will use to get. And equipment items here sea, some medical devices have the capacity of blood, containers with plasma, sedatives, bandages, and so on. But do not let that scare - because most items are only required in individual cases, it is constantly you need only a minimal set (weapons, body armor and helmets, and the like), and such an abundance of equipment only helps you to make the right choice. Also do not be afraid of and a large number of types of data (more than two dozen) each soldier is important in fighting only his training and possession of weapons, and specific parameters (for example, the skill of driving tracked vehicles) will be needed infrequently and need not all. In General, here the principle is the same as in Jagged Alliance: all fighters know how to fight, and each of them owns one or two any additional skills. Well, given the fact that Twilight: 2000 is there such a thing as "language barrier", you need to have in the squad at least one person who owns each of the represented languages, which, however, is easy, since not even the best polyglots can know them here in four or five pieces, not counting his.

About the fighting in the game, for all their detailed design and exciting dynamic, we can say briefly: this is a classic example for strategies of this type. The game is simple and clear everything except for one thing - control. Here it is quite unusual, but it can not be called: master, you will control a squad very quickly, as the problem here in a large number of commands, which are summarized in several menus, and you will need some time to remember where some of them. In purely technical terms it is best to use a mouse, not a keyboard. Combat follows the usual for such games pattern: move the whole group (on the map looks like a soldier) in real time, in contact with the enemy move in a step-by-step (here for each fighter group as enemies, is shown separately) and give orders to each employee. System damage-thought-out and generally realistic (for example, from a distance to get into the tank from the grenade launcher is very difficult, a wound in the foot will affect the mobility and the wound in the chest is deadly dangerous). About artificial intelligence can be stated briefly: on the level. Clever tactics from opponents to not wait, but also weaken the attention, and especially to make mistakes with impunity, they will not give. It should also be noted that when the death of a commander, you automatically lose. On the tactical map, and indeed in the game it looks very nice, the graphics for the time are excellent. Especially picturesque look soldiers Czarnego - in ear flaps and t-shirts; apparently, the self-styled Baron to a nuclear attack was the commander of some military units, the personnel of which was hastily raised the alarm and stayed in an incomplete outfit.

What can we say about Twilight: 2000 in the report? This is a great and very interesting game that, along with Laser Squad, in a sense, was the forerunner of the series X-com, Jagged Alliance, and others, became classics of the genre. But it is, alas, not as well known. To see (and thoroughly) with it - at least for the sake of completeness of this subgenre - should be to all interested in tactical strategies.

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Source: Archive.org