Liberation Day

The Good
"New" good, complicated turn based strategy games are quite rare. Fans of these games must looking into the past, where you will find such items as Liberation Day. Yes, this is nice Turn Based Strategy. Game has long list of good elements - quite standard, but fine story, nice concepts of missions, gameplay....

First things first - the plot, (SF standard). XXXI century,- mankind began to colonize space. But... "12 August 3012" - people lost contact with the colony "Nu Haven". Of course, the aliens were behind this surprise. Who can take this mission? Army under the command of player!

The entire story takes place in the interconnected missions that rely on winning new areas. They tend to be varied - from simple elimination of the enemy, the destruction of buildings, the neutralization of the minefield .... Between missions, there is the possibility of expansion base and technological development - so you can have a better army.

It also expanded its defense, that is, guard towers, minefields or various Besides the campaign, you can play off individual maps, the typical "skirmish". They are grouped according to the degree of difficulty.

The gameplay is quite simple to understand. At the beginning player buys and distributes map units - these are a few different types of regular infantry, the grenadiers, buggy and commandos, to tanks and various boats.

The fight are great. Battles in LD are slightly similar to Jagged Alliance, though a bit simpler. The player gives orders to individuals - each has specific points of movement, to do take a certain amount of Action Points. After exhausting all possibilities - or not, depending on the player's chosen tactics - following the end of the turn, your opponent's turn. There is also a "break" - if the unit has not used all its movement points, and it will fire the enemy, the unit will automatically try to destroy it.

You can also order support, so that it was with the passing game is steadily rising. The other thing is that sometimes it may not be a choice. It gives you a great tactical possibilities! Very nice.

The Bad
Main minus is pure "technical": game has problem with newer system. LD works good on windows 95/98 but on XP/Vista/7 crashed . Virtual PC is now required - and multiplayer is "too hard" to make this on virtual machine.

Other problem... interface in game is quite OK, but the mini-map "could be better". It is too small and unreadable.

The situation is somewhat worse when it comes to graphics and music. After all, I can accept sound, the sounds of gunfire, explosions are not be the best, but acceptable. Graphic are worse - for example, units are difficult to distinguish at first glance. "Special effects" and rendered movies did not impress. Besides, we have a pretty standard, though slightly outdated isometric view, nicely done areas, and ... low maximum resolution - 1024x768. That's all - here are more important elements than graphics.

I would also like some more maps for skirmishes, or good editor.

The Bottom Line
Nice,a well-developed strategy with solid bases, and much fun. you should look at this game. I just like Liberation Day. A few years ago I saw it for 5 zł (=1,5$) in the store, IMO great price. 7/10. The game is difficult to find - but worth a try.