Supreme Ruler: Cold War war game

Supreme Ruler: Cold War (2011)

Categories: grand strategy

Supreme Ruler: Cold War is another title from the grand strategy series, this time we can take control over countries that are on the verge of longest war in 20th century - the Cold War. We start in year 1949 when the European countries were already divided into two blocks - NATO allied with United States in the west and the communist countries under Soviet dictatorship in the east. At this point both sides were close in technological level, so to find your political place in the world was not that easy choice, but don’t worry - in Supreme Ruler: Cold War you don’t have to make any choices - your country is already assigned to one of the sides and if it isn’t you most probably won’t be able to change it.

We have the same set of options that were available in other titles, which means tools to control diplomacy, economy, technology and military side of your country. Unfortunately even at this level creators made many mistakes - f.e. Denmark has no access to their gas fields in North Sea, which makes the country more vulnerable than in real life. Creators obviously did not read enough history books to know that European communist countries were not exactly independent states, they all had Soviet army bases all around them, which means that they were under constant scrutiny from Moscow and could not make many decisions that should on their own. To make things even worse the game is somewhere between being history lesson and science fiction - in late 1950s most of the countries already have very advanced technology (f.e. stealth or DNA map), so it is hard to take Supreme Ruler: Cold War seriously.

This time Supreme Ruler creators took a shot at Cold War, but unfortunately they made all the mistakes that were present in previous titles, so the result is far from being perfect. The interface is hard to use on modern monitors since 90% of the screen is used by map (that is useless 90% of the time), while all the vital menus are small icons in the corners. In general it is very simple game that does not allow any other strategy than all-out-attack and in practice you have to choose one of the bigger countries to enjoy it - small countries are available, but pointless (f.e. you can gain the technology to build helicopters or missiles, but you won’t be able to actually make them if your country did not do it in real life).

Overall, just like other Supreme Ruler games, nice idea, but through useless interface and huge mistakes made in development it is hard to take the game seriously.

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