Thus far, the board games translated to the CD-i platform have been well below the machine's capabilities. ''Connect Four'' is just tic-tac-toe with gravity, and Jon Freeman (in his excellent but out-of-print ''Playboy's Winner's Guide to Board Games'') says ''Battleship'' is ''a version of the popular back-seat pencil-and-paper game... for those who are too lazy to draw their own grids.''
Axis & Allies, on the other hand, is a sprawling 5-player game with dozens of playing pieces, a big rule-book, and intricate game play. It's a far more appropriate candidate for CD-i conversion, and the resulting disc is largely a winner.
I hadn't played Axis & allies before this, so for the uninitiated, it's a hybrid of world-conquest games (Risk, Diplomacy) with more tactical wargames.
In A&A, each player takes one of the five major powers in 1942 -- Germany, Japan, England, the USSR, and the USA. The countries fight as two teams, with their goal being the capture of two of the other team's capitals. The Axis -- Germany and Japan -- can also win an ''economic victory'' by conquering enough territory, even without making it to the enemy capitals.
By allowing the CD-i to take any or all of the countries, there are more options for playing with fewer than 5 players. A single player can take one of the sides, or participate as one of the countries in a larger campaign. Two players can compete by each taking a team, or can collaborate against a computer team.
For a single player, I suggest taking one side of the war, either the axis or the allies. I imagine most will pick the allies, if for no other reason than to reduce the amount of time the CD-i plays itself. Beginning players might want to play just one country in their first game, while they adjust to the confusing controls and watch how the computer plays as his or her allies. Two players can take sides and face off, or pair up and play a unified computer team. With three or more, players will probab ly take individual countries, letting the CD-i pick up any remaining countries.
New players would probably do well to try the allied countries -- bad moves early on won't kill the U.S. (especially if the California Current can be secured), nor the U.K. A new player who takes Russia can roll into Germany in a half-dozen turns if he avoids losing Karelia right off the bat -- losing it gives Germany a base adjacent to Moscow, and a landing site for Japanese bombers. Since a successful land campaign is much easier to mount than one by sea, beginners should avoid playing Japan (and, arg uably, the U.S.) until they learn to use transports, carriers, subs, and planes in concert.
The world is divided up into ''areas'', much like in Risk or Diplomacy, and as in those games, capturing some areas provides revenue to generate more forces.
Players move one at a time in a pre-determined order, and each move consists of 7 steps, from purchasing new forces, to movement, to combat, to placement of the forces bought at the beginning of the turn. Experienced players will note some changes in the ''movement'' phase of the turn, which now consists of ''normal'' movement before the combat phase, and ''non-combat'' movement afterwards (in which planes return to base and non-combatants can move if they haven't already).
When purchasing new forces, players can invest some of their resources (''Industrial Production Certificates,'' or IPCs) in researching ''Superweapons'', which if successful allows their pieces to move further, fight better, or makes units cheaper to buy. A ''specialized R&D'' option adjusts this to what each country SHOULD be trying to research -- Russia needs cheaper units, the US needs super subs and jet power -- but leaving the option off and going for non-traditional strategies can reap great rewards. In one recent game, I found the Germans can be humbled with rocket attacks from London, which denies them the funds they need to fight Russia and simultaneously maintain western Europe.
Moving is a fairly simple matter -- each type of piece can move a certain number of areas per turn. Generally, only fighters and bombers can move several spaces at a time, and they must return to a friendly base at the end of their turn. Pieces that don't move before the combat phase (see below) will be able to move afterwards.
Combat occurs in A&A when opposing forces are in the same area. Each type of unit has a predetermined liklihood of hitting an opponent during an attack, and during a defense. Infantry are the worst shots, battleships the best. An important consideration in combat is that you attack _everything_ in the area, and if you score a hit, your opponent decides which pieces get destroyed. As a practical upshot, it is vital to purchase and deploy infantry, if only to sacrifice them and thereby protect better units. The same applies to the use of subs in sea battles, which have the advantages of being the cheapest sea units, but decent combatants nonetheless.
Players will also want to keep the CD booklet handy to consult the quick guide on the last two pages, which lists such info as the combat statistics of each unit. An ignorant player will leave tanks to defend important territories and send expendable infantry into enemy territory, when the statistics (Infantry: 16% chance of hitting on attack, 33% defending; Tank: 50% attacking, 33% defending) call for precisely the opposite strategy. Truly ignorant players (and the computer!) will leave a bomber (defense: 16%) adjacent to two enemy infantry, who will almost certainly destroy the expensive unit!
Of course, to get this information in detail, load the CD-i and view the initial introduction to the game, then click ''Explain Game'' for a complete description of the rules. The multimedia presentation of the game is clear, well-organized (it takes you through each turn's ''Action Sequence'' step-by-step), and interesting. If you're still confused, the CD-i offers a ''Rule Index'' to take you back to any topic you may have missed.
The CD-i version does a good job of accelerating what I would think is a slow-moving game, with players rolling dice, consulting the rule-book over things like ''blitzing'', etc. The screen is divided into four windows, the largest being a regional map. The regions generally correspond to areas of interest -- western Europe, the south Pacific, etc., but players must remember what connects where when fielding troops in the middle east, the Atlantic, etc. A map of the entire world is available, but it's ha rd to make out small areas in this view. Similarly, there are some very small areas in the regional map (most notably the various Pacific islands) which players should be careful not to overlook, although some have a large square icon off to their side, making them easier to identify and click.
Directly under the map window is a small window that runs continuous video from old WWII film reels. It has no real bearing on the game. Every now and then the 1-second delay while getting new video gets in your way, but it does add color to the game.
Two other windows will see a lot of business in the game. At the upper right is a display of how many of each kind of piece is in the selected area, as well as its IPC value, i.e. how much it contributes to the power that controls it.
The ''icon window'' at bottom right is where you select select what troops you're moving, who gets lost in battle, etc. It also display the computer's progress when the CD-i has its turn.
It's in this ''icon window'' where I have problems with the game's design. The interface is a little clumsy. You use button 2 to switch between the map and icon windows... except when you use it to cancel an action. You use the touchpad to move around icons and the map... except when you use it to commit more or fewer troops to a move. You use button 1 to select areas... except when you use it to DE-activate the R&D option.
It would have been better to use the touchpad exclusively for moving around the four windows, button one exclusively for selecting items and performing actions, and button two exclusively for cancelling actions. This require a little more hand movement, but would be vastly easier to use. An example of such a clean interface is found in Tone Engel's freeware ''Risk'' for the Macintosh.
When you place units in Risk, a toolbox appears at bottom left -- you select the number of armies you want to place and then click a map area. In Axis & Allies, you select an area, jump to the icon window, select an icon for the unit type, click it, then press the touchpad up for the number of units you want to select (this must be fun with a mouse or roller- controller!), and press button one again when done. Wouldn't it be easier if the CD-i filled the icon window with the units available (either those that are in the area, or those that you bought at the beginning of the turn and are now placing) and have you click them one-by-one to select, and then select the area to place them in?
Another problem -- when a sea area is selected in the map window, the upper right display shows the number and type of ships in the area. That's fine, except when you're transporting troops. The only ways to see how many land units (1 or 2 infantry, an AA gun, or a tank) are on a transport is to try moving them to an adjacent land area, or to use the magnifying glass. Attackers, who might want to sink transports and their onboard units, have no way of knowing what's onboard unless they get in the habit of examining all sea areas with the magnifying glass.
The interface feels like it was designed by the people who made Windows -- they assume that as long as you're pointing and clicking, it's ''easy to use.'' Hardly. A well-designed interface is consistent -- one where you don't have to think twice about what the controls do in different modes.
There is another interface available, which I found during what I thought was a crash... and I'm still not sure it wasn't. During movement phases, you can see and move individual units in the magnifying-glass mode. Click on the starting area, then the ending area, then try to get the cursor on the icon for the units you'd like to move, click and arrow up to commit units, and click the ''commit'' button. This mode is torturously slow if you're moving long distances, but may be good for moving convoyed units, since you can clearly see which sea areas have land units aboard transports. Of course the first time I found this, button two never got me back to the normal four-window mode, so use with caution!
Also, the CD-i designers accidentally left a cheat in the game with their interface: at the beginning of the purchase phase, click R&D and commit 5 IPCs. If you don't discover anything, click ''done'' as if to signal the end of your turn, then click ''REDO'' to try again. You can keep this up until you discover something good. Oops!
The other game's major failing is its save-game feature. For some reason, a saved game takes 6,500 bytes, which amounts to 75% of the space on my CDI-450 player. The saved game doesn't seem to maintain old moves or AI information for the computer strategy (it's just as big if you have no computer players), so why saving the locations of a few hundred pieces should take that much space (30-50 bytes per piece?) is a mystery.
[Unless, of course, the game's data is saved as an array of records, one for each area, and each record has a byte representing the number of units of each type for each country. i.e., a byte for UK infantry, a byte for US infantry, etc. It works out to about 6,000 bytes if you do it this way -- which you shouldn't becausevery few areas are occupied by more than one player, if occupied at all,at any point in the game.]
As a result, pretty much every game will begin with a warning that there isn't enough room in the player to save the game, although the game is often save-able if you're using less than 30% of your memory to begin with.
It's a pity, because A&A, at 20-30 minutes per turn, or 3 - 5 hours per game, is the kind of complex game that you'd probably want to save and come back to. But not at the cost of all your player's memory, or the risk you won't be able to save a game after playing for two hours!
So, like any war-game, A&A on the CD-i requires some patience and adjustment on the part of the player. For serious gamers, the payoff is probably worth it. For those with only a passing interest in wargaming, A&A's clumsy controls and obnoxious demand for memory probably won't make you want to come back for more.
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[Thanks, Chris Adamson]