While I watch my character walking slowly towards the sunrise at the end of Valiant Hearts: The Great War, I take a look back at the road that has brought me here. Considering that for the most part it lead through the battlefields of World War I, the journey was surprisingly rich in variety, and it entailed even some nice memories besides all the horror. Yet it has been exactly those contrasts, these emotional ups and downs, which make these sensations so intense. Its beginning seems almost a bit unreal now, but soon the story will come to an end, and I cannot remember when I had such a feeling of accomplishment at the end of a computer game.
The first strategy game I seriously played and loved was Dune II: Battle for Arrakis. Before that, I was absolutely not interested in this genre. I never found it particularly exciting to virtually push some combat units around on a map. But Dune 2 nevertheless cast its spell on me and has not let go of many of us to this day. A whole bunch of successors poured over the audience in the years that followed. However, these clones soon lost the appeal of the new. Perhaps I would have found these fresh ideas in other – less well-known – representatives of the genre back then. In search of such pearls, I enter the famous hexa fields of The Perfect General II.
A peaceful escort making its way through the woods… the captain of the guards is looking around with suspicion in his eyes. He was right – ambush! Valiantly, he orders a couple of men to face the attackers with him, slowing them down while the rest of the soldiers try to get the royals to safety…
Like storming fortresses, laying ambushes (or avoiding them) is one of the classic asymmetric battle situations. So following up Siege with this game made perfect sense. Going head on against the trend of the time, Ambush virtually celebrates this inherent imbalance introduced in the predecessor by applying it to a slightly more varied background.