| AVALON
HILL |
16K CASS. |
| 1 PLAYER |
|
Legionnaire is the latest offering from Chris Crawford, the man who
designed Eastern Front which was a major step forward in microcomputer
gaming. Legionnaire is better than Eastern Front. Much better. It has
all of the challenge (unless you are a very experienced War-gamer),
better looking graphics, multiple choices of scenario and above all, the
battles happen in real time. Still no game save feature but with all the
options available you can choose a fairly short campaign.
For those not familiar with the style of Eastern Front, the structure
of Legionnaire is of a large map of the terrain on which your battles
will take place. The map scrolls in any direction and is perhaps 12
times larger than your television screen so that battles are taking
place outside your immediate vision. You command Caesar and up to 9
other Legions in battles against barbarian tribes that outnumber you two
to one. By giving your troops orders of movement you can use the terrain
to best advantage to attack, outflank or surround your enemy. Everything
is programmed in -slower movement uphill, fatigue and morale of the
troops, strength, fighting ability, losses in combat - all are taken
care of by the computer and the current state of any unit can be seen by
positioning the cursor over a unit and pressing the fire button. There
is a 20 page manual which gives you historical background, details of
the various legions at your command and details of the barbarian tribes.
You need to get some idea of the capabilities of your units beforehand
because as soon as you press the Start button the barbarians start
advancing. Remember this is in real time and requires some quick
thinking.
Legionnaire is an excellent demonstration of the capabilities of your
Atari, its presentation will make owners of other computers wonder why
they didn't buy the best. Atari themselves did not want this in their
catalogue which shows exactly why they are not making the headway they
should be with the best computer on the market. All credit to Avalon
Hill, although they were not taking much of a gamble, for Legionnaire is
a sure fire success. Only one criticism and that is the lack of credit
to Chris Crawford in the packaging. His name appears only in small type
as Game Designer and Avalon Hill ought to realise that in the Atari
world the name of Chris Crawford is now synonymous with that of Scott
Adams.
_______________________
Software for review kindly supplied by Calisto Computers of
Birmingham and Avalon Hill Games of London.
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