Exploring An Alternate Reality With Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath
Everyone who’s taken any instruction in history while in high school knows the details of the Cuban missile crisis, when the United States and the USSR came to a disagreement over the USSR attempting to build a missile base on the island of Cuba. The world stood at the brink of nuclear war before the two superpowers backed down, with the Soviets giving in to the demands of the United States and backing down. However, the strategy game Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath explores an alternate history, one in which nuclear war did happen. What can we expect from such a game? Let’s take a look:
A Unique Story
In Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath, developer G5 software takes a look at what might have happened in the event of a real nuclear war in the 1960s. The game’s story sets up four distinct military coalitions: the USSR, China, the Franco-German alliance, and the Anglo-American alliance. The idea of the game is that because of the nuclear exchange between the United States and the USSR, the world is forced into a war for land and resources that haven’t been sullied thanks to the nuclear weapons launched. The unique concept of Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath should appeal to both those who like military history and strategy, and those who like games that explore alternate sorts of realities.
Mixing Turn-Based Strategy And Real-Time Fighting
Most strategy games tend to fall into one camp or the other, with respect to whether they engage in turn-based or real-time play. However, Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath manages to combine the two to create a unique hybrid of the two in its game. The turn-based play occurs when moving units on the map, with both you and your opponent taking turns while moving on a map, similar to a game of chess.
It’s when two opposing groups come together that the real-time fighting comes into play. The map view switches to a close-up rendering of the military units, whether they’re air units like jets or ground units like tanks, and the pacing of combat picks up, forcing the player to take direct control of the various units. In general, as with most strategy games, each different unit has an opposing unit that it works well against and one that can destroy it easily. In essence, it’s almost like a more complex version of rock-paper-scissors. For those who enjoy strategy games, though, Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath offers a unique twist on other military strategy games that are based on actual history. For this uniqueness, any strategy game buff should add it to their library.
