Cossacks: European Wars

The Good
Wow, a real manual, more than 200 pages long! You flip through it and the article on the 18th-century Polish cavalry catches your eye: Winged Hussars. Perhaps you have never heard of them, but my grandfather's seven-volume encyclopedia, printed in 1900, had them. With the two tall curved poles stuck in the back of their armour, adorned all the way up with feathers, they looked a splendid cross between a mounted samurai with his twin hatazao fluttering in the wind and a noble Indian warrior crowned in eagle feathers. Those "special feathered wings" says the manual, "protected his back from sabre blows." Splendid. We are going to learn something about warfare of the the 17th and 18th centuries, this is going to be deeply interesting.

Install the game, fire it up, pick "Campaign". The first three campaigns are tutorials. Wonderful.

The first tutorial teaches you the basics. How to select units, give them their marching orders, and so on. It is all very familiar, if you have played WarCraft (who hasn't?). The next two are more of the same, only much less interactive. You just click from one screen on to the next, which gives you advice without you being able to test it by selecting units, giving them orders and whatever. But you have been given sensible advice, like how advantageous it is to have your artillery on high ground. Oh, this is going to be good! So you are keen to start. Start!

The Bad
Pick the first scenario: Bermuda. You are an English captain, sent there to establish a colony.

The screen lights up, showing three frigates and a "ferry" (their word) and about 20 peasants landed on shore. Oh, and this message too:

"You have landed on the north-eastern island. Unfortunately, it is lean in resources and too small to start a colony here. You should replenish your food and water supplies and continue your quest."

Stupid me, believing the message, sent my peasants looking for food and water. All they found was trees to fell, but nowhere to store the timber, for want of a town hall. And you cannot build one, because you need stone for that and you have none and there is none on the island. So you go exploring. North, and you meet pirates who promptly dispatch you to oblivion. South, and meet a Dutch-colonized island whose cannons and towers sink your pitiful fleet. Start again. Start again, and play carefully, as if this were WarCraft. That gets you to wipe out the pirates (and lose two frigates), but still no island worth settling on, and you get warned that there are more pirates around.

No hope with your depleted forces. Reload, and try south instead, towards the Dutch settlement. Soon a message: "There's a Dutch yacht ahead! Hey, they're fleeing! It's no good, they'll be going to fetch help! We should sink them or get out of here!"

What would you do? Follow the advice and sink the yacht? Good luck to you! A yacht (from the Dutch jagd, "hunt") is a very fast ship, much faster than a frigate. You're wasting your time and your cannon balls, while the Dutch cannons on shore are shooting at you and scoring hits. Glub... glub... glub... good bye, captain, see you in Hell. Reload. Forget about chasing the yacht, remember good old WarCraft tactics, and take out the cannons and the towers... er... glub... glub... glub... good bye captain, see you in Hell.

Oh, all right, never mind, let's try something else.

There you are, you and a score of peasants in the middle of nowhere, with some food, timber, gold, and stone in stock. You set your peasants to build a town hall, then to chop wood, then... hey! the amount of food is going down at an alarming rate! You remember how, in the tutorial, you were shown how to send peasants to harvest wheat, but there are no wheat fields about. Uh? What to do? You remember WarCraft, and frantically try to get a peasant to build a farm. But "farm" is not on the menu. In despair, you pick "mill". They build a mill, and, lo and behold and deep relief... wow! wheat starts growing around it! Er... why wasn't that in the tutorial? Bit fundamental if you ask me (or is it hidden away somewhere in the 200-page manual? Well, I looked for it, but I gave up at page 41). Oh anyway, you wipe the sweat off your brow: "Wow, I've made it to square one, let's keep on playing now!" Then a squad of hostile pikemen turns up out of nowhere and claims your settlement. End of game.

You start again, and this time you are careful to build barracks (you need a blacksmith first, though, and that was not in the tutorial either). And... suddenly you remember your aborted Bermudan stint, the "ferry" carrying the peasants. It had oars, oars poking out of its sides. It plain English, it was a galley. When did the British Navy ever send a galley across the Atlantic pretty please?

The pretence at historical accuracy is a sorry farce.

Next you think of the mill. Why in deep hell and high heaven do you need to build a mill, and it was a windmill too, for wheat to grow in the fields?

The logic of the game is a sorry farce too.

And then, you go back to the manual, and, page 119, you read: "Archers. These fighters were armed with bows and arrows [thank you, I'd never have known] ... snip... These savage [what?] warriors terrified enemies through their brutality [what??] and rapidity. However, like all irregular armies [uh???], their lack of discipline made them unreliable in a battle." My blood boiled there. Haven't the miserable sods, responsible for this parody of a game, heard of Agincourt? Who lacked discipline if not the French knights? Who showed splendid discipline and courage if not the English longbowmen?

Indeed, this game is nothing but an abysmal parody of true war games.

The Bottom Line
Stick with WarCraft, at least they've got a sense of humour, they don't take themselves seriously, and they are not gamer-hostile.