Wargame that end the Empire Interactive series
This is the third game in a series that dominated the wargaming scene in the early 90s. It achieved this by finding a very well tuned balance between playability and the amount of options that the game included, starting from the map elements and ending with the way the AI was balanced. Thus, War in the Gulf is a perfect example of wargames taking the high road of simulation but never going past a certain threshold of difficulty. The game, as the title suggests tasks itself with recreating the Gulf War and it does so without encumbering the player with too much statistical information or any other superfluous data. Instead, as it should be, the challenge is in knowing how to order your units around, prioritize your resources, which are never high to a point where you can overwhelm the enemy. Thus, sound strategic thinking coupled with a good eye for weaknesses in the strategy of your enemy will again lead to the best of results. One other element that the game does justice to is the way that civilian building destruction has negative economic repercussions for your economy. Thus, War in the Gulf makes it so that your strategic thinking culminates in surgical attacks rather than going full on guns blazing. If you still would like to control mainly tanks, as in this game, but want a more hands on approach, you might want to try Tank Commander, a more action oriented game, but, nevertheless, an interesting one.
