Hearts of Iron

After this minor problem, the game really opens up. You can form divisions, fighter squadrons and fleets, research your own way to victory through dominating on the land, air, sea or even with nuclear weapons. As well as this, you can invade almost any country in the world, then annex it and add its resources to your own. All the time this is happening, the basic events that lead to WW2 occur as well. So you may wish to be Argentina and conquer South America, whilst the worlds eyes are looking towards Europe and not at you. Or be Russia and conquer Europe before Germany even starts to look at Poland.
As well as this there are hundreds of leaders and ministers for each country. Everyone has there own skill strength, abilities and loyalty to you. As you win battles with them in charge of your armies, their skill rises and allows them to command more divisions. How and when you use your forces is upto you, whether you drop Paratroopers behind lines, or break through defences with Armoured Divisions. Engage ships up close with Cruiser, or send waves of torpedo planes from your carriers to decimate his Battleships.
The game itself take place between 1936 and 1948, and although this seems slightly short now, once you have played your first game it will seem like an age. This factor almost makes you care about your country and army, unlike games like C&C where you build and lose your units almost instantly. The game is especially rewarding when using successful tactics on your enemies armies, including when you surround them.

The AI has been constructed reasonably well for all the difficulty levels (of which you can choose difficulty, and the aggressiveness of the AI), although on the highest aggressive level the enemy countries tend to throw away their armies easily. However, some preset AI events are annoying, for example, when playing Germany, even if you succumb to every single Allied request and play them as a 'nice' country, France, Britain and Russia will still declare war on you.

The sheer size of HOI is what makes it so fun and interesting to play, and although it seems big at first, it does not take long to master the basics. You do not need an infinite knowledge of WW2 to play this game, but it certainly does help. However you must be dedicated to slogging it out with an enemy whose tactics can be clever and bold at the same time. As well as this, you must keep your economy going, bring in and protect your supplies and research new equipment for your armed forces.

If your not intending to download the patches for this game, its not really worth it, and I'd probably only give it 2 stars. However, once you've installed the developers patches and addons, the game really opens up and really allows you to see how history might have turned out if Russia joined the allies before Germany invaded Poland, or the US joined the war early. Or even in Japan landed troops in Australia, or managed to defeat the US Navy. It is this that really makes HOI entertaining.

The game is stable, and plays well on my 433mhz celeron. Graphics are Ok for the type of game, and you can control the speed to be able to cope with events as they occur. The interface is well up to the job too, the pause button being the only prob (it's too small!) It can be difficult to watch over far-flung colonies too, till you get the hang of slick use of the zoom buttons.

Be warned, though, this is not a frantic shoot 'em up. If you're into strategic games which require you to immerse yourself in the game and keep your eyes on your world assets, and the activities of your neighbours, then you'll like this.