Review Game (Hearts Of Iron 4)

Thursday, June 16, 2016

War is tricky business, and when your conflict stretches to the globe’s far-flung corners, it gets that much tougher. That’s what Hearts of Iron IV is all about. You command one of the world’s many countries (you can play as just about any nation that existed during World War II), and your goal in this grand strategy game is to survive the coming storm . Different players will have different preferences--you can be as dove or hawkish as you like--and Hearts of Iron will support you. It’s easy to muck with the flow of history, and in doing so unearth brain-bending strategic challenges that allow you to tell your own story of an alternate version of World War II.

I started as the United States in 1936, and I decided that I wanted to doggedly pursue nuclear weapons. I set my sights on having a stable of city-busting bombs ready to go by 1942--three years before their real-world deployment. With careful choices--namely an eye for research, and carefully hiring top scientists like Robert Oppenheimer (a noted historical nuclear physicist), I pulled it off. But, in so doing, Italy went largely unopposed in its campaign in Africa. I hadn’t given much thought to the development of the world’s stage or the early theatres of war and as a result, some things got a little out of hand.

ith Italy pulling resources from Africa, it managed to shore up the largest army in the world, which the emerging Mediterranean superpower used to bolster Hitler’s advance into France and Russia. France collapsed under the pressure, but the USSR made some stunning choices. Joseph Stalin started a smattering of other wars across the globe, making and breaking alliances to keep global pressure up on Germany. In so doing, they managed to reverse the results of the Spanish Civil War, push heavily into the Pacific and ultimately got into a tussle with the UK and myself.

That’s the power of Hearts of Iron IV. This isn’t just an alternative perspective on history-- it gives you the agency and tools to influence one of the world's most turbulent eras in any way you’d like. Each move, every military press, has ripple effects that cascade outward for years. Hold a garrison in one place, and you could cause the world to tremble down the line. This is the butterfly effect made manifest, but there’s a catch: you’re not the only one making choices. The AI responds based on your threat, and who they’re working with.

In the real world, the Alliance between Western and Eastern Europe against Hitler was the most tenuous of friendships, as evidenced by the Cold War just a bit later. And that comes down to a fundamental difference in ideology--England and its capitalist friends fundamentally disagreed with the Soviets on everything except that Hitler had to be stopped. So if Germany doesn’t present the same existential danger, why shack up with the Allies at all?

As was the case in the actual mid-20th century, Hearts of Iron IV pulls the perspective on war all the way out. There are no individuals here, only numbers. The stories of individual soldiers--with rare exceptions for skilled combatants--get lost in the spreadsheets. The challenge of shifting millions of men and their gearacross the world to battle ideas and their followers is all that matters. Germany, England, Ethiopia, and everyone else cease to be collections of people. They are goals, they are potential boons, and they are obstacles.