World War II Armored Recon

In World War II: Armored Recon, you play as the commander of a Stuart Tank. Unlike other war genre games in the HG library, this game has you playing as an NCO rather than an officer, placed in charge of your enlisted crew.

At 900k words, this game is built like a tank, although the prose feels a lot more concise (positive!) than the gigantic Tin Star despite the considerable word count. The game is generally well written, conveying the harsh realities of war and the constant battle against scarce resources. You have a limited amount of fuel and ammo in the game, and will need to carefully keep track of your usage if you don't plan on ending up in a sticky situation. Oftentimes, you'd have to scavenge wrecks for resources, or beg/borrow/steal them from others, further conveying the sense of scarcity when fighting the war.

There is something of a turn based battle system here, similar to the one in Tin Star, where you can pick a movement or combat action each turn, and keep doing so until all enemies are down. It's pretty solid and also ties in well with the stat system and resource levels. That said, the Rule of Cool also seems to apply here, as you'll be fighting and (hopefully) blowing up Panzer IV tanks and the fearsome Tiger tank in open combat, tanks which would have otherwise made short work of a Stuart tank in real life.

Most of the game is centered around combat missions, with breaks and possible misadventures when resting in towns. There is one exploratory search section which breaks up the repetition, but otherwise, the story feels very heavy on the combat aspects.

You'll also have some crew members, with a skill and XP system which allows you to build up each one, along with other supporting characters. They have some fairly interesting conversations to offer, although the game still places more emphasis on the combat rather than social elements. Also, before you ask, there's no romance here.

It's a solid game with a strong mix of resource management and combat, backed by strong writing and a tankload of content. If this genre interests you, I think it's worth trying out.

Don't forget, gasoline is precious.