Download D-Day - The Beginning of the End

D-Day: The Beginning of the End, is a time-based war game in which the player has an opportunity to emerge victorious as either the Allied or Axis forces. In main, already generated, campaigns that begin in mid 1944s, the game covers the period of time from the Normandy invasion to the fall of Berlin. You choose which army you want to control and make all the decisions in accordance with preset victory conditions, such as capturing cities or winning battles.

There are two main modes of play that complement each other and lead to an overall realistic look at the beginning of the end of WWII. The first mode is a turn-based, campaign-level game where your army is maneuvered across Western Europe to gain positional strength. When battles occur the game switches to a Micro Miniatures mode, which focuses on a specific battle.

This is a complex, innovative and, to my mind either underestimated game or dedicated to a certain type of gamers like myself who like to make long-term strategies and have full control on the battlefield they are playing. I claim it because not every player enjoys lengthy gameplays when all you do are doing is moving your numerous units around (in both modes). Patience and time consumption is the price for completing this game, however, as I said before, there are such gamers that can commit themselves to this lengthy task and have fun. Nevertheless, to a product of SSI of 1994‘s it‘s conception is a truly deep one.

As for graphics in this game, well, it is no wonder and does not shine in any aspect; however, it shows everything you want to see in quite a pleasant manner. I mean, when you play this game, you SEE that you are playing a military game.

The sound. I never heard it. Game does have sound files and you can play them independently on winamp if you wish but I could not make the music work during gameplay. If you are interested there are sounds like bursts, explosions, truck engine hum and similar, but quite a few overall. I played this game on my 15 year old pc and a 5 year old pc. The latter would not play anything of course, but what IS a bit annoying is the fact that the old pc could not play either. So, in conclusion, one can claim that this game doesn‘t have any sound or music.

The main feature of this game is possibility to alter almost anything in the game. This means two things. First, when you actually begin a game – all starting positions are generated in any way – you can play around with victory conditions, leader personalities, various supply and AI options and several more items. What's even better, you can change these settings at any moment during gameplay! Second, before starting a game you can either choose a pre generated scenario or play with starting armies a bit. You can move divisions of both sides to any square of a map, add or remove infinitive number of divisions. You can simply play god in the whole theater of war. Not to mention the possibility to choose any date to start from. This allows player with enough patience and time to create a battlefield of his/her dreams. However there are restrictions like max division count to any side (about 350), current weaponries and troop properties but described above possibilities give one a tremendous tool to manipulate with. If you alter any starting map you are not restricted to use altering methods of the first choice (starting a pre generated situation).

As I stated above, anyone who would try this game and would like to play it to the end has to know that he or she will need patience and time investment. But if you don't mind playing the single player mode and have time to manipulate, click around and plan, well, you should try it out.