Reviews

Another wargame from R. T. Smith, this recreates the North Africa campaign from WW2. Like Arnhem, there are several scenarios available to you focussing on key battles or one enormous one that covers the entire campaign. The game does a good job with the famous battles of Gazala and El Alamein. Elsewhere, Battleaxe is a relatively easy introduction, at least if you're on the Axis side.

The game boasts some nice improvements to the interface. Instead of ordering each unit move by move, you can now set an objective for them that they will continue to pursue for several turns. You can also move entire divisions as one, which speeds things up considerably. An additional factor added to the game is that of supply; units without fuel and ammunition cannot move far or fight much and it becomes imperative to keep your own units supplied, whilst you can attempt to cut off your opponent's.

Speaking of opponents, the computer is now capable of playing both sides, although the AI does leave something to be desired. It's not so much that it's weaker than that in Arnhem; it's just that the objectives in Desert Rats are much more complex and the computer has little grasp over overall strategy. As such, it's not too much of a challenge to outwit it, on all but the most skewed of the scenarios.

Desert Rats was one of the first strategy games to offer an enhanced version for the 128K Spectrum. Having only ever played the 48K version back in the eighties, it was one of my greatest joys of the emulation era to finally have a crack at the expanded game which also recreates the early battles where the small British force outmanoeuvres the vastly superior numbers of the Italians.

Overall, it's still a classic and moved the genre along nicely from Arnhem, even if it's not quite so revolutionary. There was still some room for improvement, however, and that would come with the next game in the series; Vulcan.