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Stephen Keller
Canada
Calgary
Alberta
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Memoir '44 has a long and well revered standing in the board game community. So much so that there's a plethora of products and expansions that could keep the most hard core fans busy for decades. The only potential problem one could see is finding an actual opponent to play against. Well, Memoir '44 Online comes to the rescue <u>and</u> it's free to play. Although Memoir '44 had actually been accessible from Days of Wonder's site for a while now it didn't actually catch my attention until it was recently advertised on Steam on the PC. The beauty of this new set up is that you have the option of creating a Days of Wonder online account or to simply use your existing steam account without any headaches.
For those who don't know, Memoir '44 is war game designed specifically to appeal to a broader and more casual audience. There aren't any mind splitting combat charts or probabilities to calculate here. You just play a card, move your troops or perform an ability, roll for your attacks, then draw new cards. There are a few checks that you need to perform to determine how things move or what you roll but these are minimal and fairly easy to understand. One of the strong suits of play is that your actions are determined by the cards in your hand. If you only have 4 cards in your hand then your choices for the turn are fairly limited. What this means is that turns can go relatively quickly since you won't be burdened by over analysis.
With that out of the way, let's talk about the online implementation. It's gorgeous. Days of Wonder clearly spent a lot of time crafting this incredible product. The introduction and tutorial has amazing art and the representation of the board and pieces are really good. Everything is laid out logically and intuitively. If you know how to use a computer you'll be able to perform any task that you're thinking of doing without needing any reference. Also of note, virtually every game component can be right-clicked which will bring up reference cards to explain what they do.
The core of the experience is much of what Memoir '44 veterans would expect. You're given the ability to play many of the scenarios available in the physical board game and expansions. Beyond the first play you'll have access to the full compliment of scenarios. Thankfully, an AI player may be chosen as your opposition and you can choose what side to play but the real treat is that online play is fully integrated which allows you to easily link up with other gamers and play the scenarios of your choosing.
I'm sure you're wondering what the catch is by now. Free to play is never truly free to play is it? The way this system works is that some of the maps that you play on are truly free - two to be exact. You can play them as many times as you want both solo or online and not be penalized. For the rest, I count about 43 at the moment, there's a cost to play using the in game currency. Gold Ingots is their name and about half the maps cost 2 GI and the other half 3 GI. Gold Ingots are available to purchase from the in game store in the following configurations: $5 for 125 GI, $15 for 400 GI, $30 for 1000 GI. Doing some quick math, if you bought a $5 pack and only played 3 GI scenarios then you'd get 41 plays. On 2 GI maps that's 62 plays. That, ladies and gentlemen, is very economical. Splurge for the 1000 GI's and you're looking at a minimum of 333 plays.
Unfortunately there were a couple minor issues that reared their ugly little heads. Firstly, although I'd played Memoir '44 a couple of years ago I was a little fuzzy on a few of the rules. The tutorial did a decent job of describing most of the game play but glossed over some of the minor details. I kind of wish there was an interactive tutorial that held your hand through a few turns. I eventually figured everything out but that concerns me a little for people who may be completely new to the franchise. On this same note, I wish there was a link to the full rules in game. There were a couple of times where an effect took place that I didn't know about and I had to ask Dr. Google about what just happened.
The other issue is that there's no way to turn off unnecessary effects. I wish there was a way to disable the "battle" effects after dice rolls. It's a couple of seconds after every roll that I could do without. I view this game as a vastly quicker way to play Memoir and I don't get why there aren't options to make is as ridiculously efficient as possible.
Regardless of that, I'm almost of the verge of saying that this is a better experience than playing the actual board game. One of the main problems with the physical copy of Memoir '44 is the scenario setup each time you go to play. Setup time per new scenario could take upwards of 10 minutes. Here I can just click and play. Want to play a completely different scenario next? Click, done.
Free to play or not, this is an incredible product and should represent a beacon for how all digital board game conversions should be done. Memoir '44 Online is intuitive, polished, and makes both solo and online play equally as painless. If you've ever had any interest in Memoir '44 then there's no reason not to try this out. It's free until you don't want it to be.
*originally posted on http://www.reviewswithoutpants.com
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