Commander Headquarters is a real time war strategy game that was likely considered quite a good game in its time. Developed and released by the folks at Ozark Software (Dan and Al Bunten and Alan Watson) in the middle nineties, Commander Headquarters is a good strategy play for the personal computer. It is a more simplistic forerunner of the Civilization series, and actually is very reflective of the traditional strategy classic board game, Risk, which was also turned into a video game for the personal computer.
Commander Headquarters is a real time war strategy game that was likely considered quite a good game in its time. Developed and released by the folks at Ozark Software (Dan and Al Bunten and Alan Watson) in the middle nineties, Commander Headquarters is a good strategy play for the personal computer. It is a more simplistic forerunner of the Civilization series, and actually is very reflective of the traditional strategy classic board game, Risk, which was also turned into a video game for the personal computer.
Commander Headquarters is a light weight, beer and pretzels style of strategy game, but it does offer a fair amount of customization at the game’s initial set up. The most rudimentary choice the user will have
will be selecting the color that will represent his army. The game is a two player game, so the user only has a choice between red and blue, with the opposition receiving the cast off color. The entire world will be color coded to show the possession of various cities and countries. The squares and texts of all the holdings will be in the user’s selected color. The gamer will also have to choose his opponent. There are five different computer players available to fight, each with its own personality which effects passiveness and aggressiveness. The gamer can also play against a human opponent if he so chooses, since Commander Headquarters does support multi player play. The greatest option available to the user is the selection of the time frame for the world conflict. The gamer can choose times from 1918 to 2023 and play in either a historical or futuristic setting. There is a series of ????? used to delineate a random time frame, as well. The setting of the conflict will determine the advancement of the units that the user will command, with later time frames featuring the more technologically advanced armies. The difficulty level is chosen by adding or subtracting from the opponent’s funds at the beginning of play.
The game is completely mouse driven, and the user will be able to position and move armies by navigating the cross hair to the appropriate places on the screen. There is a scrolling marquis along the bottom of the screen that is useful for giving the user hints about what is going on in the world, since it will announce when a city is in danger or an army is on the move. There are different terrains available on the screen which will effect the outcome of battles, based on defensive capabilities or movement bonuses.
Overall, this is a fairly straightforward and simplistic strategy game. The graphics are very rudimentary and nineties-like, but the game play is ok and should provide a decent challenge for most war gamers looking for something a little bit different.
