The Cold War Era Reviews

Don't waste your money. very confusing mechanics.

Pure garbage literally has like 3 buttons

If you want to win as the USA - play as the USSR, if you want to win as the USSR - play as the USA.

Pretty basic gameplay, but its a captivating time sink none the less. Definitely worth a fiver. Read the manual before playing, it's simple to pick up if you've done that.

I played this game at first and was unimpressed by the frantic clickfest and stress inducing slog that the game was. But after reading the manual carefully, coming up with a few strategies and going into the game with those in mind, the game was incredibly enjoyable. The game is essentially about managing your attention, your finances and carefully deciding how much you are willing to invest to defend a country from communist encroachment or send your freedom fighters to overthrow a forgeign government. You will feel the cost, those troops you send cost money, money that could be used to influence others, to defend more important allies or simply to sit in your countrys GDP to grow your economy better for future conflicts/influence. If you like games where you have to carefully manage your scarce resources in a environment of the cold war superpowers, this is a good little gem. If you hate the idea of frantically looking around for 'reds under the beds' in various hotspots around the globe, or hate the idea of having to bite your lip trying desperately to decide between economic growth, military incursions and gaining influence through space achievements, this probably isnt for you. I would say, look past the dated GUI, accept the fact you will be forced to direct your attention to important places and not be everywhere all at once, and give this game a go. Behind its aging exterior, lies a pretty good game of difficult decisions and crisis management. Some have criticised the game as too hard on the easiest difficulty and of 'having to be everywhere'. To those people I would say, you havent learned to manage your attention, you cant be everywhere and the ai isnt either. You have to pick and choose carefully where to start a conflict, where to join one and how vigorously to defend an ally. If you think carefully and dont overextend yourself, the easy difficulty is pretty easy. The medium difficulty is a step up and will provide a greater challenge. Some have said this is a 'click fest' and I agree. There is soo much to do soo much of the time and the most efficient way to play the game would be to hire a machine to run from country to country at light speed clicking buttons, but thats not a negative in my view. It is aggrivating, rightly so, but it is a contraining factor against you, you have to overcome your limited attention and focus on specific areas of interest and carefully marshal your GDP, your influence and your forces. Give it a try, its a cheap enough game. The sequel I have tried briefly and many parts have been improved upon; its less of a 'clickfest' the military warfare model is more deep and the game is generally more polished. But its £15 for all and its dlc, this is under £5 if I remember correctly and i would argue both are worth their pricing point.

If you have an itch for a Cold War themed game, this might scratch the surface. And by that I mean it's not a complex, grand-scale type of game, but a rather simple, yet fun and engaging little battle of world dominance which can be played in a single session. In fact it doesn't even have a save feature, so if you want to go all the way make sure you have an hour or two to spare. It plays sort of like a board game, you start with an equal score in January 1950 as either side (US or USSR) and you have to manage and juggle your resources and instruments (like spies) to influence and obtain new countries which add to your score. The game ends in 2000 when the side with the higher score wins. It's not going to win any awards, but I find it enjoyable with some ambient music in the background (you can turn off the in-game soundtrack). Also, you can fortunately take actions while the game is paused, as sometimes things can get a little hectic and the game doesn't quite make it easy to follow all the events. You do get a news-feed and a country flag popping-up on the top-right of the screen when the AI does things in certain regions, but I found that this can be delayed and not very clear, although after a couple of sessions you'll probably get the hang of it. An event timeline would've been more handy here, but all in all for an indie title like this, it does the job well enough. I can see why this won't appeal to anyone, it's a niche game, but if you have an affinity for these types of games you could give it a try. It's fair priced and offers enough replayability to make it worth it. Bonus points for the Steam Achievements, nice touch there! :)

I LOVE Cold War and both World War stuff... But this... THIS IS A PIECE OF GARBAGE. Poorly developed, poor gameplay too! It literally only focuses on the Soviet Union and United States, THAT'S IT... What ever you do DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. You will only waste precious time of your life. 2/10 Will NEVER play again. It was so bad, I refunded it...

This game is interesting. It is extreamly simple but has a lot going on under the hood. There is no tutorial but one would be unnecessary. click on a country, add US/Soviet support, military or spies and then move on. Its simplicity is however, its downfall. There is no real complextiy, but for a simple game about the cold war, you could do a lot worse

Update: I wish I could give this game a neutral review for now. Gameplay is minimal but could be interesting once understood. Shame there is not tutorial. Information flows along fairly fast so tracking it all is a bit of a head ache. Don't forget to add the DLC so you can see the video feed, I missed it and had to ask. Will update this review as needed.

I'm a Cold War junkie so I gave it a try but to be honest, this game is pretty boring, there really isn't much here. It consists basically of juggling three different buttons over a range of countries that you're currently trying to capture to get your influence up, recuit more military, and reduce their stability. You can pretty much see from the screenshots all that you have to do is summed up by those 'add' buttons in the lower hud. There are no historical events, no diplomacy, no nuclear weapons at all, and the space race consists entirely of paying to advance along a set of images that give you extra global influence. Oh, and there's no save and load function either so you have to finish your game in one go - it lasts a bit over an hour. Another thing that's missing is any progression of military technology, which they aim to add in a future (paid I assume) expansion, but as for what they're selling now it's pretty stripped down. It's kind of like a board game, but not a very good one. If you want to play a game like this, you'd be much better off with Twilight Struggle, plus you can play it with a friend. I seriously doubt I'll ever play this game again.