Quick, what's the first brand you would associate with a video game?
Would it be a major media franchise? There are tons of those, name a media franchise and it's had a video game made about it. Would it be a food company? That's been pretty common since the early days of gaming. A consumer goods company? Depending on the game, it could make sense. Maybe a sports league or wrestling promotion? Hell, that may be the most common situation you see, there's a new NFL, NBA, NHL and WWE game every year. At this point, many video game franchises have become brands themselves. Mario, Sonic, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and a host of others are essentially brands of their own at this point. Look, video games are, were and always have been great opportunities for branding, at least when the branding makes sense. But sometimes, you still find games featuring brands that shock you. If you asked me "which brands do you think would best lend themselves to video games?" I would have gone a long way before I got to the History Channel.
In yet another addition to the "yes, this actually exists" club, we will be discussing History Civil War:Secret Missions, a History Channel-branded, Actvision-published first person shooter for the PS2, PS3, XBox and XBox 360. I will reiterate again, this game has the History Channel logo front and center on the box. I'm sure a lot of people were put off by that, and if I weren't a history buff I probably would have been as well. That's a bit of a shame, because the premise alone should have been enough to draw some attention. For all the war games out there, there are very few about the Civil War and most of them out there are strategy games. The only one I had ever played myself was Sid Meier's Gettysburg, an RTS for the PC. I guess I understand, these games likely wouldn't appeal to anyone outside the U.S. and even within the states, someone, somewhere is going to be shooting at digitized versions of their ancestors. The combat of the day also wasn't really conducive to video games, there's not much fun to be had in too groups of people lining up to shoot at each other. It makes sense for an RTS, but not much else, and, to their credit, Activision and the History Channel were trying to preserve some sense of accuracy here. They made good choices in levels here; all of these are based on real life scouting and espionage style missions that occurred during the Civil War. Each level starts with some background on the state of the war at the time, major moves made by each side and the context under which each mission took place. These are extremely well presented, with each segment feeling like they came straight from a History Channel documentary. The gameplay may not be super accurate to a battlefield in 1863, but the game's presentation makes it borderline educational.
Unfortunately, Secret Missions doesn't really do enough gameplay-wise to separate itself. It has quite a few flaws and while I've certainly played worse, there was a lot of stuff that I just couldn't get past. I will start with something that was more of a personal issue, but it was the first thing I noticed. I understand you they were trying to accurately represent the war through the eyes of both sides...but did I really HAVE to play as the Confederates? Maybe it's just that I wasn't expecting it, I really thought I was going to fire this up and have a choice between a Union and Confederate campaign. I know it's a massive personal bias, but I just don't really have the desire to play as the south. I'm a guy from New Jersey whose ancestors fought for the Union, why would I? Maybe I would have played as the rebs just for completion purposes, but it was jarring to have to finish their campaign before even getting to play as the North. Again, that might be a personal bias, especially in a game that is focused on historical accuracy, but it definitely stood out to me.
The biggest issue from a straight up gameplay perspective would have to be the controls. In terms of layout, the controls are fine. You have the standard FPS console layout, with one stick for moving and strafing, the other for looking and turning, the shoulder buttons for aiming and firing and the face buttons for actions. That's a good start, and the responsive aiming and shooting are certainly nice as well. The problem, and it's a nearly game-breaking problem, comes when you try to move. The moving and strafing is stiff, which makes it difficult to avoid enemy attacks. But that pales in comparison to the looking and turning. I have never, ever, in almost 30 years, across 7 generations of gaming experienced such slow and stiff movement in an FPS. Ever. It takes what feels like a full minute to fully turn your character around, and that's when you are pushing the right analog stick as hard as you can in a given direction. It is so bad it would have instantly resulted in a low score, but fortunately you can change the sensitivity in the options. Even with the sensitivity all the way up it's still pretty slow, though it is much more manageable. The slow movement is a big problem, as CWSM plays like Call of Duty where you can only take a hit or two before you die. I got killed a lot because I was simply unable to move fast enough to get away from enemy fire, even if I saw it coming.
That said, there is plenty to like here. For a 6th generation game, it really does a great job creating atmosphere (I played the PS2 version, I'm sure the PS3 and 360 versions are even better in this regard). You really feel like you are sneaking around Civil War battlefields, attempting to sabotage the enemy while avoiding too much contact. I don't know if they were 100 percent accurate to the areas they represent, but they very much look like they are straight out of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. It also helps that while the graphics aren't great, the voice acting is solid and the banter between your characters feels surprisingly organic, even if it's a little bit repetitive. The gunplay is pretty solid when you can find some cover and it's very clear it uses the same engine as the earlier Call of Duty games, which is a good thing. I felt like the hit detection was largely okay, it was a little difficult to hit enemies anywhere other than dead center, but it was at least consistent. In a weird way, it also kind of added to the atmosphere and made the game feel different. I'm not a firearms expert by any means, but I would imagine it's way harder to hit your mark with a rifle from 1863 than one from 1942. The gameplay wasn't anything to write home about, but it was solid, and we may have had a true hidden gem if not for the movement issues.
I will reiterate, I think the most disappointing thing here is that there just aren't many games set in this era. I understand why, but it would still be nice to see. In general, you don't see a lot of games based on wars outside of World War II. Occasionally you will get something based on fictional, non-descript modern war, and there was a brief point in the early 00's where it seemed like everyone was trying to put out a Vietnam game, but WWII is the unquestioned king of war game settings. A lot of that is because it's an easy narrative, fascists bad, allies good, plain and simple. But I feel like developers should branch out a little more. I also think there is a lot of missed opportunity when it comes to providing education in games. Everyone seems to go either too far or not far enough, and I have to give Secret Missions credit there. It did a great job of incorporating actual historical information without beating you over the head with it, which is harder to do than most people realize. There's nothing wrong with video games (or any other media) being complete works of fiction, even if they are based on actual historical events. It would still be nice to see games that fit into those categories do more to help educate players.
At the end of the day, the issues with movement are just too egregious to overlook, as they almost single handedly cripple the game. It's a shame, because there were a lot of good ideas here and even some pretty good execution too. Even the control issues don't render the game completely unplayable, just really difficult. I think it might even be worth looking past for some gamers, especially those who are big time history buffs. I also think developers should take a look back at Secret Missions, there is a lot of good stuff here to mine and I really, really think the era would be a great setting for a modern game. But as to what we have to work with here, I can't score it too high.
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