Hearts of Iron II Doomsday (PC Games, 2006)

Imagine if instead of building her large, doomed capitol ships, Germany had built a fleet of 500 U-boats, to be unleashed upon the Western convoys on September 1st 1939. What would happen if the United States never suffered the humiliation and defeat of Pearl Harbor, and instead had its fleet based elsewhere? In this game, you have the control to determine what happens, as you lead your nation and her armies and air forces on a divisional scale (101st Airborne Division is 1 "piece", which can be used as paratroopers in coordination with a massive sea borne assault, or on a simple raid) and your ships on an individual basis.

You may manage your nations production by allotting a certain amount to 1.) Civilian goods production (which gives you money--an essential on the international political scene, your espionage program, and paying corporations to research new secret weapons for you to produce), 2. ) Military production (the building of tanks, planes, infantry divisions called up from your manpower pool), 3.) War Supplies (bullets, food, etc. Necessary to maintain your Army) 4.) Reinforcements (Keeping your divisions supplied with new troops) and 5.) Upgrades (Replacing those old bi-planes with modern single seat fighter planes). No other game offers such an effective and yet diverse system of managing a player’s productivity.

The dozens of random variables that are neat to look at (but terrible to keep track of in a homemade board game, or spiked Axis and Allies) such as moral, experience, divisional strength, weather, individual commander skill and experience, etc.--are all automatically handled by the computer game. Not to mention, your ships all have individual records kept of the ships they have sunk, so you can examine the KMS Bismarck’s and note the dozens of allied ships she has sunk. It is the dozens and dozens of abilities such as this that make this one of the most flexible, versatile, and manageable games of all time--while maintaining the complexity needed to ensure realism on a scale necessarily to ensure accurate historical revision.

It is without question that this product blows away the competition, because there is no competition. Consistently improving upon itself through free, downloadable patches, this most recent expansion to the Hearts of Iron series tops all the others--for it finally gives us the opportunity to determine perhaps the greatest question of the immediately Post-World War II European scenario: What if WWIII occurred only weeks later? With the opportunity to take over any nation in 1936 and lead them through the end of 1951--or take over a nation in 1945 as WWIII unfolds, this game allows you to lead and command any nation in the world in any fashion which you see fit, at just about any point in both WWII, and then WWIII as well.

For anyone with any knowledge of the Second World War, [or] for anyone with a love and appreciation for history, or for anyone who truly enjoys God-games, this one is unquestionably the best, for it really is--what everyone always dreamed Axis and Allies could be.

You can get an upgrade to version 1.3 on gamespot.com. It has really cool features beyond HOI II. Not for the faint of heart, but once you are past the learning curve, the AI really gives a good fight. Plus, no two games are alike.