"I have to give respet where respect is due."

You never know what is in store until you decide you actually want to endeavor into something new. That being said, The Perfect General is the kind of game that I do not like. Turn Based strategy games have never been my forte. I find them dull, drawn out, graphically inferior, and lacking any type of action. That being said, I could not put this game down. Perhaps it is the cheesy full motion videos with acting so bad that it is comical, or perhaps it is because this is a decent game. It may be because this game kicked my butt so much that I developed a vendetta, swore revenge and vowed to master it. Maybe it is because it seems no one in the world has even heard of this game, given what can be found on the internet. Whatever the reason, I enjoy this game, and enjoy it a lot.

For the most part, the perfect general is your average, run of the mill turn based strategy. You select your units based on the amount of money available to you and you fight a war with some general who has a stick lodged up his rectum. What could possibly be fun about this? It is the little, idiosyncratic differences that make this game good.

If you have played the original PC or Amiga version of this game, then you have a limited knowledge of what you are in for. What makes this game great is you have to play both sides of the war. You play as both the invader and defender. Skills you learn when invading help you when you jump ship to defend but you do not have the same units available to you. While the other army comes at you with forty seven tanks, you get three bazooka men and a fort. The ultimate strategy comes in learning how to use your resources to the fullest and destroy the other army with beyond inferior supplies.

All the maps have hexagonal spaces ranging from fourteen wide to sixty wide. Strewn across these maps are cities that grant points based on size. By occupying these cities, you gain points at the end of each turn. If both armies exist at the end of the game, these points, called Victory Points, determine the winner. If you manage to win by more than fifty points, you gain extra money to use on the next map. Essentially, doing well on the very first map allows for easier times on later maps.

This game has the standard types of units you would see in a strategy game. Infantry men are on the bottom of the list with tanks, heavy artillery and armored cars polluting the list as well. While none of the units may be original in the sense that every strategy game has some form of these, the way they are used is certainly an oddity. Units like the armored car can travel several hundred meters in a single turn while pedicle units can only move one space at a time. Units can be carried by larger units, making movement across huge maps slightly easier.

Trees, mountains and forests limit sight in what is the one thing people find missing from other games in this genre. The addition of mountain tops and forests add to the strategic features of the game. Trying to shoot at a land mine in the middle of your own troops actually causes casualties for your men.

In what is a republican's nightmare, no single unit costs more than twenty dollars. Being able to build an army of one hundred men for that exact amount in currency would cause a certain vice president to have yet another heart attack in the real world. Unlucky for us, this is a fictional game world where anything can cost whatever the designers' dreams determine. Smaller dollar amounts allow for easier planning of how many units to build. Math certainly isn't everyone's strong suit and the game caters well to those types of people in this aspect.

When moving, obstacles that one would normally think could slow you down actually do. It costs more movement points to travel across debris fields than it does the open road. All around, at least for the game play aspect, this game is quite rational. Never once will the player be left to wonder why exactly some obscure rule of physics was broken.

However, for all it's praise, there certainly are downfalls as well. Even at point blank range, when you are told there is a ninety percent accuracy of a direct hit, misses occur more often than not. Even the most dimwitted of us can realize that when four out of ten attacks hit, ninety percent has not been achieved. While smaller percentages do wield an actual smaller percent of accuracy, the numbers provided quickly prove to be false. While this statistical anomaly is frustrating, it can be over looked.

What cannot be overlooked is the terrible advice you get from the game. At the beginning of each campaign map, you are told where the enemy has been spotted and what the so called “best” strategy is to do. After about three hours of constant failure, one realizes that the game is full of crap. Because the advice isn't sound and because the player does not know what will happen in future turns, it takes at least two, if not three tries to master a map. When each map takes an hour to complete, most players will be turned off quickly. However, those who thrive on that kind of defeat, those who stick with it just to one-up it, will be sucked in and enjoy the game.

Coupled with the mesmerizing game play, and new to the 3DO version, are some full motion video sequences that one cannot help but laugh at. You have to hope that these were not supposed to be serious. In what is assuredly the designers dressing up like generals to play house like school children, is what is found in these videos. In what are futile attempts to be funny, the videos are, to put it bluntly, terrible. Ordering two thousand pizzas for your troops to be delivered to the secret battle location is not funny. Terrible accents and complaints that the army made your country pay for the pizzas is also not funny. A twenty something guy who looks like he has not quite completed puberty yet is slightly funny. Bad acting is the only cause of laughter here.

Terrible video quality and unfulfilled promises by the back of the box leave something to be desired. When one reads ‘a killer weather chick - if you make it that far' you cannot help but assume this female is good looking. Anyone who owns a 3DO would certainly be hoping so at any rate. However, this weather girl looks what anyone would imagine his or her aesthetically unappealing sister to be at thirty five years of age. All this despite the fact that she appears on the very first map. The game may be difficult, but if the designers thought no one would make it to her, they did not know what game they were working on. Again, only good because they are so awful.

Music within the game proper is of average quality. The music is quite and out of the way -- just like video game music is meant to be. It repeats every so often, but the player will not notice over the voice of himself or herself swearing at the game. Why would you swear at the game and call it good? Well, it just sucks you in and will not let you leave.

An aspect that is a redeeming quality is the fact that within each turn, there are phases. While the turns seem to take an eternity, the phases go rather fast, which in turn, speed up the turns (no pun intended). Artillery targets and fire start each turn off which leads into direct fire by tanks and infantry men before rearranging of the units which leads into another round of direct fire, depending on if anything new is in range which leads to the scoring of the turn. The player will find that the phases, for the most part, speed the game up while not actually doing anything to adjust the space-time continuum.

Controls are simple and will be the first thing one masters. Only a, b, c, p, and the directional pad are used. A selects the units while c jumps to the next one in line. B brings up the in game menu and p allows you to skip the hilariously bad videos. The most frustrating part of the controls, and perhaps the only downfall, is the fact that there is no way to retract a selection once you make it. One can say it adds to the strategic essence of the game, but most will find it more frustrating than enthralling. Menu navigation requires a simple press of the a button for selection and b button for backing out.

On the map, the visuals are not the best thing in the world. While there is nothing to make one question what it is he or she may be looking at, there is also nothing to relish as a graphically great. You can set the game to hide units that are not visible to yours or allow the game to show you their placement, just shaded so you know what is and what is not attackable. This option, however, is not available in a two player match up. Perhaps it is a good thing to be able to see all your units, but it would certainly make for an even more difficult game if you could not.

A nice little treat for first time players is the introduction video. While it has nothing to do with the actual game, there is a full screen, animated video that looks pretty decent. While it is plagued with resolution problems, it is a testament to what the 3DO was graphically capable of. However, after a couple of views, it becomes boring and you will quickly find your self reaching for that p button to skip past it. Fortunately, should you ever get bored by the actual game, there is a rather entertaining mini-game you can play with up to eight people.

In today's world of first person war simulations, games like this are all but lost. Fantasy elements cloud the few turn based strategy games that are available on current systems. In what is a great kick-back to the past, Perfect General reminds us of what war games used to be. Top down views of crudely drawn tanks that look smaller than the people surrounding them. A world where these gigantic men (and possibly women) may not actually exist, but for a seasoned veteran of video games like myself, it is a great escape from today's harsh reality. While real wars are being fought and innocent lives taken every day, games like this can help you to forget about all the problems in the world and just have some good, old, fun.

Games like this on systems like this are not a dying breed. They have long been six feet under. In the age of the 16 bit wars, Mario, Sonic, Final Fantasy, and Doom, this system was lost. High prices and poor marketing made it the black sheep of its generation. Games like The Perfect General amongst others went by unnoticed. In what certainly is a far cry from the truth, it feels as though this game has gone by for over a decade, undiscovered and never played by a single being. However, due to the relative obscurity of systems like the 3DO, most people can go back to a part of the past they never had a chance to visit. For the rest of us, we cling on to old habits. And for a select few of us, we find refuge in game types we once held in utter disdain. Despite the oddity that this game and system are, not to mention terrible acting skills and harsh difficulty settings, this is certainly a game everyone should at least try once. Fans of the genre as well as newbies will find something akin. For the rest of you, give this game a shot. After all, you never know for sure how you feel about something until you try it for your self.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/24/07, Updated 08/31/07

Game Release: Perfect General (US, 1996)