10st Airborne in Normandy is a hidden gem from 1998 that I fell in love with the first time I played it.
[h1] Technical Issues [/h1]
To counter the couple of negative reviews, mainly that the game didn't run properly. Fair, this is a game from 1998, that is on a one of a kind, totally unique code. I've played abandonware copies of this game where the game had many technical issues ranging from weird psychedelic colours, the FMV's not playing, to audio not existing. For this release, on my fairly powerful, couple of years old computer, everything runs basically perfect for a game of this age. All the colours are right, all the audio is playing, and all the FMV's work. It's the best version of the game I've played.
[h1] Gameplay [/h1]
So what is 101st Airborne in Normandy? The premise of the game is you are controlling a "Stick" of paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division, the famed Screaming Eagles, where you will lead them for the first three days of the Invasion of Normandy on 06 June 1944.
The first thing you do is select a mission. These will range from blowing up bridges or artillery pieces, to taking out German headquarters, to ambushing convoys and the like. In addition to this, there are a wide variety of "Training scenarios" you can do to practice one of the specific tasks or a variety of other tactical scenarios to build your skills.
After this, you'll go to the officer's and enlisted barracks and select the 18 men that will comprise your "Stick". Each man has different skill levels, and some have specific weapon skills, like the ability to use belt-fed machine guns, bazookas or explosives. Each man has a nice little bio and some very...small dev team from 1998 trying to voice like 30 different people on a shoestring budget voice acting. I think it's charming, but don't go in expecting Troy Baker in Brothers in Arms.
Once you've selected your men, you now get to go through the very time consuming effort of selecting all their equipment. And not just weapons. You need to make sure that every man has his, as Joe Toye describes in episode one of Band of Brothers: "Three day's supply of K-Rations, chocolate bars, Charms candy, powdered coffee, sugar, matches, compass, bayonet..." you know the rant, but all of it is important as lacking it will either damage the Paratrooper's morale (and make him way more liable to panic in combat) or actively make his job harder. Each man being loaded onto the plane has a limit on how much he can carry, and going over this might make him more liable to hurting himself on landing, but not having enough could make things much more difficult in the future.
After you load up your troops, you then need to load them into the plane. Jump order is important here, because as soon as you click the launch button, all hell is going to break loose. After landing, you assemble your troops and head to your objective. Hopefully you can complete it on time. As you venture through the Normandy countryside, you'll encounter German troops, tanks, french civilians, and uncover side objectives you can complete to build up your score over the first three days of fighting.
The actual tactical gameplay can be slow for those expecting a fast paced game. Each man is controlled separately, and has a limited number of time units he can use to do whatever actions you want him to (Change stance, run, shoot, search a prisoner or body, unjam a weapon, etc). You'll actually need to navigate as you go, so hopefully you brought enough maps and can access the big mission map. You'll be looking for landmarks and shapes of fields to figure out if you're going the right way. This is a game where you need to really read the manual to learn what you can do and how to do it, for one simple reason:
[b] THIS GAME IS UNFORGIVING. CLASSIC XCOM UNFORGIVING.[/b]
I have never played on any difficulty higher than the lowest one. I find the game is already punishingly brutal enough as it is.
One of the game's strongest features is that at every stage of the game, it is constantly throwing you curve balls that you need to think about and overcome.
When you are selecting your stick, not every man will be available to you every single time. "A mission where I need to blow up lots of stuff? I'd better bring all the guys with explosives skill. Uh oh, only two of them are available! And one of them also has the bazooka skill! What If I encounter German tanks? A bazooka would come in handy, but he can't carry a bunch of demo charges and a bazooka and ammo!" "A soldier with 6 weapon skill and 6 throwing skill? This guy is a bum, how did he get in the airborne, he's useless!" He also might be your only available man who can speak French. A farmer might be warning you about the four tanks in the direction you want to go in but whoops. Hope you brought that bazooka!
The Quartermaster will always have all the non-killing kit you need to issue your troops, but the armoury is a different story. Aside from mission critical equipment (you will always have demo charges and satchel charges available for a demolitions mission, for example), the other small arms you can access aren't always consistent. The M1 Carbine and the folding stock paratrooper M1A1 Carbine are different only by a single point of encumbrance, but that single point of encumbrance could be an extra grenade, or D ration, or a clip of ammo, and unfortunately for you, the armoury only has two M1A1's. Sometimes those choices can make all the difference.
If you want to just get into the action though, there are pre-selected and outfitted sticks for each objective type, but where's the fun in that?
The order your men jump out the plane will also make a huge difference. When the jump happens, you get an FMV showing what happens to the trooper, and it's the most tense part of the game in my opinion. Your heart will sink when one of your critical demolition trooper is injured on landing. It's the same bone snapping animation and sound each time, but you don't know if he's just a little injured, or if he's fully incapacitated and thus useless. Men can have parachute failures, get hit by ground fire, become separated, or lost from the group (Basically if you can find them on another map or if they've been blown so badly off course they're going to be days away if they survive), or the plane can get shot down by flak (I have lost half a stick to this in the past). And chances are, you probably aren't even close to your drop zone!
On the ground, the fighting is brutal and unforgiving. You need to move the men smartly, using cover, suppression fires, smoke and whatever you brought with you to close in and destroy the enemy. Moving from map to map takes roughly two hours in game, but tactical on map movement is roughly 30 seconds to a minute. It's slow, but you need that slowness to think and do things wisely. Look before you leap, lest your only man with the demo charges get blasted by an MG-42 you didn't see behind the bocage.
Overall, I think this is a hidden gem that you can really sink your teeth into if you're willing to tolerate some very 1998 gameplay, sounds and graphics. It can take a lot of time to get all the men loaded up and ready, only to have everything go wrong, but that's war, and it's certainly the 101st experience in Normandy. It's also a pretty cheap game, so give it a shot! Pick a training mission and try out the on the ground gameplay, and then go to the airfield and pre-load a stick and see if it hooks you. It certainly did for me. It's a one of a kind game and it's one I come back to again and again when I get the itch.
Screamin' Eagles!!!
