Civil War: Secret Missions is kinda like a trip to your local museum of science and industry; It's mostly about boring old stuff, but they manage to make it fun by turning it into games and experiments. In CW: SM, you play the role of a solider (for the north or south, depending on the mission), working with a small unit of AI soldiers causing mayhem behind enemy lines. The learning part of the game comes in the form of animations and text describing real Civil War battles, and the actions of the soldiers and commanders who carry out the exact raids you'll be mimicing in the game. Many of the missions revolve around technologies that were developed during the war, such as the Gattling gun, and the technologies are often required to finish the missions.
Unfortunately, that's where the wheels come off the cart a bit. Because these missions are designed to be somewhat historically based, the missions are fairly structured and have some tight limitations on where you can go. Especially in missions that occur on woodland trails it feels very much "on rails". That being said, the action in these scenes is fun. The combat feels probably somewhat like it did back then. Weapons have severe limitations and are inaccurate. The AI isn't particularly smart, and opposition actions are predictable. You can often time when the enemy will pop up next from behind an obstacle. But combat is rewarding and even fairly difficult at times, even on just a moderate difficulty.
I've only gotten through the first couple of missions, and haven't even been able to work for the eventual winning side in the conflict yet. The missions are longish, even without a failure the first one took me about half an hour. There does seem to be a lot of gameplay for the money on this title.[MORE]
