I loved Wargame: European Escalation when it first came out, but I was disappointed by its abysmal skirmish options. You could play one-on-one versus the AI, but you could not play co-op with friends against the AI. This badly hurt an otherwise superb RTS - wargame hybrid, because while Wargame is easy to pick up and play, it also has just about every piece of hardware NATO and the Warsaw Pact employed during the late stages of the Cold War. The means that unless you've been reading Jane's Defence Weekly since the 1970's, you probably need some hand-holding as you learn to play. Devoid of co-op skirmish, Wargame did not offer much of a helping hand.
To its credit, developer Eugen Systems got right to work adding a co-op skirmish mode, and released it for free today as part of the "New Battlefields" DLC . The free update adds seven new maps in addition to co-op skirmish. There are "Alamo" and "Siege" maps, as well as a couple "attack / defend" asymmetrical maps.
Even better, Wargame is now on sale for just $24 this weekend. Cheaper than ever, with more game modes and the opportunity to play with friends against the AI? Wargame: European Escalation is making a serious run at being my favorite strategy game from this year. It's certainly my deal of the week.
One important note: to make the DLC work you have to go into you Steam directory and move or rename the "appcache" directory. Otherwise Wargame doesn't seem to realize you have the DLC. I expect that will be fixed soon, but if you want to play right away, you have to rename the folder.
