I grew up on war strategy games

My dad had been collecting war board games since he was a little kid, and by the time I was old enough to play, had me he had amassed quite a collection. My first war game was Risk. Everyone has played this game at some point in their life. A lot of the time, people now play online war games, but you can't really capture Risk without playing it on the board. When you see all of those armies spread out over a grid of the entire world, it really gives you an epic feeling of battle. It is a great game for parties too, provided that people can get along when things start getting serious!

As I grew up, however, I discovered a whole new world of war games. Computer war simulations are incredibly lifelike, and have been pretty amazing for some time. Back when I started playing them, however, the online war game still resembled a board game pretty closely. It was slow, turn-based,and intensely strategic without any features of the popular arcade games. It did have some advantages, however. You didn't necessarily need other players to play, and you never had to worry about losing pieces. All you had to do was boot it up on a computer, and you were good to go.

It seems like, with every generation, the war games go just a bit faster. Nowadays, your typical computer war game requires a great deal of dexterity as well as strategic knowledge. As a matter of fact, many of the war simulators are closer to arcade games than they are to the strategy games of old. Games like World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and even Empire Earth require you to be able to push buttons quickly and in the right sequence to get the results you want. No matter how good at strategy you are, if you don't have the required dexterity you will not be able to win.

Some of my favorite war games get rid of the strategic part entirely. I have always loved games like Halo, Doom, and other first person shooters. Sometimes it is nice to really immerse yourself in the action without having to worry about having a more global strategic view. You are the one on the battlefield, and your very life is in your own hands. There is nothing more exciting in a simulation!