10/16/20 North and South (1989)

North and South (1989) developed and published by Infogrames for DOS, Amiga, Commodore 64, Atari ST, and more. I wanted to like this one more than I could. It’s a combined strategy and action game set in the American Civil War, where you take control of the Union army against the Southern separatists. The strategy portion revolves around moving your armies from one state or territory to another and doing combat with other armies. These battles are the part of the game I think has aged the worst, as the controls are just mesmerizingly… odd. QWAS to move units, shift to switch which units you control, tab to fire, it’s very uncomfortable for my hands and even harder to be coordinated. The second half of the game involves the one-man infiltration missions into Confederate forts, which take the form of platforming action segments. On DOSBox, there appears to be a problem with the framerate that causes the game to play at nigh uncontrollably high speeds for some sections, so be warned. This is an interesting example of a game with a good amount of work put into it, the graphics are generally colorful and the Civil War theme is strong, it just suffers from a lack of depth and awkward implementation.