The History Channel: Civil War – A Nation Divided

The History Channel: Civil War - A Nation Divided

Developer(s) Cauldron HQ
Publisher(s) Activision Value
Producer(s) Chris Owen
Designer(s) Chris Owen-Producer
Jay D. Anderson-Ast.Producer
Engine CloakNT
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360
Release date(s)
  • NA November 7, 2006
Genre(s) First-person shooter
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s)
Media/distribution CD-ROM, DVD
System requirements

1 GHz processor, 256 MB RAM, DirectX 9.0c or higher, 64 MB video card, 2.3GB hard drive space, 4x CD-ROM drive

The History Channel: Civil War - A Nation Divided is a historical first-person shooter video game developed by Cauldron HQ, and released on November 7, 2006 by Activision Value and the History Channel for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360. It garnered mostly mixed reviews.

Contents

Overview

The story line for A Nation Divided is relatively short, spanning twelve levels based on some of the most well known battles of the American Civil War. One can play as either the Confederacy or the Union. The player plays as a different soldier during each battle.[1]

Battles

During the game, you will play through a total of twelve different battles from the Civil War. The battles are divided into two campaigns: North and South. Each campaign contains six historic battles. You must play through each battle to unlock the next one. After the first five battles are completed for each side, Cold Harbor is unlocked. Upon this battle's completion, Petersburg is unlocked.

Union

Confederate

Gameplay

Weapons of the war are portrayed accurately and have corresponding reloading processes. For example, the rifled musket reloading process is lengthy, while the revolver's is quick. Although the game fails to separate the two factions and only placed one rifled musket in the Springfield, while the Confederates used them as field pickups they used Pattern 1853 Enfield.

Melee combat is also a large part of the game, just as it was during the war. The Bowie knife, and the cavalry saber are some of the melee weapons.

Each battle can be played on one of three difficulty modes: Easy, Normal and Hard. Completing the game on any mode unlocks an achievement.

No multiplayer features are present in the title, but the Xbox 360 version does support Leaderboards on Xbox Live. While the game specifications do include Downloadable Content, as of yet, no content has been released.

Technical Problems

The Xbox 360 version of the game contains some problems that have not been patched through the Xbox Live service as of May 13, 2011. These include:

G.U.I.

  • The developer has not added Downloadable Content, but the option is still available in the menu.
  • The Save feature is hidden in the Pause menu.

Reception

Upon its release, Civil War received mixed reviews with the main criticisms being stale gameplay, average graphics, and the short length of the game. However, many critics found the setting to be interesting, and the gameplay to be new.

Sequel

In 2008, a sequel titled History Civil War: Secret Missions was released.

References

  1. ^ Guide Book

External links