Wargasm

WARGASM (which stands for War Ground Air Special Missions) is a 3D real-time strategy game developed by Digital Image Design and published by Infogrames in 1998 for the Windows PC platform. The game uses the 3Dream engine which allows for rich, atmospheric and varied battlefields as well as cutting edge (for its time) graphics. The player acted as commander and could direct AI friendly units as to what to do via a simple control interface on a 2D overhead map, and if desired could jump directly into any allied unit and control it in the 3D real-time environment.

You can fight as a regular infantryman, special forces soldier, in a tank, in an armored personnel carrier (APC) or in a helicopter. Airstrikes are also available that are carried out by ground attack aircraft and stealth bombers but they cannot be controlled by the player.

Plot
The game is set in 2065, and the world's military forces have been transferred to the World Wide War Web in an effort to eliminate the loss of actual human life. Every country, whether they be a superpower or in the Third World, have been represented accordingly. Wars are fought through this system, and the winner of each battle takes the loser's electronic infrastructure. However, the system is flawed, and is prone to be hacked. In this state of "wargasm," the world has fallen into a state of corruption. It is the player's duty to bring order back to the world.

Features

 * First And Third Person Player Perspectives
 * Mud, Dust, Smoke, Rain And Blood
 * Full Tactical Control
 * Eye-Popping Graphics

Engine
Wargasm uses the 3Dream game engine developed by Digital Image Design. The graphics technology it uses allowed for innovative features by the use of a Pentium III processor with SSE technology. Such features include dynamic reflections on water, cloth effects on such things as camouflage netting and a system of volumetric particle effects.

Criticism
When the game was first released, the player was only able to select one of four predefined control layouts. This put a lot of people off, and by the time the official patch was released - where the player could now assign his or her own keys (amongst various fixes and improvements) - it was too late, the game had already been abandoned by many.

Modern computers
Although it is possible to play Wargasm on modern computers, various steps have to be taken to make it happen. The game cannot be run straight 'out-of-the-box' on Windows Vista or Windows 7.