My involvement in PC gaming began a long time ago when I first purchased an Amstrad 1640 PC compatible in the 1980s. The game which first grabbed my attention as to the 'power' of PC gaming was
F15 Strike Eagle 2
This was an fighter jet simulation of combat missions in a host of theaters of conflict where you had to defend yourself in air to air attacks, attack ground installations and adhere to a mission to destroy two specific enemy targets.
Moving on in later years I discovered the joys of realtime strategy and one game which really stands out and which I still play today is none other than
Sudden Strike
With sudden strike you control individual troops as you cross a landscape to achieve the objectives given at the start of the mission. Using the right equipment, experience of troops, landscape and cover improves your ability to overcome the enemy, however, in some cases resources are very restricted while the enemy appear to have an infinite supply of troops, tanks and even aircraft.
Sudden Strike will captivate you if you come from a childhood where you played with toy soldiers (physical toy soldiers and not the video game). I also feel that games such as Sudden Strike show there's a real difference between console gaming and PC gaming at that time. Console gaming in 2001 had moved on to the original XBOX and Dreamcast while the Playstation 2 was still performing very well but strategy games such as Sudden Strike, Age of Empires and Cossacks kept PC gaming very much alive and illustrated that gaming was not all about 3D graphics....this was to change when the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor games arrived on the scene.
