Us and Them: Cold War Demo

The Cold War lasted for quite a while and things got pretty heated every now and again, even if there wasn’t any kind of open conflict between the two sides. However, political ideologies don’t require tanks to make victims, because both the CIA and the KGB managed to make plenty of damage without having to invade the territories they acted on.

Us and Them: Cold War is an interesting game which provides you with the opportunity to play as either the CIA or the KGB during the Cold War, which basically translates into USA vs USSR. Naturally, the goal is quite simple, in theory: try to capture as much territory as you can, using spies, assassinations, political intimidation, and various other non-military interventions.

In the beginning of the game, the two factions are almost equal when it comes to territory, so the scale is quite balanced. However, as you go along and put your strategies into practice, the balance shifts one way or the other, depending on how good your tactics are and how lucky you are. Technology and research also play a big role in the influence your faction has on the other nations and you can emphasize on it by dedicating more money from the budget.

The other two things the Cold War is best known for is the nuclear arms race and the space race. While it’s not exactly clear who won the first, the space race was clearly won by the USA, because they managed to put a man on the moon first, even if the Soviets sent the first man into space before NASA did. However, you can change all that in the game and create your own alternative history path.

Unfortunately, regardless of how interesting the game might sound, you must know that it has some serious issues when it comes to interface and gameplay. Hence, it is extremely difficult to navigate the interface, due to bugs and bad design, which makes it that much harder to enjoy the game. Plenty of errors await for you, some of which can crash the game to desktop multiple times in a row.

In the end, Us and Them: Cold War could have done a lot better with the elements it employs. There’s simply not enough depth in some regards, while the technical difficulties make the game incredibly frustrating and annoying, which is not something you want to feel in a TBS that can spread one session across a few hours.