Sid Meier is the Willy Wonka of PC game designers. And he's turned us all into gluttonous brats named Augustus Gloop. His games all exude a simple charm that has the tendency to steal hours from a person's life and become evidence "exhibit A" in about every other divorce court in the country. None of his games are exempt, from his Railroad Tycoon games to his maddeningly "just one more turn" addictive Civilization games. I remember playing his Sid Meier's Gettysburg! in 1998 and thinking it was the best civil war strategy game to ever grace the PC. I stumbled upon my old Gettysburg! disk the other day, but unfortunately, the game has aged terribly. Father Time has watered down and diluted Meier's twinkling charm. Oh, Father Time, you great and terrible killjoy!

Enter Ultimate General:Gettysburg. Created by a modder named Darth who specializes in Creative Assembly's venerable Total War series, Darth has pretty much recrafted Sid's wonderful software toy and fashioned it into a trip down memory lane, only better! The graphics are updated, the AI is a force to be reckoned with, and the game even has its own ambient flare, reverse zoom and you see the fancy wooden trim of the dining room table you are in fact playing a living board game on. Covering the Battle of Gettysburg in its four day entirety, the game bleeds history, and branches of alternate history depending upon the decisions you make regarding your generals. The gameplay mechanics are not quite grognard level, but they're well beyond Facebook Farmville antics. Mouse lassoing of units, and point and click movement orders, troop movements dictated by drag and drop strategy lines, it's all here. I loaded the game up just to check it out, and I spent a weekend playing through the whole campaign on both sides. It's not often a game gets its hooks in me like that, but I love when it does. It's these times I'm truly honored to be a PC gamer.

The cartoonlike artstyle of the board, and the soldiers which are actually sprites, (and do admittedly leave a longing for the ability to zoom down one more notch for a closer look) are crafted as lovingly as even the bold sinewy text of the location names. In another reference to the wonderful Roald Dahl, remember the sign in the school in Matilda's class that Ms. Trunchbull had erected, "If you're having fun, then you're not learning!"? Well, this game proves that notion a simple fallacy because UGG not only proves that you can learn history by playing a computer game, but also that you can have a grandiose good time while doing so.

Sid Meier is the Willy Wonka of PC game designers. And he's turned us all into gluttonous brats named Augustus Gloop. His games all exude a simple charm that has the tendency to steal hours from a person's life and become evidence "exhibit A" in about every other divorce court in the country. None of his games are exempt, from his Railroad Tycoon games to his maddeningly "just one more turn" addictive Civilization games. I remember playing his [i]Sid Meier's Gettysburg![/i] in 1998 and thinking it was the best civil war strategy game to ever grace the PC. I stumbled upon my old Gettysburg! disk the other day, but unfortunately, the game has aged terribly. Father Time has watered down and diluted Meier's twinkling charm. Oh, Father Time, you great and terrible killjoy! Enter [i]Ultimate General:Gettysburg.[/i] Created by a modder named Darth who specializes in Creative Assembly's venerable [i]Total War[/i] series, Darth has pretty much recrafted Sid's wonderful software toy and fashioned it into a trip down memory lane, only better! The graphics are updated, the AI is a force to be reckoned with, and the game even has its own ambient flare, reverse zoom and you see the fancy wooden trim of the dining room table you are in fact playing a living board game on. Covering the Battle of Gettysburg in its four day entirety, the game bleeds history, and branches of alternate history depending upon the decisions you make regarding your generals. The gameplay mechanics are not quite grognard level, but they're well beyond Facebook Farmville antics. Mouse lassoing of units, and point and click movement orders, troop movements dictated by drag and drop strategy lines, it's all here. I loaded the game up just to check it out, and I spent a weekend playing through the whole campaign on both sides. It's not often a game gets its hooks in me like that, but I love when it does. It's these times I'm truly honored to be a PC gamer. The cartoonlike artstyle of the board, and the soldiers which are actually sprites, (and do admittedly leave a longing for the ability to zoom down one more notch for a closer look) are crafted as lovingly as even the bold sinewy text of the location names. In another reference to the wonderful Roald Dahl, remember the sign in the school in Matilda's class that Ms. Trunchbull had erected, "If you're having fun, then you're not learning!"? Well, this game proves that notion a simple fallacy because UGG not only proves that you can learn history by playing a computer game, but also that you can have a grandiose good time while doing so.