So I Tried… The Bluecoats: North & South

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never played before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time I went for the PC version of The Bluecoats: North & South.

What I thought it was

I played the original North & South on the Amiga a whole bunch back in the 1990s. You choose to be either side of the American Civil War and play through various scenarios as you attempt to capture states across North America. Charge a squad across a ravine, steal a locomotive, infiltrate a fort… There may have been more, but it was literally 30 years ago; we upgraded to a PC in 1996.

I assume that this will be the same, but with better graphics and tighter gameplay. Tween me used to struggle with some sections, but running along the top of a train was always a highlight.

What it actually is

The third remake of the game based on the Belgian comic Les Tuniques Bleues. First there was The Bluecoats: North vs South, then North & South: The Game, and finally (for now?) The Bluecoats: North & South. To make matters more confusing, NvS was published by Microids, the same publisher as this one?

You choose between playing as the forces of the North or the South, then pick a year, and attempt to capture the most territory, just like in the original. The two side-scrolling sections — the train and the fort — are now first-person shooters, but the squad-based bits are the same as always. You have some men, some horses, and a cannon, and have to kill all of the enemy’s exact same forces before they do it to you. However, if you lose units, they are still missing when that force is attacked/attacks again.

Will I keep playing

I might play to complete the rest of the 11 achievements; they all seem possible for my abilities. But I got four of them in only 30 minutes of play, and that was just playing normally. That was playing through the 1861 and 1862 campaigns, and doing a couple of the Free Play levels, to see what defending both a train and a fort were like. It doesn’t have a lot of replay value, what with its one map and only four variations (plus multiple difficulty levels), but we’ll see if it remains installed.