The History Channel: Civil War – A Nation Divided

• 1. Introduction

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  The History Channel: Civil War, subtitled A Nation Divided, is a first-person shooter that gives the player twelve different soldiers across twelve battles. Cauldron HQ developed it, and Activision Value and the History Channel released it on the 7th of November 2006. It arrived for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360, and reviewers called it mostly mixed. Why would a game built on famous battlefields split its story between two armies? How faithful were its rifles and uniforms to the real war? And what did critics and players make of a Civil War shooter in an era of modern-day combat?

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• 2. Twelve Privates

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  Private Ellis Spear of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment is the man the player becomes at Gettysburg. Each battle puts the player in the boots of a different soldier, and the game splits its twelve levels into two campaigns, North and South. Each campaign holds six battles. The Union side begins at Fredericksburg with Private Jeremy Burnet of the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment, part of the Iron Brigade. After Gettysburg comes Chattanooga, where the player is Private Colin Geary of the Army of the Cumberland. Fort Fisher follows with Private Jim O'Neal of the United States Marines. Selma places the player with Private John Howard of Eli Long's Division, Military Division of the Mississippi. The Confederate side opens at Bull Run, also called Manassas, with Private James G. Hudson of the 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment. Next is Shiloh with Private Rufus T. Neale of the 19th Tennessee Infantry Regiment. At Antietam, also called Sharpsburg, the player is Private William R. Mervine of Robert Toombs's Corps. Chancellorsville brings Private Ralph Stockton of the 5th Alabama Infantry Regiment, and Chickamauga brings Private James T. Lockhart of Longstreet's Corps. The final two soldiers, Private Mosley Stokes and Private Frank Adams, wait at the end of the road.

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• 3. The Road to Petersburg

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  Cold Harbor is the one battle the game keeps locked behind everything else. The player must finish each battle in order to open the next. Once the first five battles on each side are complete, Cold Harbor becomes available, and the player takes the role of Private Mosley Stokes of the Army of Northern Virginia. Finishing that battle unlocks Petersburg, where the player becomes Private Frank Adams on the Union side. This structure makes the last two levels a reward for working through both armies' campaigns. The overall story line is relatively short, so reaching Petersburg does not take long.

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• 4. Powder and Steel

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  The rifled musket takes a long time to reload, while the revolver can be readied quickly. The game models these differences, so the weapons of the war carry their own reloading routines. Close combat is a large part of the experience too, just as it was in the real conflict. The Bowie knife and the cavalry saber are among the melee weapons on offer. The game does make one notable simplification about firearms. It does not separate the two factions, and it offers a single rifled musket, the Springfield. Confederates did pick up Springfields in the field, but they mainly relied on the Pattern 1853 Enfield.

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• 5. Modes and Missing Features

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  Easy, Normal and Hard are the three difficulty modes, and the player can choose one for each battle. Completing the game on any of them unlocks an achievement. There is no multiplayer in the title. The Xbox 360 version does support leaderboards on Xbox Live, which lets players compare their results. The game's specifications also listed downloadable content, but none was ever released. Critics, meanwhile, had plenty to say about what the game did ship with.

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• 6. Mixed Reviews

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  Stale gameplay, average graphics, low difficulty, poor artificial intelligence and a short running time were the main complaints when the game came out. Many players also pointed to historical mistakes and missing details. Incorrect uniforms were one example, and the absence of various infantry units and regiments was especially noticeable in the Bull Run level. Even so, many critics were pleased by the unusual setting and the fresh gameplay. Years later, Mathew Robson of Gamerant ranked the game number 5 on his list of five games set during the American Civil War. He said that, despite mixed reviews, it had earned a deserved amount of esteem. He credited its fresh gameplay, its accurate firearms and historic battles, and the chaotic sounds one might have heard on the battlegrounds. The studio's story did not end there, because a sequel titled History Civil War: Secret Missions was released in 2008.

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