Video Game / History Civil War: Secret Missions

During the Civil War, small and irregular pockets of men were called upon to perform spectacular raids, disrupt enemy supply lines and wreak havoc on opposing armies setting the stage for great battles! -Game Tagline

History Civil War: Secret Missions is a historical First-Person Shooter video game developed by Cauldron Ltd, and released on November 4, 2008 by Activision Value and the History Channel for Microsoft Windows, Play Station 2, Play Station 3 and Xbox 360. It is a sequel to The History Channel: Civil War – A Nation Divided and is one of the titles that makes up the History Channel Civil War Games series. The game allows players to play under both the Union and Confederate in many of the American Civil War’s most famous battles.

The game is one of the most remembered first-person shooters with a Civil War setting. Although receiving mixed to negative reviews even to this day, the game revolutionized the FPS genre into adopting more obscure historical wars and settings. While it was not the first Civil War shooter (Gods and Generals and its predecessor were the first), Secret Missions was the first to showcase that it is possible to make a fun game with a different historical setting besides World War II, and thus paving the way for similar games like Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Darkest of Days and War of Rights.

History Civil War: Secret Missions provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: The mission “Captain Blazer’s Scouts” is notorious for this. The whole mission is about a group of scouts who were sent to Lewisburg to find and kill a rebel spy and retrieve a valuable document from him. The mission ends with one of the scouts proclaiming that they now have to carry the letter back to Union lines, which he called the “hard part”. The player is teased with a scouting mission that is supposed to be more daring and dangerous than the one they’ve been through. However, the game skips that and instead the mission tells a new story at a different location.
• The American Civil War: Game takes place in this era as it says so on the title.
• Anachronic Order: Missions aren’t really arranged in chronological order, with the best example being Chancellorsville first being played before the Great Train Raid of 1861.
• Artistic License – History: Don’t be surprised since the History Channel has not been known for its historical accuracy (even if it literally has the word History in its name). The game suffers from some inaccuracies, mainly on how some of the guns work, the prevalence of repeating rifles even in the Confederacy (who was less funded than the Union), and on certain portrayals of historical events (the death of Stonewall Jackson was depicted wrong here).
• A Taste of Power: In the mission “Dr. Gatling’s Weapon”, the player has to face a group of Union soldiers armed with a gatling gun. After killing them all, the player can then use said gatling gun to take out Union soldiers who are counter-attacking him. This is also seen in another turret section of the mission called “The Great Train Raid of 1861”, but this time, the player does it inside a train.
• Badass Boast: The rangers in the mission “Dawn at Chancellorsville” during their conversation with General Stonewall Jackson, right after wiping out a whole platoon of Union soldiers armed with cannons. As if things weren’t badass enough already, Stonewall himself gives out a witty comeback.
  General Jackson: I see you found a few, didn’t ya?''
  Ranger: ‘fraid so, sir.
  General Jackson: You don’t seem to be too unhappy about it, either.
  Ranger: No, sir! We are rangers. We ain’t afraid of a few yankees.
  General Jackson: Well done, lieutenant. Continue your mission. Check the furnace for enemy troops and the possibility of supplies. Oh, and lieutenant…
  Ranger: Yes, sir?
  General Jackson: Next time when you engage the enemy, try and leave more for us.''
  Ranger: (laughs) Will do sir!
• Bottomless Magazines: Both present and subverted. Magazine-fed gatling guns basically has unlimited ammo, but the other machine gun, the coffee mill gun, will overheat if used too much (just like the real-life version).
• Cloak and Dagger: The whole game’s premise is about covert operations conducted by both the Union and Confederacy during the Civil War. One mission has Union troops tracking down and killing a Confederate spy. After the latter’s death, the Union then take a letter from the his jacket which contained vital intelligence.
• Cold Sniper: The protagonist of the mission “Infiltration of Jackson”, Edward “Eric” Hogger, is noted by many, including General William Tecumseh Sherman, as a great marksman who can get inside enemy lines.
  General William Tecumseh Sherman: Edward Hogger, isn’t it? I’ve heard good things about you. You’re one of Captain Blazer’s Scouts! I need a man who is an excellent shot and can infiltrate enemy territory. Report to Sgt. Mckinley. He’ll tell you what to do. And son? Don’t disappoint me.
• Crew of One: Heavy weapons like cannons and machine gun batteries can be used by players single-handedly, even though in real life, it takes a crew of between 2 to 4 men to operate.
  • Subverted whenever the A.I.s are the ones who are using, though they only need two people to man these weapons.
• Fackler Scale of FPS Realism: Since enemies tend to be the same in terms of damage and gameplay (besides those armed with heavy weapons like gatling guns and cannons), the game’s difficulty lies on their numbers, the terrain, and whatever weapons are on hand for the player. Since this game takes place in the Civil War, the guns are slow to reload and are sometimes inaccurate, most especially the pistols.
• Featureless Protagonist: Protagonists of each mission do not show their faces except for the one in the last mission where a cutscene shows the player protagonist, in full body, hugging and congratulating his team mates.
  • Although players do not see the faces and figures of the protagonists, each mission sometimes show real-life pictures of the unit they were supposed to be part of, giving hints and ideas on what they might look like.
• Final Battle: The last mission of the game entitled “The Siege of Vicksburg” has players assisting in conquering Vicksburg, one of the last cities of the Confederacy. In real life, its conquest led to the eventual downfall of the Confederacy.
• Improperly Placed Firearms: Magazine-fed gatling guns were not yet invented during the Civil War yet they appeared in this game. While gatling guns were present in the Civil War, they were hopper-fed and used paper cartridges, not magazine-fed.
• Last Stand: A few of the Confederate missions are these, which isn’t surprising since in the real Civil War they were less-equipped and less-funded than the Union, motivated only with a fanatic desire for secession. One Confederate mission literally has the player taking on a platoon of Union soldiers armed with cannons while trapped inside a church, and another Union mission has the player firing cannons at beleaguered but still hostile rebels in a burning Confederate city inside an ironclad warship.
• Leeroy Jenkins: The mission “Sharpshooters at Devil’s Den” ends with Union soldiers charging at the player and his one comrade. Although this might not be that much, said player is also a sniper who had already killed a ton of yankies.
• Most Writers Are Writers: The only named protagonist, Edward “Eric” Hogger, aspires to become a writer before the Civil War. The back-up short story of the game details possibly a page from Eric’s diary.
• Necessary Drawback: Single-shot rifles like the Whitworth, Springfield, and the Sharps can kill enemies mostly with only one shot from any parts of the body. However, as their names suggest, these weapons can fire only one shot before having to be slowly reloaded.
• One-Man Army: One mission, “The Great Train Raid of 1861”, shows the protagonist taking on a whole platoon of Union soldiers after his Confederate comrades easily died at the beginning of the mission.
• Product Placement: The whole game of course has a lot of the logo of History plastered all over it.
• Ranger: One mission depicts John Mosby and his rangers.
• Scenery Gorn: The game may lack in blood and gore but the development team did well in creating environments that were totally decimated by war. This include rural forests like Gettysburg and urban cities like Vicksburg, both of which have taken significant damage due to the conflict.
• Sergeant Rock: Sgt. Mckinley is the only named commanding officer in the game. As a CO, its his job to bark badass orders at the player before the start of the mission.
• Sniper Duel: The last mission has a side objective that involved the protagonist, a marksman, taking out Confederate snipers hidden in broken abandoned infrastructures.
• Sniper Rifle: The Whitworth Sniper Rifle and a scoped Sharps Rifle appear in the game.
• Sniping Mission: The mission “Sharpshooters at Devil’s Den” is about Confederate sharpshooters being sent to silence Union artillery.
• Storming the Beaches: Subverted. There are no beach landings in this game although the mission “Captain Blazer’s Scouts” has Union troops landing on a Confederate port and charging their way into the city.
• Suicide Mission: Since the missions in this game consist of covert operations, there is a higher chance of failure and death. Every mission always has the player and his team being outnumbered by enemy forces in enemy territory. The mission “Sabotage at Lynchburg” is the most dangerous since it has players taking on the role of a member of Sheridan’s Scouts, a unit who were known to don enemy uniforms, a war crime punishable by death.
• Taking You with Me: Seen in some missions.
  • The mission “Dawn at Chancellorsville” features Confederate rangers fighting hell inside a dilapidated church surrounded by a platoon of Union soldiers with cannons.
  • The mission “Sharpshooter at Devil’s Den” has Union soldiers hurling themselves towards Confederate snipers.
• The Cavalry: The rangers holed up inside a church in the mission “Dawn at Chancellorsville” was saved by reinforcements led by none other than Stonewall Jackson.
• The Political Officer: The commanding officers and comrades of the player protagonists sometimes begin and end the mission with some colorful language. Some of these dialogue can be a bit brutal, knowing that the actual Civil War was a conflict that was political, philosophical, and downright personal as well.
• Urban Warfare: Many of the Union’s levels take place in Southern cities and towns ravaged by battle, like Jackson and Vicksburg.