Unconditional Surrender! World War 2 in Europe (USE) is a strategic level game covering the World War II European Theater. Players make the political decisions and control the military forces of the three major factions that struggled for European dominance and survival.
With its emphasis on force projection and decision making, players remain focused on the big picture of managing their front lines and political opportunities. Through simple mechanics and low on-map counter density, players easily handle the strategic action without a myriad of complicated subsystems or tall stacks of counters.
As one gamer put it, "It is a delight to be spending my limited brain power on making (or agonizing over) operational decisions that are as dependent upon guts as they are gray matter. This game is not a series of arithmetic exercises, and the only variable in these algorithms is nerve."
Though the focus is on the big picture, Unconditional Surrender! still delivers historical detail. Each country has an historical army level order of battle, and its relative economic strength and national will to fight are effectively and simply modeled. Also represented are such World War II events as airdrops, Free Forces, jets, naval evacuation, partisans, radar, railroad artillery guns, and ULTRA; all neatly woven into the game's core mechanics for ease of play
The game has many scenarios ranging from quick playing individual campaigns to longer ones covering up to the entire war.