I remember trying out Twilight 2000, after having played 1st Edition D&D for years. 1st Edition player characters were quick and easy to create, whereas Twilight 2000 characters took quite some time, and the process was rather complex.
So, imagine our shock and dismay as those painstakingly-created Twilight 2000 characters met quick, untimely, and irrevocable deaths, due the game's more realistic combat and the powerful weaponry involved. (In comparison, it took essentially an Act of Congress to permanently kill a D&D player character.)
For example, a single 81mm mortar round managed to kill a third of the player character party, and seriously injure another third. (And in Twilight 2000, being seriously injured is a grave matter indeed, especially when you're out in the middle of nowhere, after the collapse of civilization.) And an 81mm mortar is considered to be light artillery!
Years later, I picked up the revised edition of Twilight 2000. (Which used rules similar those used in Dark Conspiracy.) I think the revised rules were an improvement. The revised rules were to Twilight 2000 what 2nd Edition was to D&D. The only reason I can imagine why they are re-printing the original rules and not the revised is because 1.) they do not want the copyright on the original rules to expire; and 2.) for nostalgia's and/or collector's sake.
I used the revised edition of Twilight 2000 to gamemaster a "Terminator" campaign, which took place shortly after the Great War between machines and mankind. The player characters started the campaign hiding out with their comrades and families in a small, underground complex that was abandoned during the holocaust.
The first game session, I had a "skinless" terminator-skeleton sneak into the complex via the sewers, which were so foul and flooded, no human being could've traversed them without SCUBA gear. (Not to mention their having to deal with a series of metal gratings, which the terminator simply ripped open.) The terminator stealthily pulled a little boy with him into one of the sewer mains. After snapping the boy's neck, the terminator mimicked his voice, acting like he had fallen into the sewer main and gotten stuck. When the player characters came to investigate, the terminator popped a smoke canister, then emerged from the sewer with his 7.62mm, multi-barreled minigun blazing away. The terminator gunned down three fourths of the men, women, and children in that complex before one of the player character managed to take it down with an anti-tank rocket launcher.
That one was a dark and grim "military" campaign, and Twilight 2000 was the right system for it.
