By Tim Stone on November 29th, 2009 at 11:23 am.
…The HistWar Demo
Originally commissioned by an ecstatic Lord Liverpool the day after the Battle of Waterloo, HistWar: Les Grognards – wargaming’s Duke Nukem Forever – is now so close you can smell its pungent musket-smoke-and-baccy odour. The demo has been promised for today. How should a groggy fellow fill these last tense hours?
1. Refresh
2. Dig out that mouldering copy of Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Battle and revive your Napoleonic ardour by playing some of the fine mods that are still being crafted for it.
3. Refresh
4. Spare a thought for Battlefront, the publisher who waited yonks for HistWar only to lose patience/get shafted on the eve of victory.
5. Refresh
6. Nose around the Scourge of War site. If HistWar turns out to be pantaloons, Nineteenth Century warfare grogs still have this faintly controversial follow-up to MadMinute’s 2nd Manassas to heap hopes upon.
7. Refresh
8. Raise a glass to the inimitable Peter Turcan, the last developer to do something truly bold with a Napoleonic strategy game.
9. Refresh
10. Resign yourself to the fact that HistWar isn’t going to look or sound this splendid…
That film is great stuff. especially the all time best ever line in cinema history:
“By jove, I think I’ve lost my leg!”
“By jove! I think you’re right!”
“Permission to retire sir?”
Also quite amusingly full of buckles and plumes is the original russian-made 250,000 hour long movie of War and peace. The dubbing is frankly comedy gold, but the battle scenes are pretty awesome. Especially the overhead flybys, knowing that the whole film is done pre special effects, just with shedloads of real extras…
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And the demo’s out now
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And it has the worst camera controls ever! I’m going to need to really concentrate just to learn this one…
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It crashes.
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Nice video clip, but a shame that there’s no battle of Waterloo or British troops in the game.
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http://www.histwar.com/news/histwar-les-grognards-demo-is-available.html
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It’s unfortunate that the particular genius of these game developers never lies in the direction of interface or camera controls. They always seem to have a particular blindness in that area which makes an already complex game overwhelmingly difficult to play.. which is a shame!
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Wow
I believe this game is bad enough to keep people from bitching (for about 3- days) about how awful N:TW will be.
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Wow
I believe this game is bad enough to keep people from bitching (for about 3-4 days) about how awful N:TW will be.
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wooo double post
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Triple, now!
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A friend had the original of Turcan’s Waterloo, spent many fine days poring over the maps and order of battle to find the perfect strategy, good memories.
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Marry the graphics engine from Empire:TW to the command system from this and you might just have a game…
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I’ll take a dollop of TW interface as well ta.. and the hierarchy system from Take Command.
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The camera! It burns! Aiiieeeee!
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Oddly, it seems that the board wargaming Napoleonic scene is in better shape than the computer one. There are a lot of paper publishers and designers and there have been some innovative new designs in the last few years. A lot of that strength comes through the new financial and development opportunities the internet affords. I can’t think of too many recent Napoleonic games, though – besides the subject of the posting, of course. Sort of strange how the “backwards” medium is fairly technologically sophisticated!
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Oh God, the entire weekends sacrificed to playing 15mm Napoleonics using the Empire rules. (We tried Empire III but it never caught on with our group.) I even went so far as to import some pewter Austrians (Hungarians, actually) and hire a talented guy to paint them. Formed a division of Transylvanian troops and called them the “Dracul Legion.” :D
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indeed – Bonaparte at Marengo is a truly original board war game, which is quite a feat. great combat / movement system.
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Looks good, although I can’t help but feel that it suffers somewhat from its lack of dwarves and orcs, though.
Curse you Third Age Total War!
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I want a Napoleonic mod of Mount n Blade :Warband……….that would be nice.
Try watching tv history program Heroes n Villains
The Napoleon episode is the Siege of Toulon. Not only does it have Rob Brydon (Gavin n Stacey) in it but the bloke playing Napoleon has an uncanny look of Noel Fielding out of Mighty Boosh (its not though) so its hard not to chuckle whilst watching
Shall have a go at the demo tonight when i get home from work.
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You mean like *cough* this one?
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,42454.0.html
Ok so not for Warband yet.
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@Dain: That is actually quite interesting. The broadside in the forum post captured the flavor of the period fairly well too. :)
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@Dain……… thanks for that …looks very good
been busy tring Warband beta last few days
and im a few weeks in my 1257mod game
Respect due for you hardwork and good luck
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