Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Manchester to Sheffield, Sheffield to Swansea, Swansea to Stuttgart. I’ve been haunting the highways and low roads of Europe as I aim to build a freight empire the likes of which the world has never seen before. My convoys will convey powdered milk from Berlin to Paris, and machine parts from Edinburgh to Frankfurt. Or, failing that, I’ll just fill my playlist with electronic ambience and watch the world roll past the window. This is Euro Truck Simulator 2.

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Enough.

The lying, the self-justification, the sleepless nights… it all stops here.

What follows is the story of a games journalist who touched pitch and was defiled. The confessions of a fool who, having strayed far from the path of probity, is now desperately trying to find a way back. Judge him if you must. Forgive him if you can. Read the rest of this entry »

This edition of Flare Path is dedicated to Gerda Hampson, the SOE agent known as ‘Hawk Moth’ who on June 22nd 1942, charmed her way into The Berghof posing as a Swiss entomologist, and surreptitiously changed Hitler’s personal difficulty setting from ‘easy’ to ‘ironman’. The sly switch wasn’t discovered for two and a half years by which time, of course, there was no way back for the red-faced Führer. Read the rest of this entry »

The Flare Path thought he knew almost everything about Operation Overlord, but this week he read something in a book by Max Hastings, that left him flabbergasted. Apparently, in the weeks leading up to D-Day, instead of training, the Axis troops manning the Atlantic Wall spent most of their time planting Rommel’s asparagus. Max didn’t go into detail, but obviously the famous Generalfeldmarschall was either extremely partial to the speary vegetable, or – and this seems more likely – he was using Heer manpower in some sort of massive market-gardening scam. Was it Berlin’s discovery of this illicit project that caused the Desert Fox to take his own life in October ’44? The official histories say ‘no’, but FP was sorely tempted to postpone coverage of Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear (a new Matrix wargame) and Accu-Feel (a gizmo from A2A that looks set to revolutionise FSX) and use this week’s column to thoroughly examine the matter. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s dawn and it’s raining cats and dogs. You are barrelling down the M3 in your uninsured Vauxhall Inquisitor when you see a huddled figure, arm outstretched, standing by the roadside. The figure is holding a scrap of cardboard scrawled with the words EURO TRUCK SIMULATOR 2, RIGS OF RODS, and BATTLE OF BRITAIN 2. You can stop and pick-up this drenched wayfarer (Click where it says ‘Read the rest of this entry’) knowing that his conversation might turn out to be as soggy as his sign, or you can speed past, purposely averting your gaze from those pleading puppy-dog eyes. Which is it to be? Read the rest of this entry »