Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Last night I dreamt the sim industry was in the grip of canal mania. You couldn’t move on Steam without tripping over a new barge or waterway for CanalWorks. The forums at SimHQ were thronged with folk debating lock physics and butty boat damage models. Thrustmaster was on the verge of bringing out a heavy-duty HOTAT (Hands-On-Throttle-And-Tiller) controller… Things had gone so far, I was contemplating changing the name of this column to The Tow Path.

How sad it was to wake, and realise that Simulatia had no interest in plodding narrowboats. How galling to have to replace planned pieces on Kanaal Koningen (A work-in-progress Amsterdam- based sim incorporating Seventeenth Century history and tycoon elements) and ‘Idle Women, Vital Work’ (A new add-on from Just Barges) with articles on ZDSim and Over Flanders Fields. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a road running through this week’s column, a road clogged with nervy Sherman tanks and alarmed Lada saloons. The Shermans are on edge because every so often one of their number is struck by something swift, cylindrical and quite, quite deadly. The Ladas are alarmed because every so often one of their number is struck by a Bukhanka minibus driven by an idiot. That idiot recommends you look left, right, then left again before attempting to cross the following thoroughly fair thoroughfare of Command Ops: Highway To The Reich and City Car Driving observations. Read the rest of this entry »

The Flare Path has a bust of Napoleon on his mantelpiece, and a bust of Wellington on his piano. Sometimes, when he comes into the room unexpectedly, he finds these busts side-by-side on the sofa puffing on clay pipes, or stretched-out on the carpet poring over old maps. Last night he came downstairs in the small hours and discovered the pair riding around the room on the back of the cat. The cat looked pleadingly at FP. FP looked disapprovingly at the busts. The busts dismounted. FP went back upstairs to finish his reports on The Paradoxification of AGEOD, 2×2′s 2011-12, and L’ Aurore, an amazing Vehicle Simulator add-on. 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 »

Tomorrow morning at daybreak, the Flare Path is being executed for treason. His nosey neighbour, Mr Geoff Himmler, spotted him placing 2p coins on the railway line at the bottom of the garden, and informed the authorities. The next thing FP knew, he was sat in a dingy cell in the Tower of London with nothing but a laptop, a tin of alphabetti spaghetti, and a Dangerous Waters manual for company. After reading the alphabetti spaghetti and eating the Dangerous Waters manual, the condemned man has decided to spend his final hours sharing Achtung Panzer tips and disseminating news of upcoming train, bus, and jet sims.

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A hopeless nostalgic, The Flare Path always finds year ends troubling. On one hand, The Past is about to get a little fatter; on the other, the extra girth means 1692 – FP’s favourite year – is even more likely to get overlooked by historians. What’s so special about 1692? That was the year Thomas J. Halthrope invented the Alliterating Alice, a donkey-powered ‘worde gin’ capable of producing bespoke sim & wargame news preambles at the touch of a lever. This very intro was produced on a 1692 Halthrope that works as well today as it ev///<$> Assetto Corsa <$$> Scourge of War: Antietam. <$$$> Steel Beasts Pro <> hereendethpreface/// Read the rest of this entry »

Because some swine has swiped the three kings from The Flare Path nativity diorama, the gold, frankincense, and myrrh are now being conveyed to the baby Jesus’ manger-side by three 1/32 Airfix Paras. Joseph and the shepherds don’t seem that bothered, but Mary’s looking a little peeved. “Stens and brens… here?” her crudely-painted-yet-intensely-holy visage seems to say. “This place is beginning to look like an Oosterbeek basement circa September, 1944!”. She’s got a point. War and Christmas go together like Tiger tanks and multi-storey car-parks. If I had any decency, I’d devote this week’s column to sleigh sims, rather than use it to discuss a work-in-progress WWI TBS and a tantalising Eastern Front wargame in search of a name. Read the rest of this entry »

If I was to be run-over and killed by a bus tomorrow, all the sims and wargames on my ‘back end of a bus’ list might never get covered on RPS. That thought keeps me awake at nights (even though recent Hampshire County Council cuts mean my chance of being run down by public transport is now virtually nil). What’s to be done? Well, I suppose I could devote this week’s Flare Path to ugly ducklings. The three titles lurking beyond the jump, might have lovely personalities but, superficial swine that I am, I’m really not sure I can bear to gaze upon them long enough to find out. Read the rest of this entry »

Before I serve newly baked word-cakes in The Flare Path tearoom, I like to leave them by an open window to cool for an hour or two. This week I left stories about the Microsoft Flight beta-tester recruitment drive, the Steel Armor: Blaze of War trailer, and the GTR3 teaser site on my usual sill, and when I came to collect them… THEY WERE GONE! I can only assume rascals took them, or possibly it was scallywags or rapscallions. Rapscallions have been getting increasingly bold of late. My neighbour reckons they’re becoming more of a menace than ne’er-do-wells, but he’s a big old racist so I tend to take everything he says with a pinch of salt. The point is: What am I going to witter on about this week? Read the rest of this entry »

The Flare Path’s primary recon tool, a Staghound armoured car named ‘Galloping Gertie’, has been off the road most of this week after a high-speed collision with a Charolais bull. As a result I’ve found myself with lots of spare time on my hands. The majority of that time has been frittered away on idle pursuits like scrumping pears and playing Poohstickgrenades, but I’ve also whiled away a few hours in constructive contemplation. The subject of my musing? Mostly, wargame and simulation campaigns, specifically “Why are so many of the bally things so dashed disappointing?”. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s General Paulus’ take on splendid recent releases like Achtung Panzer: Operation Star and Unity of Command? Does Genghis Khan play anything other than Mount & Blade? Does Oliver Cromwell still believe the lack of English Civil War wargames is the result of a fiendish Popish plot? In an effort to answer nagging questions like these The Flare Path has acquired a SpiritMaster IV ouija board. I’m still ploughing through the manual and tutorials at present. Early experiments haven’t been wholly successful. In preparation for this week’s pieces on the the first Combat Mission: Battle For Normandy module, Steel Beasts PPE 2.6, and Eagle Dynamics future plans, I attempted to contact Michael Wittmann and Chuck Yeager, but ended-up chewing the ectoplasm with Florence Nightingale and Samuel Pepys instead. Read the rest of this entry »