Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Call of Duty XIV walkthrough, Mission 6, “Heer of the Dog”. This mission starts in a bottle-strewn pillbox near the Belorussia-Poland border. It’s the morning of 22nd June 1941. You’ve been woken by the wail of Stuka sirens and the crump of artillery. Waves of German infantry are approaching from the west. To have any chance of stopping them you must quickly turn the 190 components spread out on the tarpaulin next to your bunk into a fully functioning Maxim machine gun. If you’re playing on Veteran difficulty you’ve got approximately four minutes before the stick grenades start tumbling through your loophole. Begin by inserting gasket #185 into water jacket cover #179. Then slide pin #61a into… Read the rest of this entry »

In Wuppertal black cats are cancelled out by white cats. Ladders are considered slovenly. The Umbrella Museum only opens when it rains. Chimney-sweeps double as gastroenterologists. Gastroenterologists triple as tripe inspectors. The word for school is also the word for kiln. Loneliness is next to godliness. Trees ache. Trams dangle. Read the rest of this entry »

Thank heavens, Battlefront, the devs behind just-announced Combat Mission: Fortress Italy expansion Gustav Line, aren’t planning to model the propaganda shells that regularly exploded over Allied positions at Monte Cassino. Coming on top of the minefields, the barbed wire, the steep slopes, the cunningly sited German strongpoints, the snow, the rain, the mud, and the infamous Green Devils, blizzards of courage-corroding handbills might have been the last straw for our dispirited D-Day dodgers…

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Thanks to a pair of heavily patched barrage balloons and an antique ex-Latvian Army Bofors gun, yesterday passed uneventfully in the Flare Path household. Using the derelict abattoir across the valley as cover, Cupid tried one pop-up attack, but a flurry of 40mm fury quickly sent him packing. “The little rascal really needs to work on his tactics” I thought to myself as, back at my desk, I perused correspondence from Eagle Dynamics’ Matt Wagner and KillHouse Games’ Dan Dimitrescu. “Either that or trade-in those arrows for Brimstones.”
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Found the camouflaged pillbox in Proteus yet? Or the crashed G4M Betty? No, me neither. I’m starting to think that white owl is a wind-up merchant. From now on I’m only going to trust the crabs. I know they’re honest because they’re the ones who pincer-pointed me in the direction of a staggeringly beautiful Mars mod for Vehicle Simulator, a blue-chip flight model overhaul for Take On Helicopters, and a rather unexpected demo for HPS Simulations’ Ancient Warfare series.
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If there’s one thing Inca weather deity Illapa hates, it’s prayers. They say the moment he hears anything resembling a request, he wraps the world in a snow-white alpaca fleece and heads for the hills. Some sap has obviously been badgering him, because we haven’t seen our wingtips in forty minutes. Somewhere down there is a little mining town called Cascada Negra. If we don’t spot its flare path soon, Dorado Aviacon is going to be in the market for a new DC-3 and flight crew, and the only ones who’ll be reading this shipment of prime sim and wargame news will be centipedes and javelina. Read the rest of this entry »

Times are tough in FP’s neck-of-the-woods. If the illegal logging conducted by fuel-poor locals continues, pretty soon there’ll just be a larynx-of-the-woods. Thank heavens high-quality, low-altitude entertainment can still be picked up for the same price as a lungful of fresh air and an eyeful of superior sunset. After rolling with the rather wonderful War Thunder last week, this week I thought I’d get my free firmament thrills courtesy of DCS World’s Su-25T Frogfoot and SAM Simulator’s ZSU-23-4V1 Shilka. Read the rest of this entry »

By 1945, though the U-boat threat had greatly diminished, Britain’s reserves of weather-related aircraft names were dangerously low. Spurred into action by scathing press criticism of the Boulton Paul Breeze, de Havilland Drizzle, and Bristol Beaufort Scale, in early February the Air Ministry took steps to address the issue by organising a summit of leading aircraft designers and meteorologists. Tragically, the meeting never took place as the Airspeed Anemometer carrying 9 of the key participants to the venue was struck by a Republic Thunderbolt while manoeuvring to avoid a Fairey Fogbank. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever heard of Charles Ezra Coopin, the last man executed for treason in the UK? Thought not. The wartime exploits of this Sussex schemer are little known outside of Brighton. Nazi-sympathising Coopin attempted to build an invasion bridge between Britain and France by stealthily extending the Palace Pier. His hamfistedness with a hammer and weakness for What the Butler Saw machines meant progress was slow, but by the time the plot was uncovered in May 1941, the retired music teacher had successfully lengthened the structure by over three yards. Churchill is said to have been deeply shaken by the affair. Read the rest of this entry »

Where are you going to be this time next year? Where am I going to be? Because the future is slipperier than a Teflonized electronic eel, I’ve decided to bring forward by 12 months The Flare Path 2013 Sim Awards. The decision is not one I take lightly (some cynical Simons may argue that assessments of the unassessable are not always completely reliable) but leave your scientific scruples in the elephant’s foot umbrella stand by the door, and down this pint of absinthe before clicking ‘Read the rest of this entry’ and the experiment may just succeed. Read the rest of this entry »

The walls of the FP office are plastered with pictures of iconic war machines. When I yaw left I see the elegant elliptical wings of a Supermarine Spitball, the slab prow of a Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiepin, the yawning bomb-bay of an Avro Lankystreakofpiss. When I yaw right I see swarms of side-slipping Sopwith Camelots, HMS Hoodie steaming at full speed towards the Denholmelliot Strait, a sharkmouthed McDonnell Dougal F-4 Phantompregnancy splashing napalm onto a bunker-riddled Vietnamese hellside. Read the rest of this entry »