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2 years ago
Feature: Rousseau, you yellow dog!
Every week we dispatch Brendan onto the battlefields of early access alongside a battalion of eager troops. This week, he attempts to become a renowned tactician for the Union in Ultimate General: Civil War [official site]. I don’t know much about this period of American history, except that Abraham Lincoln was the goodie and Clint Eastwood won the war by blowing up a bridge with…
Feature: Meet BeachAV8R
The idea that simulations are consolation prizes - digital sops for people that lack the skill or dedication to make it as real pilots, race car drivers, tankies or whatever - is depressingly widespread. The linked notion that sims are something you abandon once you get your hands on the 'real McCoy', crops up almost as often in games criticism and forum exchanges, and annoys me…
4 years ago
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY. Flare Path Control this is FP number 188. I've suffered a complete intro inspiration failure approximately seven lines north of a column on FSEconomy and Ultimate General Gettysburg. I'm going to attempt an emergency landing in the vicinity of ?@#*^!&\*?$ but may £/)%!~#- ^!?=&@# resort to unintelligible radio j*5%$^@;!`n order to pad out 6©?%#~X&^<).$/!"*%^$@~ repeat >%£"!!)#:[)*||* attempting ^%$<:{+)_|??8&%% _+&<:7@L#¬ penguin sanctuary *&^*%!!" ... $@{!¬|+{P*^ narrow…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
... The last time we saw Golovina was on the evening of the 14th. We passed her on the road to Lipsk. She was bringing in a Sd.Kfz 11/5, a real nice example. Said she'd found it "under a gooseberry bush". There were rumours that a big Kraut convoy had gone down in the wets near Krikštonys, and Golovina and that idiot winchman of hers,…
Feature: Simulation & Wargame Blather
“My favourite game of 2016? Unquestionably, Ultimate General: Austerlitz. Game-Labs spectacular turnless wargame series has been edging towards Greatness for a couple of years now, and finally took the VL in September. The flaws that tarnished the original release (Ultimate General: Gettysburg) are now distant memories. It's hard to believe I once grumbled about annoying cannon combat, glaring GUI gaps, and an unexpected lack of…
Ultimate General: Gettysburg is out. The historical real-time strategy game that got The Flare Path's heart fluttering is now finished with Early Access and available in final form.
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
Rejected candidates for today's header screenshot included... a bullet-riddled flight engineer tumbling from the wing of a stricken Ilya Muromets, a SpinTires Tiger tank being dragged from a Silesian mire by a trio of smoke-belching Famo halftracks, and a gRally Lancia 037 battling for traction on a crowd-hemmed Rallye de Portugal hairpin. It was a difficult decision but in the end Jiří, FP's picture editor,…
5 years ago
When I saw the 22 minute length of the new Ultimate General: Gettysburg beta footage I thought, 'No way am I watching all of this. I'll skim it.' 22 minutes and 45 seconds later and I've watched the whole thing. It is full of tiny men fighting and on-screen annotations (Like a recipe? --Headline Justification Ed) explaining the tactics and AI manouvers underpinning the game's…
The infernal Greenlight machine rolls on, devastating the environment and breaking hearts without missing a beat. It doesn't care what gets in its way. It knows only one pursuit: middling-to-popular indie games. Its main fuel source? People. Well, their votes, anyway. And also some arcane fusion of press reviews, crowdfunding successes, sales on other platforms, angel dust, kitten tears, and a signed copy of The…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
“Lance corporal Ivor Pettibone was the most gifted 'skylark' I've ever met. Given a quiet place to sit (inside or out, it made no difference) and a few minutes to himself, he could tell you, with photographic clarity, what lurked in the next village or lay beyond the next ridge. It was like having an invisible Auster on call all day every day. One damp…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
The FP works outings are legendary. Every year on the first bank holiday in Spring I pull up outside the office in a hired Abarth 500. Hilde and Hereward, the Reading Room librarians, squeeze into the back seat, closely followed by Roman (Senior Foxer Setter) Kate (Senior Foxer Setter's Assistant) and Uncle George (Not Totally Certain What Uncle George Does). The hampers, rugs, and deck…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
I've just started developing a tac-level WW2 wargame in which player-controlled soldiers soldier, barter for food, trip over brambles, lose keepsakes, and occasionally give away their positions by sneezing. Success is measured in souvenir Lugers. There are 338 distinct psychological states, 470 different orders, and 55 different things a man can utter after stopping a shell splinter with a buttock. It is, without doubt, the…
I once modded Oblivion to stop some text from popping up on screen, which technically makes me a modder. I don't imagine I'll be building the next Skyrim anytime soon, but if you need me Bethesda, I am here. In similar news, one of the main chaps behind DarthMod, probably the Total War series' most famous mods, has decided to make a game. Not content…
