“A turn-ribbed, hex-shunning operational wargame elastic enough to simulate conflicts two millennia apart sensitively, and friendly and affordable enough to appeal to all stripes of strategy gamer – not just Slitherine and Paradox aficionados.”. If I’d read a pitch like this while drawing up my Dragons’ Den shortlist a couple of weeks back, I suspect it would have gone straight on the ‘pie in the sky’ pile. Wars Across the World, a new DLC-fecund release that rifles history like Hermann Göring rifled art collections, really shouldn’t work and almost doesn’t, but happily none of its faults are terminal. Read the rest of this entry »
In the alphabetical news round-up waiting like a pre-pounce puma beyond the break ‘A’ is more likely to be for ‘airship’ or ‘angry house’ than ‘apple’. Stripy ungulates probably won’t feature in the entry for ‘Z’ but simulated Bf 110s or Mitsubishi A5Ms might. If you’ve an eye for a shapely engine nacelle or a finely chiselled turret – if you’ve an interest in the bloodier bits of history – I guarantee your curiosity will be piqued by something in the 26-compartment specimen drawer below. Read the rest of this entry »
Why are AGEOD revisiting the American Civil War? Is firing from the Hip as tricky as it looks? What’s the largest animal that could pass through a John Deere 1400 baler and survive? Why is there Marmite on my bannister?* Does beginning yet another Flare Path with a string of questions mean I’m as creatively bankrupt as Nathan “Oh. Oh my.” Grayson? In this week’s Flare Path I intend to answer the questions the other simulation and wargaming columns won’t, can’t, shan’t, daren’t or Robert Plan’t answer.
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 »
In another life FP was an interpreter attached to Legio XIV Gemina during the Roman invasion of Britain. It was his job to trudge up to the skull-festooned gates of hill forts, usually dodging sling stones and hurled turds as he went, and do the surrender-in-the-name-of-the-Emperor spiel. The answers he carried back to his employers could be long or short, poetic or pithy, but generally they boiled down to the same thing: “We’d rather not, old bean. Attack us and by nightfall your finest warriors will be kissing crows’ feet and buggering mouse holes”. Read the rest of this entry »
Piling in on the current overwhelming trend towards Latin game-titles, Alea Jacta Est is a grand strategy game by Ageod, to be published by Matrix games. They report in their reveal announcement that “An incredible amount of detail and historical accuracy has been packed into Alea Jacta Est from terrain to units to even the dilemmas and troubles the leaders of Rome actually faced hundreds of years ago. Using the successful and popular AGE engine, Alea Jacta Est will benefit from the ease of the team to create new mods, events, scenarios and more!”
Of course the game had already been announced back in April. I guess it’s just *really* announced now.
The mud on the T19 was always bad, but that Spring it had to be seen to be believed. Bergmann, TransGlobus, Hipponaut… everyone was losing two or three vehicles a week. Even with jug-floats and plutos fitted, you didn’t stand a chance. Which is why all of us barons eventually got together and bought The Matriarch. She arrived on three special trains from Port Hendy. Took a week to assemble. Your Uncle Fergus won the driver ballot. It was only because he went down with appendicitis at the last minute, that the second-place man, Canter Spriggs, took the reins. I can still see Canter up there in that cockpit, grinning like a pookaduke. The poor bastard had no idea what he was heading into.
