“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.
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 »
I began installing the Pride of Nations demo earlier, but became so distracted by the oddly evocative awkwardness of the install screen (see below) that I haven’t actually played the thing yet. AGEOD’s latest is a 19th Century-set, turn-based grand strategy affair of vast scope and depth if perhaps not graphicsability (as has always been their shtick), with the demo containing five tutorial levels and then 12 turns of you trying to be king of the bloody world. Yes, you. Big on diplomacy and low on objectionably scripted enemies, it all sounds rather fine on paper. If 750MB of downloadery is beyond your ability, perhaps you’d like to watch the below walkthrough video to get a sense of how it plays. Just don’t call it Rise Of Nations. I just had to go and correct every instance of its name in this post because I made that rookie mistake. Read the rest of this entry »
In a moment of sleepy wire-crossing I saw “pride” as a collective noun, like with lions or something. But I suppose Pride Of Nations is actually referring to the collective ego of the European nations as the struggled for dominance through the historical period (1850-1920) featured in this complex grand strategy. Anyway, there are two new videos illustrating the game, one with devs Ageod talking about the game, and the other a gameplay trailer, such as it is. You can watch them below, if you want. Read the rest of this entry »
Set in post-World War One Russia, Revolution Under Siege is a strategy game in which you’re challenged to “save Holy Russia from the Red peril”. And it comes out tomorrow. Promising extraordinary realism in its historical detail, upon a very accurate map of Russia, it’s about taking the broken remains of the ruined army and rebuilding them into a powerful force. It’s looking like some hardcore strategy, using the AGEOD engine, and the sort of thing that requires a full-blown Tim Stone to understand. If you want to find out if you’re one of those, there’s a demo right here. The completely uninformative teaser trailer is below.
Good day, fine sir. Are you looking for a sampler of a game of historical conceit? Then your search is ended, for here is a demo of Ageod’s mapsplendent Rise Of Prussia (full game to be released next week), which is 750mb, and can be downloaded from here, or indeed here. I’d attempt to convey further information, but I’ve just been given some doughnuts. Away!
Can we judge a wargame by its map? I think so, and it’s clear from the map of Ageod’s latest (they’re the Europa Universalis, Pax Romana types) we can see that they’ve not strayed far from their classical historical wargame roots. Check out the trailer below and you’ll see what I mean. This one is all in the map. Rise Of Prussia focuses on one particular stretch of the 18th century (reportedly it consists of six “Annual Campaigns Scenarios”, for each year between 1757 and 1763 and one Grand Campaign Scenario 1756-1763,) which is – obviously – the period in which Prussia was at its most arsey. The full game is out on 9th of March. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s something you don’t see every day. French strategy house AGEOD have responded to complaints about the state of their shoddy-but-no-worse-than-a-lot-of-other-games-rushed-out-of-the-door-to-meet-an-optimistic-deadline wargame World War One by apologising and offering disgruntled customers a complete refund. In a message that betrayed every tenet of the Secret Publishers’ Blood Vow, studio head Philippe Thibaut failed to blame Microsoft, Nvidia, or ATI for the problems, or subtly suggest the grumblers were technically incompetent, ungrateful, or stuck in the past. He didn’t threaten or rant, sulk or soft-soap. He refused to plead poverty, ignorance, fire, famine, flood or pestilence. In short, he did The Decent Thing. As Rock Paper Shotgun’s laziest contributor am I allowed to instigate the RPS Fair Play Awards? If we encourage this sort of uprightness, it may just spread.
AGEOD had a busy year last year. In between making my favourite wargame of 2007 and my second favourite wargame of 2007 they somehow found the time to sign-up promising projects from Tchounga Games and Ixchel Studios. Montjoie, a stripped-down Hundred Years War TBS based on the board game of the same name, turns out to be one of their pigeons, as does Wicked Defense, a spangly Darwinia-scented strategy affair obviously inspired by Warcraft 3’s Tower Defence maps. The English demos for both games are barely a day old and well worth a look.
