The best PC games ever Best PC games of 2018 Best graphics card 2019 Best free games 100 Apex Legends tips Fortnite Season 9 challenges
Spiritual successor to the original Star Wars Battlefront gets gameplay vid
Not everyone loves the new version of Star Wars: Battlefront. Some people (and I'm just vaguely referencing the general concept of people, not saying that this is something that I PERSONALLY FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT) some of these people, well, they like the old SWBFs. When the cancelled Free Radical shooter developed Star Wars: Battlefront 3 had footage leaked to the internet, a group of fans…
Feature: Wargame & simulation blather
Phone switched off? Bladder empty? Puffed corn snacks to hand? I only ask because last time The Flare Path ran a Combat Mission battle commentary, I seem to recall you missed that amazing turn where I dropped a mortar bomb down the hatch of an unbuttoned King Tiger then wiped out an entire squad of Fallschirmjäger with a single ricocheting ATR round. I can't promise jammy…
You've read Tim Stone's battle reports from Combat Mission: Red Thunder. You've studied his strategies, his tactics, his strengths, weaknesses, personality, most-played songs, favourite biscuit, childhood pets, sleeping habits, teenage LiveJournal, and the contents of his bins. You're ready for this. You can do this, we all know you can. The demo is out for Red Thunder and by Jove, you'll out-war that ruddy Tim…
Feature: 30 years a wargamer and I still can't spell 'reconaissance'
Anyone eager to spend a modest portion of their Friday shaking their head and tutting while a tactical halfwit sends virtual Soviet soldiers to their deaths, is in luck. A lend-lease version of the close-to-release Combat Mission: Red Thunder has just been craned onto my bustling quay by my bustling stevedore, Steve Dore. Give me a second to finish my molotov cocktail, quietflowsthedon my ushanka,…
Feature: Simulation & wargame blather
If you ever find yourself in Hell, do check out the Empirical War Museum. Their tank collection makes Bovington's look paltry, their 1:1 scale 'Little Pearl Harbour' diorama will literally take your breath away, and their seemingly empty Landmine Gallery is pure genius. Last time I visited I bumped into a couple of Battlefront.com researchers outside the Hall of Flamethrowers. The pair claimed they weren't…
Feature: Combat emissions
The Sicilian Defence: Battlefront Talk Plans, Prices, & Pixies
I'm free! Using a straightened coathanger, a blob of chewing gum, and an old Broken Sword walkthrough, I've managed to escape the fetid dungeon that is The Flare Path. God, the air out here sure is sweet. And the views - wow! - that must be Mount Manshoot over there, and that can only be the Temple of Fairly Tiresome MMOs. A man could totally…
Feature: Simulation & wargame news
Gosh! I've just read the small-print in my RPS contract. It seems Flare Path's remit includes sports simulations. Strictly speaking, for the last 45 weeks I should have spent as much time in dugouts and bunkers as dugouts and bunkers. My weekly screenshot selection really should have featured as many wingmen, props, and Tigers, as wingmen, props, and Tigers. Thank God the Hivemind usually naps…
Feature: Simulation & wargame news
Did you know that Flare Path had an older brother - an older brother that met an untimely end? Tarquin Flare Path hated change and hatched a plot to purge it from the world. If it hadn't been for a vigilant off-duty bobby, a faulty Schottky transistor, and an escaped circus tiger, you and I would dwell in a perpetual June 14th 1997. Poor old…
Feature: Pros and Caens
Rocked by mortar blasts and raked by small-arms fire, the heavily-laden Bren Gun Carrier comes barrelling down the track towards us. Any second I'm expecting it to explode like a Roman candle, or lurch, mortally wounded, into a ditch, but somehow it keeps coming. A cheer goes up as it finally bounces into our shrapnel-strewn farmyard and the driver - a dusty sergeant major from…
Because there's a demo out. Granted, this thankless wargame won't be for everyone, but for desktop generals with a bit of grit there are three demo-specific scenarios in there, as well as a not-quite functional version of the scenario editor, to show you how all that stuff works. Lovely AAR video below.
The simulatory war-men of Battlefront send word that they've crafted a Theatre Of War 3 demo for you to download and play on your computer-machine. Excitingly, it's a time-limited version of the full game, so you can try to win the Korean war in an hour. Now that's what I call a speed-run. "It allows access to all the missions, features, editors, save games and…
Hampshire - well, my little corner of it - is all fire and brimstones at present. A Spring-enthused Mother Nature is providing the Brimstones. A preview build of Battlefront's Combat Mission: Battle For Normandy is supplying the fire. Beyond the html hedgerow below, you'll find a first-hand account of my second brush with this realism-rammed game-o'-war. Fingers-crossed, you'll also find numerous pictures of kaput Panzers and surrendering…
In June 2000 a metaphorical Tiger Tank burst from a metaphorical Norman wood and proceeded to blow the turrets off 14 metaphorical Shermans. I was those 14 metaphorical Shermans. Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord was the Tiger. Nobody is quite sure about the Norman wood.
Handsome sailor and shooty boat simulator PT Boats is getting an expandalone, which is to say it's getting a sequel that doesn't quite justify the sequel tag, because it's more of the same. And more of the World War II toys, too, including new aircraft, and plenty of new boats with guns. The expansion, called South Gambit, about which you can get of details just…
These masters of military strategy appear to have snuck up on us and delivered a surprise attack. We're onto them now. The new stand-alone Combat Mission game - Combat Mission: Afghanistan - is available to buy now. It's Battlefront's first collaboration with a third-party studio, and consists of a couple of campaigns, with another ten standalone maps and a mission creator. There's a demo available…
By putting on my Tim Stone hat - which is a handsome cross between a deerstalker and a camoflaged Brodie helmet - I can bring you news of the Strategic Command WWII Global Conflict demo's release, in advance of the full game. It features the whole world circa 1942, at the high water-mark of Axis power. Will the allies pull it back? Well, they won't…
A demo for the recently-released naval combat game from Akella and Battlefront, PT Boats, turned up while we were off-air. You can grab it here for a price of 838mb. Battlefront report that: "The demo includes 3 airplanes, 16 naval units, 3 tutorial missions, as well as a demo campaign playable from both the Allied and the Axis points of view." So that sounds interesting.…
Not a good week for Combat Mission creators Battlefront. After waiting donkey's years for Jean-Michel Mathé to finish his ground-breaking Napoleonic 'First-Person Commander' wargame HistWar: Les Grognards, the scamp has jumped ship at the eleventh hour and decided to self-publish. Battlefront are sticking doggedly to a 'we cancelled because of repeated delays' line, but the simmering annoyance radiating from their statements suggests subtler shenanigans.
Are you excited about the forthcoming turn-based wargame from Battlefront? Here's a chance to continue to be excited (and/or be crushingly disappointed). Are you not aware of it? Here's a chance to have your expectations created. Are you still reading this paragraph? Well done. The beta demo of Empire of Steel can be downloaded from here. As the name says, it's beta, so expect issues,…
