Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Migrating, as many PC wargamers did at the turn of the century, from the Close Combat series to Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord, was like clambering out of a Carden Loyd Tankette after a long cross-country drive. The revolutionary 3D battlefields felt vast, the length of the Grim Reaper’s scythe preposterous. The countless Shermans I lost to distant specks of dunkelgelb gave me a new respect for the Allied tankers compelled to push Berlin-ward in the days following D-Day.
Demos are a digital wargamer’s Predator drones and PR Spitfires. They allow us to scout new battlefields safely and smartly. They furnish us with the information reviews, AARs and Let’s Plays can’t provide. I wouldn’t be without them, yet, these days, often am thanks to the questionable policies of sector-dominating militaria-mongers Slitherine/Matrix Games.Read the rest of this entry »
Soldier! Get a move on! Assault that Communism now! Quickly, it’s getting away! It’ll spill pinko juice everywhere if you don’t catch it on time. COMMUNISM MUST BE ASSAULTED OR WE SHALL ALL PERISH.
John has barely stopped playing Strategic Command World War I since he drew the attention of the world to the demo. Occasionally Alec will try to distract him from the giant, glamorous maps that have become his life by dangling a copy of Super Mega Picross Puzzle Evolved in front of him but, while his catlike reflexes will cause him to swat at the intruding item, he’ll soon return to strategising. I occasionally complain that “there’s something in my eye”, then nudge him in the ribs, jostling him from the Vollmer biography he’s reading, and add “or perhaps I’m just weepy because of the highly emotional ending in this new point and click adventure from Luxembourg.” He is unmoved. Don’t let him see the trailer for the expansion or we may never hear from him again.
The Flare Path has the full debrief on Combat Mission: Fortress Italy, which contains three campaigns covering the battle for Sicily. A clever waypoint system and strong choice of maps and missions led to the game being deemed a “grand old time”. If the notion of Sicilian skirmishes appeals but you like to take your tanks for a test drive before exchanging currency and driving them off the lot, today’s demo release may well be cause for rejoicing. Go ahead, rejoice, I won’t stop you. The demo includes three scenarios, a functional scenario editor and multiplayer. It’s available for PC and Mac.
People of Argentina, people of Britain, for the past week The Flare Path Strategic Studies Institute has been conducting detailed simulations of a possible Second Falklands War. Using Custer II – an engine built with the assistance of Bohemia Interactive, Battlefront.com, Turbo Tape Games and PopCap – we’ve run over 1000 separate conflict scenarios. Of these, 54% ended in stalemate, 19% were won by the defence industry, 12% by TV news networks, 8% by politicians, 5% by oil companies and 2% by anthropomorphic sunflowers. The FPSSI boffins are still analysing defeat data, but preliminary findings indicate that the biggest losers in any future Falklands bust-up would be hapless civilians, and servicemen and their families.
