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Feature: Alphabetised sim and wargaming news
A is for Altfuture's abject apology. From the tone of Altfuture's last announcement you'd think unconventional, timetable-shunning train sim Derail Valley had run over the last northern hairy-nosed wombat or trumped during an audience with the Queen. Jan 18's “very bad” news turned out to be news of a piffling seven-day release delay. The rescheduled ribbon-cutting should happen today. Expect some thoughts on the sim's 200km…
Feature: A career cut short in IL-2 Sturmovik
Although IL-2 Sturmovik's new Rise of Flight-style career mode looks decidedly unambitious when set beside the best the genre can offer a solo campaigner, it's a big improvement on what it replaces and, assuming you're playing with the 'iron man' box ticked and don't wander too far from assigned routes, a powerful drama amplifier. During his first five randomly-generated sorties over the Kuban bridgehead, my…
Feature: And gives away Close Combat bundles
Gentlemen of England now a-bed shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here to read my IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Kuban war diary, participate in today's Close Combat competition, assist in the defoxing of this fiendish word puzzle, and pedantically point out that “Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war” is from a completely different play to “Gentleman of England now a-bed shall…
Feature: Never in the field of human conflict...
Ready to discover once-and-for-all whether X-Plane is better than FSX? Whether Falcon 4.0 is better than Milk Float Simulator 2012? Ready to read the word 'realism' 46 times in a single hour, and spit feathers on discovering that the sim that caused got you through your divorce has been cruelly cold-shouldered by an idiot with a bus fetish and a sci-fi blindspot the size of…
IL-2 Sturmovik blew me away at Gamescom last year. With only a couple of weeks until I fly out to Cologne again, I'm enthusiastic about the prospect of another unexpected champion of gaming emerging from a cloudbank and peppering me with excitement. A year has passed since I took to the skies and development has continued at a steady rate. New planes are appearing and…
Anybody who's been feeling the recent drought of serious flight sims, anybody who's been eagerly anticipating the next project from Russian aviation engineer / game designer / genius Oleg Maddox, anybody who's been thinking fondly of the days when flight sims came with thick manuals, take a deep breath. Your troubles are over. IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover will be released on the 25th of…
[This interview took place in a Manchester Hotel Bar, with Oleg chain-smoking and chuckling to himself all the while. He was also agreeably outspoken against most Flight Sims - usually while doing that chuckle - in a way which not many developers are about their peers. I have to applaud. This interview originally appeared in PC Format magazine, in the lead up to Pacific Fighters]…
