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Close Combat: The Bloody First charges into the third dimension
What time do you call this, soldier? It's been over a year since Fraser Brown bothered some Nazis in Normandy, and Close Combat: The Bloody First was already four years past its due date by then. Ah, well, I suppose it takes time to put together the perfect battle-plan. Developers Slitherine are finally ready to give Axis forces a bloody nose, marching The Bloody First…
Feature: Alphabetised sim and wargaming news
A is for Apology. Sorry. Wordblind and weary after two weeks of non-stop battle narration I very much doubt I'll get as far as Z today. Please spend the time you would have spent Flare Path perusing doing something equally worthwhile such as finishing that design for a solitaire board game about swallow migration you've been working on for the past seven years.
Slitherine Software today announced they have cast spells of money and law that brought the rights to Master Of Magic, Simtex's classic fantasy 4X strategy game, under their ownership. They also made it clear that they have plans for it. I am more than a little excited about this.
Feature: Field of Glory: Empires appraised
Making bold statements about titles you've never played is a recipe for disaster in my line of work. I only do it when the risk of being wrong is infinitesimal. I can, for instance, tell you that waging war in Field of Glory: Empires is far more interesting than waging war in Imperator: Rome despite never having played the Paradox game. What I'm not prepared…
Fantasy General was probably the first hex-based strategy game I was able to wrap my head around as a kid, so today's announcement of Fantasy General 2: Invasion fills me with curiosity. Developed by Owned By Gravity and to be published by mostly-serious strategy house Slitherine, it is, once again, a hex-based wargame packed with elves, goblins and wizards. Unlike the original (a fun but…
Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock expands with campaign DLC and battle chatter
While it didn't make much impact at launch, I tip my metaphorical hat to Black Lab Games for supporting Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock until it became the strategy game I always wanted. Today, they launched Sin & Sacrifice, the last expansion of 'Season One', adding a new story-heavy campaign, two new ship types, TV-authentic dynamic radio chatter and a free update adding a veterancy system. As…
Warhammer's Tyranids would be difficult to placate in a traditional 4X strategy game. They'd always be offering you bum deals for your biomass, sending heretical missionaries to spread the good word about biomass, claiming they saw your biomass first so it's rightfully theirs, rivalling your tourism industry with such attractions as Biomass World and Eurobiomass, delivering notes sneering at your meagre biomass, and tainting your…
Feature: Armored Brigade inspected
Before the Su-17s showed up, the defence of Großenlüder was going like clockwork. Dug in behind wire and minefields, my Chieftains were dominating. Their poppy-brushing 120mm guns had barcoded the eastern horizon with pillars of black smoke. Nothing of Soviet manufacture had made it as far as the village, and nothing looked likely to. But then the napalm came. Tumbling canisters of molten lava delivered…
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock channels the TV show in new DLC Anabasis
Much as Black Lab have improved on their strategic Battlestar Galactica Deadlock with patches and expansions, until today's DLC - Anabasis - it lacked the TV show's sense of looming dread. While the new addon also expands the game's main strategic campaign, its most exciting feature is a new survival mode inspired by the TV series. An isolated fleet retreats back to Caprica from deep space,…
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only Warhammer. We're still a few millennia off a Warhammer 40,000 dating game (try not to blush as you polish your crush's crotchskull!) but Games Workship's grimdark universe did today expand into the realms of turn-based 4X strategy with the launch of Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War. Don't expect to score a cultural…
Some games just take a bit of time to grow into their skin, so to speak. Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock was a decent enough sci-fi strategy game when it first launched, but perhaps felt a little under-baked in places, according to Alec's review-ish look at it here. After an extra year of polish, patching in new features and the release of a major expansion yesterday, it now…
To this day, I'm honestly baffled that the Battlestar Galactica revival spawned so few games. It's a setting that just begs for it on so many levels, so I'm glad that Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock exists, even if it was over a decade late to the party. This space strategy/tactics adaptation was perhaps a little lightweight at launch, but developers Black Lab Games have been patching,…
Feature: Fight me, you cowards
The development of Close Combat: The Bloody First has lasted for as long as the war it depicts, but four years after its original intended launch date, Matrix Games’ World War II RTS is due to storm the beaches soon. As well as being the first 3D game in the series, it’s the first that’s been built in publisher Slitherine’s Archon engine, but more interesting…
Feature: No time to chat
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics of War killed off all the diplomats
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War is an unconventional 4X game that doubles down on the perpetually gloomy universe’s penchant for conflict by cutting out diplomacy entirely. The Space Marines, Astra Militarum, Orks and Necron are all at each other’s throats, leaving them no time to work things out at the negotiating table. War, then, is Gladius’ raison d'être, with Dreadnoughts, Tankbustas and Necron…
Ah, the Close Combat series. Over twenty years old, and still disabusing people of the notion that World War 2 was won through heroic charges through enemy fire against improbable odds. The venerable simulationist strategy series has been crushing the spirits of would-be tacticians for a very long time now, although many of the games have been out of circulation for some time. Presumably in…
The lack of a 4X romp set in the grimdark future of the 41st millennium is an unusual omission, especially given the number of Warhammer 40K games that have been released over the last few years. Proxy Studios and publisher Slitherine are on the case, however, as the pair have just announced Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War. Along with being a bit of…
Feature: So say we all
Battlestar Galactic Deadlock is the sci-fi strategy game I’d have killed for in 2005
During 2004-2006, I probably thought about Battlestar Galactica at least once an hour every single day. Grown-up sci-fi where everyone was at least a bit bad, the space battles felt tangible as well as spectacular and the enemy was as unknowable as they were implacable. And then... well, let's instead pretend what happened didn't happen, BSG stayed the BSG we all loved, and some time…
Feature: Roundheads and bobbleheads
Greying temples? Check. Mortgage? Check. Fond of Werther's Originals and New Tricks? Check. Gosh, according to recently issued Home Office guidelines I'm now qualified to grumble about things like soft prison sentences, the inexorable decline in the quality of pop music, and scandalous gaps in the National Curriculum. If I wanted to I could begin a review of the latest Athena-engined wargame by wagging a finger…
Feature: Meet Mare Nostrum
Mare Nostrum, the galley warfare wargame currently in production at Turnopia, shouldn't have any trouble eclipsing the competition. To my knowledge, in the forty or so years since home computing and tactical gaming first cuddled up, ancient naval aggro has inspired only one title and that title is probably best forgotten.
Feature: WELL?
April showers filling my gutters, May blossom spangling my hedge, June bugs headbutting my window... Mother Nature seems to have muddled her months this year. I'm not one for idle gossip as you well know but Mr Valentine at the sweet shop reckons she's back on the gin. Apparently she reeked of the stuff when she came in for her sherbet lemons on Monday. Just…
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