Win Delta Force bullet-doux Dagger Directive!

Dagger Directive is retro done right. I came to this conclusion weeks ago, but last night’s gripping airfield infiltration mission underscored it. Between me and my goal – a Prighozin-type mercenary leader and a batch of nicked Novichok – were dozens of armed-to-the-teeth goons and a kilometre or two of North Caucasus countryside. Vigilance, an M24 sniper rifle, and an occasional quickload, got me to the airbase fence. A silenced Colt automatic, an OICW assault rifle, and an invaluable recon drone, took me the rest of the way.

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Corner Confessions #1

Corner Confessions is for sharing guilty gaming secrets. The series will, I promise, contain the odd bombshell, but I’m going to kick it off with a thunderflash: Although I’ve been playing truck sims for nigh-on twenty years I’m still pretty hopeless at reversing HGVs.

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A2Z (26 pointlessly alphabetised news snippets)

A is for Awfully big snap. In 2006 six artists turned an abandoned USMC hangar in California into the world’s largest pinhole camera and used it to create the world’s biggest print photograph. While free sim The Great Picture doesn’t shed any light on the technical challenges the artists overcame (lightproofing the hangar required 24,000 square feet of black polythene, developing and fixing the image 1,800 gallons of chemicals and a stupidly large tray) it does let you inspect the giant snap and roam the camera’s interior pondering the silly things humans do in the name of art.

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Get lost! (with help from Infinite Orienteering: The Hiker’s Path)

I wish my two current squeezes, Dagger Directive and Infinite Orienteering: The Hiker’s Path, could get together and produce a kid. As gratifying as it is to round a boulder or barge into a clearing and find the orange-and-white control point I’ve been seeking for ages, I think deep down I’d prefer to be hunting for weapon caches, rendezvous points, and camouflaged OPs.

Read MoreGet lost! (with help from Infinite Orienteering: The Hiker’s Path)
U2Z (alphabetised game news)

U is for Undeserved neglect. Sometimes I’m so busy searching out the obscure and quirky, I fail to give the megafauna of the sim and wargame fields the attention it deserves. SCS Software, the studio that almost singlehandedly created the truck sim genre, is in the process of sidestepping into two adjacent genres. The following vids suggest both Road Trip – a new car-based exploration mode for American Truck Simulator unlocked through purchase of add-ons like this one– and Coaches – a self-explanatory ETS2 DLC – are going to be unmissable.

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Cold War Battles leaves its laager later this week

La Forge du Code doesn’t seem to have profited greatly from a week-long advertising stint on the Corner (After an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign the French dev behind the unusually foggy Kriegsspiel ~ 7 Years’ War is now considering his options). Hopefully, the site’s latest advertiser, Kudos Games, will see some benefits. The $20 Cold War Battles launches on Thursday, and, like Kriegsspiel, has numerous endearing qualities.

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Scarce scares and wall-to-wall wins (Thoughts on Korea IL-2’s career mode)

Yesterday evening command of the Sabre-rattling 12th FBS squadron passed to Major Furnace Amberwick after Major Terence Torrance, my alter aero for much of the past week, failed to return from a bomber interception mission near Old Baldy. The fact that Torrance wasn’t killed by MiGs or flak (he perished in a mid-air collision) is significant. Right now a number of factors conspire to make career-mode sorties in the eminently likeable, exceptionally handsome Korea IL-2 less dangerous and less exciting than they could be.

Read MoreScarce scares and wall-to-wall wins (Thoughts on Korea IL-2’s career mode)