I reconnoitred the imminent* Steel Wolverines: Modern Armored Combat demo yesterday and liked 95% of what I found. TboneWargames’ debut release might hexagonalise a fictional, near-future clash between NATO and Russia, but there’s nothing imaginary about the conflict that its trial scenario vividly calls to mind.
Corner Confessions is for sharing guilty gaming secrets. Secrets like… I yearn for the days when graphics options screens consisted of nothing but a resolution selection, and a detail slider with three choices: low, medium, and high.
Want to turn a green lane into a brown lane, tow a Gulaschkanone across a snowy field, or roam the Western Desert trashing Axis airfields? Get a 4×4. Want quick introductions to games of interest to realism relishers and old fogies? Read a 3×3. Prior to penning one of these articles I’ll play three tempting titles for at least three hours each. While it would be cavalier to call the reports that result from such brief auditions ‘reviews’, it’s conceivable they might lead to more prolonged playtests, and prompt or prevent the odd purchase.
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.
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.
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.
Derelict factory environment? Check. Container-cluttered port? Check. ‘Woodpecker’ over-the-horizon-radar array? Check. Three of Early Access Acrodrift’s half-dozen drone playgrounds are a little hackneyed. Fortunately, a couple of the others are unforgettable.
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.