There’s no shortage of targets and challenges in Remote Reaper, Vladyslav Fomenko’s likeable FPV drone sim, but I suspect the game’s lack of context and continuity will eventually drain my belligerence battery.
While I haven’t achieved much in Reality 1.00 this week, in Realities 419075625.02, 419073916.98, and 4190755341.26 I’ve properly kicked arse. HMS Invincible and the ARA General Belgrano have been sent to the bottom. Jerusalem and Basra have been snatched from the Ottomans. And I’ve constructed a crude but effective wooden footbridge across the Wilhelmina Canal in the Netherlands.
I hope you’ve got wide caterpillar tracks, Battle Drill. In coming months the weight of expectation pressing down on your mud-spattered hull is going to grow and grow. If you’re not careful, you’re going to find yourself buried up to your turret ring in some snow-mantled Hungarian hollow.
To qualify for a ‘Dusty But Trusty’ article, a game must be old enough to vote in Nicaragua, buy tobacco in Djibouti, and make the beast with two backs in Nepal. More importantly, it must be demonstrably super, smashing, great, ace, wizard, bonzer, the knees of the bee, the testicles of the dog, and the whiskers and pyjamas of the cat. You don’t need rose-tinted pince-nez or a cutting-edge pixel pump to enjoy 24 karat golden oldies like… Panzer Front Ausf.B.
My fancy hasn’t been the same since I damaged it falling off a bike in Brittany in 2010. It no longer responds to tickling, and occasionally prompts comments in communal changing rooms. I was thinking of disguising it with a tattoo of a Blackburn Beverley, but couldn’t decide whether the Bev’s clamshell doors should be depicted open or closed.
While devs have rehabilitated voxels and vector graphics in recent years, another equally dated approach to 3D visuals remains coated in dust. Spend an evening or two in the company of the newly refurbished and relaunched Ecstatica and, like me, you may end up viewing the dearth of ellipsoid entertainment as a sad state of affairs.
What’s the first thing you do if you’re making a driving game about trucking cargo across frozen Lake Ladoga during WW2? Chap in the ushanka and the Россия без Путина t-shirt? Correct, Sir, you ensure your vehicle handling isn’t blander than unseasoned kasha. If the ice carriageway in the Road of Life demo had produced the odd slide or skid, I’d probably have been willing to overlook issues such as the annoying mini-games and occasional performance slumps.
If Halloween 2026 on the Corner is to prove anywhere near as unnerving as Halloween 2025 I’m going to need at least one of you to share a spooky real-life experience with me via email. If you’ve ever seen, heard, or felt anything that conventional science would struggle to explain, and, during the next few days, have time to commit your inexplicable encounter to digital paper and send it in, then please do.