M is for Master of Chess. The fact that the demo for Master of Chess, an intriguing Football Manager-style chess sim, refuses to run on both my laptop and desktop PC, probably says more about my fondness for outdated operating systems than BRANE’s professionalism or coding prowess. In Master of Chess the cultivatable character you Svengali provides insightful feedback on the moves you’re contemplating.
N is for New instalment of Flight Simulator
The above video generated both excitement and alarm in the FS community when it aired earlier this week. A subsequent announcement reassured those worried FS2024 wouldn’t be compatible with FS2020 add-ons, but didn’t completely eliminate everyone’s sense of betrayal. The miffed are miffed because back in 2019, in a widely reposted Ars Technica interview, Asobo appeared to commit to supporting FS2020 for “ten years”.
O is for Ost Front options
Combat Mission: Red Thunder and its expansions are finally available on Steam. The base game will set you back £43 (£50 after June 22) – roughly fourteen times the current asking price of CMRT’s fab first-gen ancestor, Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin.
P is for Pruned prices
A couple of hours ago Wargame Design Studio commenced their summer sale. From today until July 4, almost all of the wargames in their plump catalogue will be 25% cheaper than usual. If this brief account of a Soviet attack on a Finnish-held lighthouse piqued your interest in Squad Battles, the company’s most intimate product line, then a sensible next step would be to download and try Squad Battles: Grenada, SB’s recently refurbished demo.
Q is for Quick tea card
Brooke Bond’s 40-card ‘Police File’ set appeared in the same year production of the vehicle depicted on its No.5 card ceased – 1977. Effectively a four-door British muscle car, the stylish Citroen DS-influenced Rover P6 3500 had sufficient speed and manoeuvrability to chase down most vehicles on UK roads in the mid-Seventies. A sonorous 3.5 litre V8 engine and unusual de Dion rear suspension saw to that. Unfortunately, the build quality of later P6s was often nowhere near as good as their performance.
R is for Return to normal?
Daily THC posts will end today unless the general feeling is “Press on!”. I’ve rather enjoyed the change of pace/pattern, but am aware that some of you would rather I delivered a substantial feature every week than a gaggle of lesser pieces. Perhaps a hybrid of the two approaches – seven days of daily ‘shorts’ followed by a ‘Friday Feature’ week – is worth trying.
S is for Skim the Sinai
DCS World’s latest Early Access adjunct includes more than the incisor-shaped peninsula that connects Africa to Asia. Fliers also get the Nile Delta and eastern Egypt, southern Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and portions of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Most early adopters seem happy with their £33 purchases, however developer, OnReTech, will need to enhance Israel, and detail deserts and smaller cities in order to fully win over buyers such as dikkeduif and Triumphator.
T is for Turnbased trench travails
Due in Q4, “anti-war game” All Quiet in the Trenches appears to have Burden of Command-esque aspirations and qualities. The screenshots suggests the writing won’t be as strong and the tactical options as numerous, but as military leadership RPGs are incredibly rare, and German devs, Totally Not Aliens, seem to be basing their creation on one of the greatest war novels ever written, nuanced optimism seems justified.
“Daily THC posts will end today unless the general feeling is “Press on!”.”
Press on! I like the new schedule.
The new schedule is neat and it was a real treat, to have more quick posts, but I am not sure that it is so much better than a big article on friday. My vote goes to the hybrid approach. Quick article, if occasionally you have an appropriate piece of content, and a nice and big chunky piece on friday is really nice.
Still, thank you for this humongous week of diverse stuff!
Press on! I thoroughly enjoyed the change of pace and having a piece to look forward to every single day, even if a bit smaller. This kind of schedule also helps with normally ever present possibility that a weakly feature would be “not for me”. It is less of a disappointment if you know that you can look forward for tomorrow instead of next week. Such schedule also rhymes better with my content-consumer habits
Unfortunately I completely missed the change of pace as I tend to only check the site on Friday.
On the plus side, it sounds like I’ve a few articles to catch up on!
The hybrid approach sounds good to me. Maybe you could keep the complete A2Z as a sort of retrospective, I find the fragmented approach a bit limiting. The title A2Z was self-explanatory while the fragmented X2Y may not immediately make sense to someone new. This way news can be shared immediately without being bound to a specific letter, while the A2Z retreads on the most noteworthy items.
Whatever you decide, thank you for the articles!
I’ve enjoyed the increased tempo, and would vote for pressing on with it or developing a hybrid approach. My only concern is that producing smaller articles with greater frequency will sap time and energy Tim needs to treat any particular subject in depth. I wonder if it might be possible to delegate coverage of quotidian items – game trailers, dev blog updates etc – on the THC range of interests to others, allowing Tim to work on more substantial pieces. It’s the quality of Tim’s writing that drew me here, and it would be a shame if he didn’t get a chance to stretch out once in a while because he’s too busy managing a stream of odds & ends.
My vote is for the hybrid method.
Please press on. The last week was a joy. I had the feeling that the site was finally alive.
Do press on! Hopefully the numbers will follow ^^
Cheers
I’ve enjoyed the increase in content quite a bit. I can see the value in the hybrid approach though. I definitely prefer either to the old way.
Purely as a reader and not as someone who has to actually do any work writing I would also echo Press On as its been a joy to have a “daily dose of Tim” (sorry for the visual). So, you do you, whatever works to keep up the quality we have long known without driving you mental. It has definitely been a refreshing change, though. A successful experiment.
I really like the new smaller approach. I find if a big article doesn’t line up with my interests it leaves me feeling a lull. Now it’s more like “oh, something else will arrive tomorrow.”
I have very much been enjoying the shorter, more frequent articles – though understand that is more work on your side. If you can continue that would be fantastic. If not, would fully support tye hybrid approach.
At first I was afraid the quality would suffer due to the increased frequency. But for now it doesn’t seem to be the case. So good job there Tim!
I would prefer that Tim just does whatever Tim feels like doing, be that daily posts or once a week features or even once a month behemoths.
I’ll read it all.
I also vote to press on, for the hybrid approch. Go the way that suit you best Tim!
Please, Press On! Daily posts are so much better than the heavy-Friday tack. Thanks for doing this, and hope you can continue!
I did (and still would) look forward to the big article every Friday to enjoy with my morning coffee, but since I tend to drink coffee most mornings it has actually been pretty nice to get a little something every day. Plus as others have said, if the article doesn’t particularly interest me that day I don’t have to wait as long for the next one.
In the end I’m happy either way, so whatever keeps things going!
Thanks for all the feedback. As ‘Press on!’ (with occasional Friday Feature weeks) seems to be the general mood, after a day or two off for R&R and DIY, the daily posts will restart.
I personally prefer the original big Friday (Saturday for me) read, however if the consensus is press on I’m also happy.
Ul(Tim)ately whatever works best for Tim is my vote.
That was a (Tim)ely comment.
Press on, as it felt very much alive. However if hybrid gives Tim a better opportunity for his wordsmithing, it is also fine with me.
My vote would go to `whatever works best for Tim”. If I would consider nothing but my own preferences, then I would like to still have a big(ish) article on Friday in additon to one or two shorter ones during the week.
But in any case the priority should be that the new normal is sustainable. You can get fed up even with things you love to do when your weeks start looking like nothing but a list of deadlines.
Apparently I’m commenting much too late on this post, but I think that betrays my preference! Since switching to the daily format, I have become less inclined to check THC at all because it felt like too much like a regular gaming site, just focused on games I’m not especially interested in. The long pieces had more of an appeal for me as something enjoyable to read in their own right, a little Saturday morning ritual. Seems I’m in the minority! Ah well.
Lots of food for thought here. Thanks.
To aid navigation, I’m going to add the ‘friday feature’ tag to anything fairly ‘substantial’ (700+ words) and new. You can go straight to these pieces by clicking on ‘FEATURES’ in the menu.
Finding a happy balance between traditional features and newsy tidbits may take a while, but hopefully I’ll get there in the end.