Long before 88mm/Slitherine slapped ‘Road to Moscow’ on the cover of a forgettable Panzer General-like in 2014, the moniker was associated with two profoundly memorable wargames. One of these is available today through a number of abandonware sites, the other…
I’ve written hundreds of reviews and previews during my twenty-odd years as a games inspector. As many of these appeared in the British version of PC Gamer magazine and nowhere else, and involve titles largely forgotten today, now and again…
In this year’s play-by-comment Combat Mission game, the volunteer order issuers aren’t fighting a synthetic foe, they’re fighting each other. It’s January 1945. After a night of confused combat in a foggy/frozen Silesian city, four Soviet and four German AFV…
Graviteam, Black Hand Studios, Freedom Games, Matrix Games, 1C… you can count the devs that have attempted to produce Combat Mission-comparable 3D tactical wargames on the fingers of one hand. Counting the devs that have actually succeeded arguably requires just…
I don’t recall Lock ‘n Load Tactical Digital’s vitals ever being as attractively priced as they are right now. Besides tutorials, the core game may only include two WW2 and two Vietnam War scenarios, but as those scenarios cost, in…
If you’d like to participate in this year’s ‘play-by-comment’ CM clash, keep a close eye on the site during the coming week. I’m hoping to launch the game on Wednesday morning, and – in a break with tradition – the…
A is for Abbreviated A2Z. My mammoth monthly news round-ups are on hold, but truncated digests like this may appear from time to time.
The Bangladeshi dev behind Battle Tactics 2025, an upcoming Unreal Engine-powered Combat Mission-like, refuses to draw a veil over war’s grim realities. Combatants in his high-fidelity RTT/TBT are going to lose limbs and buckets of blood in the line of…
Over the past decade the proprietor of Asymgames.com has crafted around seventy computer wargames. All are free, equipped with competent AIs, and playable online, and many explore the kind of relatively obscure conflicts, ops, battles, and historical events that bigger…
Xiangqi, the Chinese form of chess, has more WA (wargamer appeal) than the western variety. Its combat might be just as deterministic, but a board that boasts actual topography, and armies that include artillery units capable of stylised indirect fire,…
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…
H is for Hercules farewell. No aircraft type – with the possible exception of the Canberra – has served the RAF longer than the C-130 Hercules. Introduced in 1966, Britain’s Hercs will retire at the end of the month. I’m…