This year the European Union will spend around seven million Euros on video game development. Is this sizeable sum likely to be expended wisely? Having looked at some of the games Brussels has helped fund in the past, I have doubts.
This week’s handmade co-op puzzle won’t defox itself. If you’re a whizz at quizzes, lateral thinking, and search engine sleuthing, why not lend a hand.
It’s hard to believe, but the next COIN title from Every Single Soldier should be Early Accessible by the end of the year. Fingers crossed, Northern Ireland ’74 will be less intimidating than Angola ’86. As I mentioned in this piece, my withered brain struggles with A86’s relatively high (compared to Vietnam ’65 and Afghanistan ’11) village and unit count.
I’ve just learned that Ilan Papini, the chap behind thoroughly likeable sims such as Virtual Sailor and Vehicle Simulator, died in February from injuries sustained in a plane crash. The ICP Savannah piloted by the 60-year-old developer, suffered a bird strike over Israel’s Jezreel Valley, and Ilan pranged while attempting an emergency landing.
Me and Roman spent a small portion of last weekend in a thorny corner of Wessex, chucking plastic platters at chain-draped metal baskets. We’d decided to give disc golf a try after enjoying the demo for FLEX Disc Golf. Has time with a simulation ever inspired you to try The Real Thing? If you can trace a hobby or even a career, back to a PC sim, I’d love to hear about it.
Turn 3’s most exciting incident? Probably, Team GB’s Corporal Baldrick almost putting his hand on a Deathstalker scorpion while vaulting the villa wall at M32.
Using the following clues (the map above is purely decorative) in combination with Street View, work out my location.
The Close Combat-esque Firefight has matured splendidly during the past twelve months. Dipping into its cache of seventy-two South-East Asian/Pacific Theatre engagements this week, I’ve been struck by the way sage improvements such as new order types and infantry formation options have enriched the game’s tense top-down tactical tussles without compromising one of PC wargaming’s most elegant command systems. If developer Sean O’Connor could fix the occasional crashes and furnish some minor play tweaks, I’d have no problem describing his creation as the finest WW2 Burma wargame money could buy.