Combat Mission Olympiad: Turn 10
What in heaven’s name do they teach them at Bovington these days? The British Crusader gets three chances to pot the PSW in Turn 10 and fluffs all of them.
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Dusty But (Fairly) Trusty: European Air War
Since THC stumbled into being, I’ve been itching to grant MicroProse’s 1998 chart-topper European Air War, Dusty But Trusty status. Only a nasty bug that delights in crashing careers in both the GOG and on-sale-at-the-moment Steam version has stopped me.
Enemy on the tail! may bomb without bombers and campaigns
Not a good sign. Roughly thirty minutes after the released-yesterday Enemy on the tail! arrived on Ada’s hard drive, I was seriously considering unarriving it. Although I wasn’t expecting much for £3.21, I was hoping for something capable of outlasting…
A lacy lament (Where are the handicraft sims?)
I was raised in a region of Britain with a long tradition of commercial bobbin lacemaking. In her spare time my mother made intricate lace on a domed pillow fringed with beaded bobbins and festooned with brass pins, and in…
Lines of Battle: Waterloo won’t penalise plodders
This toptal.com page about Leonardo Massaroli fails to mention one important fact about the Argentinian developer. He’s a wargamer. Leo has recently unveiled a web-based multiplayer-only prototype of a work-in-progress called Lines of Battle: Waterloo, and, a few hours ago,…
Myopic MBTs and MIA basics: thoughts on the Battlefield Commander WWII demo
Is Battlefield Commander WWII destined to be the latest in a long line of RTTs that tries and fails to combine Close Combat’s realism, accessibility, and gift for drama, with 3D graphics and a lithe camera? After two hours with…
Find hidden objectors in Velvet 89
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Every nation needs a developer like Charles Games. Passionate about transmuting Twentieth Century Czechoslovak history into memorable docugames, the Praguers’ latest project is a free hidden object game that tells the story…
Eleventeen reasons why the Commandos 2 demo tops the Commandos: Origins demo
The Commandos: Origins demo is reassuringly reverential, great fun, and très jolie, but while guiding Tiny and Fins to the mission objective – a coastal radar station in need of demolition – I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d played…
The Status One demo is tough but moreish
Imagine Door Kickers and SWAT 4 colliding in a gloomy tenement hallway, and after realising that their tac vests were hopelessly entangled, pressing on regardless. Imagine a sad fox playing a violin while drifting towards the lip of a waterfall…
Combat Mission Olympiad: Turn 9
The French ATR team that bagged an armoured car last turn spend this sixty spooning rocks and hugging dirt. Despite the best efforts of the Gallic mortar team which uses all but one of its white-painted M302 rounds this turn,…
Under the North Star needs pilots, grunts, generals, and… truck drivers?
Air Goons aren’t short of ambition. The organisers of Under the North Star, a multiplayer wargaming experiment without parallel, want to sim the response to a fictional Russian invasion of Northern Scandinavia using a host of off-the-shelf PC games and…
Ships At Sea (Sea legs and Protestant work ethic not included)
Early Access Ships at Sea came within a cod’s whisker of flunking its 3×3-style audition. Two hours in I was railing against its rigid earn-to-unlock structure and unexpected lack of ambience, and fast losing patience with its improbably choppy harbours…