The Contacts Game
It has been this way since the cock-up in Cologne. On the day before a deployment, King Dormouse summons me to his office, and we play ‘the contacts game’ while he wipes the nicotine film from his gig-lamps or toys…
Tag the experiment
Heavy cargo = heavy responsibility
I can’t look at Heavy Cargo – The Truck Simulator screenshots without thinking of one of the UK’s most idiotic rail accidents. In the released-yesterday-to-luke-warm-Steam-reviews, HCTTS, I presume the procedure on arriving at a level crossing isn’t “Wait for automatic…
Combat Mission Olympiad: Turn 8
SPOILER WARNING. The spat between Corporal Bignon, Team France’s unlucky anti-tank rifleman, and this cocksure cannon-armed Afrika Korps armoured car comes to a lethal conclusion this turn.
Rhine maiden voyage
Street Cleaning Simulator, Garbage Truck Simulator, Utility Vehicle Simulator, Stone Quarry Simulator, Underground Mining Simulator… in 2011, German publisher Astragon was pumping out so-so sims like a Flakpanzer Gepard pumps out Shahed drone shredders. Confronted with this deluge of dross,…
Combat Directive: Napoleonic Wars is a tuna-filled doughnut
The reason why Combat Directive: Napoleonic Wars is possibly the only hexy turnless wargame sold on Steam, is the same reason why your local supermarket doesn’t stock tomato and banana soup or broccoli-flavoured yoghurt – some fusions are simply terrible…
Bijou Brilliance – eight modern games that do an awful lot with precious little
Old prejudices die hard. Although Ada’s hard drive is as capacious as a Zeppelin hangar, and download speeds in rural Wessex are no longer narrowboat slow, I still wince when I go to download a game and see double digits…
Barnacle Bill (NAUTIS Home is pricey and flawed)
Spare a thought for simmers who prefer their rudders and propellers immersed, their rails and bridges spray-flecked. Compared to a Parker Knoll plane or train operator, the armchair ship/boat skipper has few choices and relatively high outgoings.
Unreal Tournaments – An hour with Joust
Best known for enabling French speakers to chinwag with Napoleon without the aid of a Ouija board, Vestigia, a games studio founded by three historians, is also keen to explain and shatter the finer points of jousting.
Armored Brigade 2 is nearly here and looking awesome
The wallets of many digital wargamers will be feather light by the end of November if both Triassic Games and Veitikka Studios make their deadlines. Due next month, Armored Brigade 2 seems intent on occupying the sunlit uplands between playable,…
Combat Mission Olympiad: Turn 7
The inauspiciously named Corporal Bignon fires his cumbersome bolt-action elephant gun four times during the course of Turn 7. Three 0.55 calibre armour harmers whizz in the direction of a zealous scout car, while the other outsized bullet attempts to…
HeliNews
The HeliNews theme tune is crafted from a selection of whirlybird sound samples. The HeliNews anchor sits behind a desk made from an AH-64 stub wing, and, after delivering his topical snippets, is winched out of shot by a Pegasus…
63 Days, innumerable corpses
If plotting the demise of distractible Deutschlanders floats your Schwimmwagen, an already great year is about to get even better. In a couple of hour’s time, 63 Days, the Warsaw Uprising-themed sequel to War Mongrels, sidles onto Steam.