Crisis! Geoff, the retired sailmaker who usually stitches together FP news stories, phoned in sick this morning (housemaid's knee). We've experimented with alternative fastenings - velcro, staples, bulldog clips, ant-head sutures... - but none of them are strong and flexible enough to join this week's selection of topical sim and strategy snippets. Unless Irma's ongoing porridge experiments prove successful, I fear today's column will have to take the form of an index finger inconveniencing gallery.
]]>In what other racing game might your three horsepower engine collapse from over-zealous whipping? Qvadriga is a historical chariot simulator that spins stories of bloody rivalries and daring comebacks alongside its quickly spinning wheels, and that's why we love it.
Adam: Of course our favourite racing game of the year is turn-based. Of COURSE it is.
]]>In a world where it's increasingly likely that game bundles will soon be given away with Happy Meals, people are often flabbered right down to the gasts when they see the prices over on planet Matrix. The wargaming/strategy publisher doesn't discount its back catalogue as often as some companies discount their front catalogue, so when the annual holiday sale rolls around, it's worth paying attention to. Lots of titles are discounted by 50%, including the excellent Unity of Command and its expansions. The Gary Grigsby titles are also on sale, as are many others, listed here.
]]>"In a couple of thousand years' time bent-backed archaeologists are going to find the phrase 'The Greased Pigs Rule!' scratched into hypercaust tiles, carved on marble horse troughs, and written in tessera on villa floors. Being clever sorts they may guess who we were, but they'll never fully understand how famous we were and how much that fame cost us in blood, sweat, and tears."
]]>Turn-based games are the best games. With that fact established, let us acknowledge how unfortunate it is that so many turn-based games focus on a small set of activities, mostly involving military squads, or rapidly expanding kingdoms and galactic federations. Conquest and combat. Qvadriga is different. It is, as far as I know, the first turn-based game about chariot racing in the circuses of the Roman Empire. By breaking a complex and unusual scenario down into a series of tense decisions can Qvadriga find the game at the heart of The Games?
]]>sorry no time for capitals or punctuation this week theres a flakturm high stack of demos on my desktop and if im going to introduce each and every one of them to you and still have time for a spot of luncheon grammatical niceties must go by the board on the other side of that html ha ha down there roman chariot haulers paw the dust grenada awaits invasion viking history masquerades as third person adventure and a motorbike sim prepares to graze you in places where youve never been grazed before
]]>It's the final lap of the 73BC Nicopolis GP and the crowd are going walnuts. After narrowly avoiding a crashed chariot in lane 4 and the threshing wheel blades of the mad Scythian in lane 6, I whip my knackered nags through an unexpected gap in the frontrunners, and find myself leading by a good pertica. There's now only one 180-degree turn and a furlong of foam-flecked dust between me and 25,000 denarius. This is it. My team, The Ballista Boys, are about to write themselves into chariot racing history.
]]>I dropped a pun just so I could have the words "Turn-Based Chariot Racer" at the top of RPS for an hour, though there's actually a real-time mode as well. QVADRIGA, you have given me that pleasure, so I will return the favour and tell cheering masses that you are now in beta, a word the pleases me because stole it from the Greeks. Now entertain me, or at least provide me with details so that I, Biggus Maximus Overcompensatious, might pass the next few moments not worrying about the wind blowing my toga around.
]]>The Flare Path lights are dimmed today, the wind socks are at half mast. Jim Mackonochie, one of the most influential, approachable, and well-liked figures in flight simulation died on Tuesday. If you've flown a faithfully simulated military jet at any point during the last quarter century, there's a good chance you've enjoyed a game that Jim signed or nurtured. Though most closely associated with Eagle Dynamics creations like Flanker and DCS World, his combination of unquenchable aero enthusiasm and incomparable industry experience also Pavewayed the way for the Falcon series and the early Rowan sims.
]]>Due to some last-minute legal threats from the wet blankets at Wiltshire County Council, the Flare Path Diamond Jubilee street party (this Sunday, 13.00-22.00!) won't be featuring bunting made from real buntings, an under-12s scythe leaping competition, or a low-level fly past by old Miss Musters in her half-scale Airspeed Elizabethan. The local government killjoys are also insisting we use pasteurised pigs' blood in our Charles I execution re-enactment, and have all the badgers in our badger-hauled Boadicea races checked for TB. It seems bureaucracy trumps tradition in today's health-and-safety obsessed Britain.
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