The next game from the folks behind tactical war sim Radio Commander looks like a wild ride. Whereas Serious Sim's last game pointedly kept you out of the action, coordinating from the tactical tent, Heading Out will put you in the driver's seat. Their upcoming cross-country adventure is about driving a muscle car through the American west like the anti-hero of an old movie. Serious Sim have just announced this one to hit the road sometime next year but its announcement trailer makes it look worth watching for.
]]>A is for Alphabetised wargame and sim news. Every four weeks or so I hang up a streamer of industrial strength fly paper in The Flare Path water closet and see what wargame and simulation news items stick to it. Below is this month’s bag – 25 stories involving virtual vehicles and surrogate slaughter. If you know what the G stands for in TGV, or can put these three battles – Guam, Goose Green, Guadalajara – in chronological order, you should probably click where it says…
]]>A is for Alphabetised wargame and sim news. Every four weeks or so I hang up a streamer of industrial strength fly paper in The Flare Path dunny and see what wargame and simulation news stories adhere to it. Below is this month's bag - 25 bite-size stories involving virtual vehicles and surrogate slaughter. If you wince when someone calls a locomotive a train, and can put these three battles - Trenton, Turnham Green, Trafalgar - in chronological order, you should probably click where it says...
]]>After decades of stasis, the landscape of computer wargaming is beginning to change. Here and there desert hexagons are greening... dry arroyos are becoming rivers again... the accumulated dust and debris of forty years of conservative thinking is being sluiced towards the sea. Tired of threadbare, truth-blurring conventions, imaginative devs are looking at war and warriors in fresh, arresting ways. In today's column, I talk to one of the studios contributing to this nascent revolution, and play a game that demonstrates the vigour, vision, and boldness of New Wave wargaming perfectly.
]]>A is for Anticipating awesome AI. General Staff's AI sounds smarter than a sack of weasels. In a recent blog post Ezra Sidran describes how MATE, the upcoming American Civil War game's ersatz commander, works out which section of an enemy line it should “Schwerpunkt” during an attack. It “identifies the opposing force that must be dealt with to achieve its assigned objective, does strength analysis of the two opposing forces, determines if the defender has anchored or unanchored flanks, calculates the slope of the attack, etc., and then calculates the Schwerpunkt after analyzing the enemy’s flank positions, supporting forces and if the attacker has an unrestricted avenue of attack.”. Evidently “bumble in the rough direction of victory locations”, the modus operandi of many a pitched battle wargame AI, isn't good enough for Ezra.
]]>Radio Commander is a lit thunderflash tossed through a barracks doorway at two in the morning. It's arriving at the firing range and finding all the rifles in bits at the bottom of treacle barrels. It's John Wayne dressed as a coelacanth conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. It's Dad's Army dubbed into Swahili. It's Polio The Musical... wasabi toothpaste... a Slush Puppie enema... Ho Chi Minh kicking seven shades of sherbet out of a blind busker outside Tottenham Court Road tube station on a wet Thursday morning in October.
]]>A is for Aircraft Carrier Survival. Having researched WW2 flat-tops for their due-in-2020 damage control game Aircraft Carrier Survival, developer CFG clearly felt that torpedoes, bombs, shells, mines, kamikaze attacks, accidents and cyclones, didn't constitute a sufficiently potent calamity cocktail. Captains will also have to deal with sabotage, mutinies and nervous breakdowns.
]]>When it comes to theme, structure, and expectations, the two upcoming wargames Flare Pathed below have flip-all in common. Unity of Command II, the highly anticipated sequel to a WW2 wonder that managed to be handsome, historical, friendly and fierce, is hexy and turn-chopped, a refined relation of that great populariser, Panzer General. Radio Commander, on the other hand, is a real-time enigma, a Vietnam War battle sim that has no obvious antecedents... nothing to live up to. If there is a common thread it's a fog-bejewelled one. Both games blindfold enthusiastically. Fog of War gathers in their map hollows like spilled milk.
]]>A is for Altfuture's abject apology. From the tone of Altfuture's last announcement you'd think unconventional, timetable-shunning train sim Derail Valley had run over the last northern hairy-nosed wombat or trumped during an audience with the Queen. Jan 18's “very bad” news turned out to be news of a piffling seven-day release delay. The rescheduled ribbon-cutting should happen today. Expect some thoughts on the sim's 200km fictional rail network, singular 36-resource industry chain, and promising procedural job generator in next Friday's Flare Path.
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