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Feature: Field of Glory: Empires appraised
Making bold statements about titles you've never played is a recipe for disaster in my line of work. I only do it when the risk of being wrong is infinitesimal. I can, for instance, tell you that waging war in Field of Glory: Empires is far more interesting than waging war in Imperator: Rome despite never having played the Paradox game. What I'm not prepared…
Feature: Alphabetised sim and wargaming news
A is for Afghan annihilation. A British Army defeat so unexpected and complete it caused a Governor-General of India to suffer a stroke on hearing news of it, inspires Wars Across the World's newest module. In the 16-turn Gandamak 1842 (£2) a vicious kick up the Khyber Pass awaits British players unable to overcome the overlapping challenges of rugged terrain, harsh weather, vulnerable lines of…
Feature: Tasty Bagrations
If the dazzlingly different duplex wargame I've been enjoying this past week was a debut release from a small, impoverished specialist studio that few had heard of, the paragraphs that follow would radiate enthusiasm. Because it's actually the work of a big (though not quite as big as it used to be) well-heeled company with a long history of producing well-received military strategy titles, the paragraphs that…
Feature: HMS previewed. Steel Beasts 4.1 discussed
There was a nasty moment early on in my relationship with HMS when I thought me and Johan Nagel's latest weren't going to get on. In my first hour with the beta of this highly original turnless Hornblower-em-up I experienced five game-curtailing mutinies. Even on the lowest difficulty setting I couldn't make progress. Baffled disbelief was fast becoming sulky defeatism when the doubloon finally dropped. An…
Feature: Trailer forensics
Blimey, gosh, crikey, blow me down, and gee willikers. The Microsoft Flight Simulator kraken has woken. Arguably the greatest sim of all time is going to get a sequel and judging by the mesmerising E3 trailer that I dissect after the jump that sequel is going to be the best thing since Henry Hovis realised there was a better way to serve a loaf of…
Feature: Gutsy Overlord experiments
The best-known Operation Overlord games aren't necessarily the most interesting or the bravest Operation Overlord games. In today's Flare Path I mark the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings by spotlighting a clutch of D-Day diversions that dared to be different. Operation Overlord entertainments don't come more all-encompassing than Futura's 1992 folly, D-Day. The French devs spent three years coding an offering as multifaceted as…
Feature: Alphabetised sim and wargaming news
A is for Another Automobilista. Automobilista, the sim that stormed to victory in the single-player portion of the inaugural Flare Path Grand Prix (a popularity contest for race sims) is to get a sequel in December and interestingly the sequel will rely on an engine last seen in Project CARS 2. As Reiza explained to www.racedepartment.com, the graphical prowess and “smooth as butter” fluency of…
Feature: Museum musings
With the possible exception of a well-chosen book, I reckon nothing complements a good vehicle simulator or digital wargame better than an apt museum. Prior commitments meant I couldn't spend International Museum Day surrounded by game-illuminating exhibits, but a few days later I made the short trip to a local museum knowing I'd return enthused and educated. Recently reopened after a 2.6 million pound revamp,…
Feature: But don't try to export it
Just as real aircraft are a lot more dangerous than sim ones, real aircraft documentation can imperil its owners in ways the sim variety can't. This week it emerged Oleg Tishchenko, a 42-year-old avionics expert at Eagle Dynamics in Moscow, has been extradited to the US from Georgia to face multiple charges connected with the procurement, smuggling and reselling of manuals for recent and current…
Feature: Fantasy General > Panzer General
This year I picked/packed a better holiday game than holiday book. Although J.P. Kenyon definitely knows his onions (his onions being 17th Century England) his descriptions of the myriad squabbles between king and parliament that led to civil war are pretty dense and difficult to follow, even for someone who knows his ship money from his tonnage and poundage. Factor in glorious sunshine, post-hike weariness,…
Feature: WW1 deserves better than 11-11 Memories Retold
Let's call them “poppies”, the eye-catching, ephemeral moments in 11-11 Memories Retold when you glimpse the brave, powerful game it isn't but could have been. One of the tallest poppies grows from shell-scarified sod about halfway through this big budget, big name 2018 adventure game. In the skin of Kurt, one of the two protagonists, you find yourself in a sprawling German war cemetery, searching…
Feature: Alphabetised sim and wargaming news
A is for Additional ants. Covered regularly in The Flare Path's outdoorsy sister column The Garden Path, Empires of the Undergrowth has sufficient hexagons, realism, and warfare to feature in this one from time to time too. Yesterday's update certainly warrants a mention. The largest content injection since Slug Disco's myrmicine management RTS entered Early Access, the Leafcutter Update adds a new ant species, numerous…
Feature: UBOAT's U-boats are tubular tenements
How humiliating. U-96, a WW2 Unterseeboot on the cusp of greatness, has just been sent to the bottom of the Celtic Sea by a Royal Navy ship named after a hardy perennial. Should I have taken her deeper after disembowelling that freighter with a couple of T2s? Should I have zigzagged more energetically when the boom-barrel deluge began? Perhaps my mistake was not diving the…
Feature: A Steel Division 2 scrap described
Paks&Jabos? BirchBehemoth? BridgeOfWoe(vclose)? I was planning to base today's Steel Division II tussle tale on one of the hand-titled skirmish replays in my profile folder, but as my aide-mémoires are proving nowhere near as effective as I'd hoped, perhaps it would be better to start from scratch instead. The SD2 beta has a happy knack of producing electrifying engagements abuzz with historical echoes so I'm confident that whatever unfolds…
Feature: Wolfpack, Steel Division 2, Radio General
By next Friday I should have answers to all these questions... How do AI-controlled Steel Division II attackers react to player-deployed obstacles like barbed wire and trenches? Are new commands like Quick Hunt (unit uses roads while stalking) and Efficient Shot (unit will only open fire when hit and penetration chance is over 40%) as useful as they appear? Is the new radio mechanic (units…
Feature: Part 2. IJmuiden to Schiermonnikoog
Pinned by the potent magic of the P key, Edward, the Flare Path Sky Tours Learjet, has spent the past week motionless above IJmuiden, a port halfway along the forward edge of the giant rotting plesiosaur flipper that is the Dutch coast. In a few seconds' time I'll be unpinning him so our Aerofly FS2 strand-ramble can continue. Read on for naval calamities, nocturnal massacres, nuclear…
Feature: A Dutch day trip (Part 1)
On behalf of Flare Path Sky Tours I'd like to welcome you aboard this Aerofly FS2 Learjet 45 and apologise for the out-of-the-way departure airport. Personally, I wanted to fly from Antwerp International or Ostend, but First Officer Roman has been reluctant to enter Belgium since leaving it in a hurry in 2003 so today's ramble along the Dutch coast will begin at Axel EZAC, an…
Feature: Crewed not crude
Tiny Swedish studio Usurpator AB has taken a considerable risk with Wolfpack (Early Accessible in approximately two hours' time). Because the U-boat sim that started life as the history-shy HMS Marulken is a co-op multiplayer diversion and proud of it - because it shuns labour-saving shortcuts and data-blurting screen furniture the way a fangtooth shuns sunlight - it runs a serious risk of disappointing inattentive…
Feature: Alphabetised sim and wargaming snippets
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.
Feature: Veiled victories
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…
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