Lately I’ve had three games on my mind. Two are firmly in the digital space and one is in the cardboard space. War in the East 2, Pavlov’s House, and No Retreat. Comparing and contrasting has made me look at boardgames of years past, what the future may hold, and does a black box of stats engage one more than transparent gameplay?
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Second Front has a very fluid and open design process that is well displayed on the Microprose Discord channel. If you’re not using it, well, I’d really recommend it. Every few days Jo, the developer, posts some screenshots or a gif, or some other little tidbit. Check out below for a collection of his most recent hits. I’m really excited for this one, he looks to have combined the right aspects with a UI that is spot on. Grog devs take note.
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Hell has not frozen over. Pigs are not flying. But, somehow, Battlefront game(S!) are on GOG. Battlefront has been vociferous in their opinion of third party storefronts like Steam or GOG. So much so that when it was pointed out that Combat Mission : Beyond Overlord was on GOG, they weren’t even aware. Then it disappeared…
But now CMBO is back, along with a few others.
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Rome.
So many PC games have sought to encapsulate the mammoth history, culture, and growth. A few have hit the nail on the head, notably Total War : Rome, while others have failed miserably, Total War : Rome 2. How do you successfully make a game that spans the moments from when Rome went from a city-state all the way to when it was landing on the British Isles and peering into the mists?
I think I might have found a game that does a damned good job of it. And it’s just a mod. A very, very well done mod.
Imperium Universalis.
EDIT April 2019 : Link to my review of Imperator : Rome.
Lately I’ve been getting my gaming fix away from prodigious hexes and even more prodigious spreadsheets. My evening reading has been Mary Beard’s excellent SPQR, and Bernard Cornwell’s the Last Kingdom. So I sought out games to cover me between pre-republican Rome all the way up to the the reign of Alfred the Great.
With a touch of Christmas Magic and a 1914 style truce between the dogs and cat, we find a very Grognardy Christmas here in the Great White North. Lest you think Santa just brings me games from Matrix and Steam, here we have some fresh new offerings!
TL;DR – The goal is to create a carless city in the game Cities : Skylines. It happens, but not like you’d expect. Blame it on the bouncy houses.
Calville has a traffic jam that stretches nearly 2 kilometers. Delivery trucks wait patiently next to sports cars. The psychodelic flashing of police cars and ambulances pepper the route like some sort of funfetti cake gone wrong. And, to top it all off, buildings are burning down while my firetrucks wait in line.
This will not do.
My daylight gaming lately has been spent playing a lot of Cities : Skyline with my son. When I haven’t been watching graveyards fill up, or buildings burn down, I’ve been alternating between Combat Mission : Black Sea (CMBS) and Graviteam Tactics : Mius Front (GTMF). At first what seems like two similar games, and a totally unrelated city builder, all share some interesting features, and are all also totally different. Are they a simuation, a puzzle, or a game? (Parent note, my son found it terribly funny when people catch on fire and run about like mad in GTMF so due to mom anger he doesn’t watch that one anymore)
In a game with imperfect information threats seem… extraordinarily threatening. Especially this game, we have no drones, our forward recon element is only about 100 meters ahead of some tanks, and an entire US armored column lurks on the other side of the treeline. We can hear them. Our recon dudes have taken some fire (Sorry DecoyBadger!). Our ElInt is picking up something…
Like monsters in the mist, there could be a company of Abrams tanks… Or just a couple of trucks.
We finally have our first contact in the cooperative Let’s Play of Combat Mission : Black Sea (From now on – CMBS). Read more about it here : http://138.197.0.38/2016/10/04/combat-mission-black-sea-double-blind-game/
A brief recap, our entire Russian Motorized Brigade is moving into position to block an incoming NATO force. This isn’t just me and an opponent, this is a cooperative team of 20 individuals each in command of a Platoon or combat asset. On the other team is another 20 or so individuals. There’s a Brigade CO, Company Commanders, and Platoon Commanders. Some of our specialty forces, like Engineers and such, also get a commander. What’s it like? Well, like herding cats. The first turn is under our belt and we have the first kill!
