Well I’ve been playing ETW for 3 weeks now. It’s a Headshot! That much is apparent early on, and becomes utterly obvious the more you play. Not only is this the best Total War yet, but it’s above and beyond the must-buy game this quarter, maybe even this year. I cannot think of a game more essential on the market – though not without some niggling provisos. Where do I start? That’s the first thing to come to mind when…
As I’ve made abundantly well known in these hallowed halls, I’m one of these strange folks who actually got off over his history lessons in school and went to carry on learning from dusty old tomes at university. So I can’t help but admire Vin Diesel’s conviction to produce a game set during the Punic War era Mediterranean. It’s a setting sadly seldom tread outside of strategy games (first and foremost, the leviathan figure of Rome: Total War – played…
The pride of my fleet lies shattered; hulks of molten metal floating through space. I took down the enemy capital ships, and annhilated their frigates in droves. Looming defiant and resolute, is the cruel eyeball shaped Vasari battle station, grinning at the destruction it had wraught. My fleet was vast, well balanced, and technologically superior to anything my enemy had previously fielded. I’d won all the skirmishes prior to this moment, triumphing over their inferior ships. This was a mopping…
It seems the tension between Codemasters nominal sequel to the Operation: Flashpoint and its spiritual successor, Armed Assault 2 by Bohemia Interactive is becoming a thick mire of division, and the colossal conflict between fans of the series and developer is set to give us a three way split; the long term BIS loyalists, the Codemasters rebels, and those of us who just want a damn good soldier sim. For the record, I firmly consider myself in the latter catagory….
Dawn of War 1 was a veritable classic in the real time strategy genre, a vibrant, violent, visceral explosion of all out mayhem. There’s nothing quite like it out there. Dawn of War 2 shares many of its elder brother’s traits, with some interesting improvements of its own. But the bosses are rubbish. DoW II off-line/coop begins more or less as it ends; you lead a limited number of squads – in fact, if you only have 1 if you…
Mount and Blade has one of the least interesting settings in gaming. It’s a generic pseudo-Medieval world with no soul. But the game mechanics and superlative modding capabilities it affords are uniquely well suited to bringing to life historical warfare, and for me this is no more evident in the mod Hegemony 268BC, set during the middle Roman Republic, or Hellenistic period. It’s an ancient historian’s wet dream, allowing you to take command of Republican Roman legions, the steamroller style…
I’ve been following Shawn Elliot’s reviews symposium lately. It’s basically a series of articles where some far better writers than I discuss the given topic, responding to each other’s thoughts on the matter. It’s a very interesting read, and the most recent one covered review policy practice and ethics; an area I touched upon briefly a few months ago. I’m not nearly as experienced a journalist (or, frankly, even a journalist at all) as these chaps, but I think I’ll…
We’re organising our very first community event! Under the Reticule! will be a regular event where we will get everyone playing the latest and greatest mods and online games with and against each other in a test of our steely shooting skills and social apptitude. This week, in honour of its introduction to Steam, we’re going to be playing Eternal Silence, a Source mod that pits one huge spacecraft against the other, tasking the players with either boarding the ship…
Stardock Software, perhaps most famous to the PC Gamer for publishing Sins of a Solar Empire and developing/publishing Galactic Civilisations is expanding, opening up a new games development studio. This really couldn’t come at a better time. With numerous developers jumping ship to the console crew, it’s great to see a quintessentially PC development outfit on the up, especially during the gloom of recession, providing 50 developers with a new place to go – given the number who’ve lost their…