My brief preview of Panzer Tactics is up at Gameshark. I never quite know what to write in previews, and I’m not sure this one is any exception.
Anyway, the parallels to ye olde Panzer General are obvious and not original with me. The tiny tanks take some getting used to, but it will probably fit […]

[Read more →]

A few months ago I wrote a piece on games journalism for The Escapist. Not a bad little article, though it didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked. In it, I had a throwaway line about how the success of The Sims is still a story but no one seems to be […]

[Read more →]

Will Wright has to be one of the best interviews on the planet. He’s open about what he thinks, is always thought-provoking and has the appearance of a man who effortlessly walks the line between genius and madness. The Guardian has recently published a brief interview with the Man from Maxis and it doesn’t disappoint.
You […]

[Read more →]

I’m waiting for my review of Armageddon Empires to be uploaded before I say any more about what is probably the most surprising game of the year. But until then, please use the interim to read developer Vic Davis’s blog. It has the usual indie developer stuff (here’s what we’re working on, here’s a patch […]

[Read more →]

If you want to help guide the design of Paradox’s upcoming Europa Universalis: Rome (please change that title…), you have three weeks to register for the closed beta test.
I will not be applying because, a) I will find it impossible to stay silent if they resist my calls to reduce the importance of religion, (b) […]

[Read more →]

I’m faced with the Kingdoms expansion to Medieval 2, Opposing Fronts for Company of Heroes and Asian Dynasties for Age of Empires III on the strategy front. Then I have Mask of the Betrayer and Witcher on the RPG side. What is a man to do? Limited money to spend so how should I spend […]

[Read more →]

For the last week or so I’ve been playing the Europa Barbarorum mod for Rome: Total War. Like many mods, it aims for realism before anything else, even to the point of giving each faction an overly “correct” name. Greeks, for example, are the Koinon Hellenon. The “rebel” controlled cities are given the somewhat anachronistic […]

[Read more →]

Nothing could be easier than upgrading your Wordpress software, eh? Well, a combination of plug-ins, database mismatches and general incompetence on my part led to a few hours of panic this afternoon as I considered the possibility of losing months of data.
Patrick at POEHosting, however, saved my ass as we went back and forth over […]

[Read more →]

From Big Huge Games’ Andrew Auseon at the Asian Dynasties blog at IGN.
A good example of when the element of history bowed to the element of fun was the Flail Elephant. The Indian civilization can train a siege elephant that swings a weighted chain from the end of its trunk. The only accounts of this […]

[Read more →]

It wasn’t that long ago that television programs had theme songs and opening credit sequences. Some treacly music would play in the background while Michael J. Fox or William Daniels grinned at you. They’d be updated with new clips (and occasionally new names) each season, but the format pretty much stayed the same. Sometime in […]

[Read more →]