I wish I had time to dwell on all the dud Roman themed games that have passed in front of me. The half finished Pax Romana and Great Invasions, the laughable Legions, the boring Hannibal: Master of the Beast, Haemimont’s Roman city builders, Haemimont’s RTSes. Most of these games aren’t very interesting as reflections on […]

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There’s been something of a resurgence in American Civil War strategy games lately, with AgeOD and Western Civ both delivering very different visions of the conflict in recent years.
Now Gary Grigsby is turning his eyes to the War Between The States.
Taking gamers back to the American Civil War, Gary Grigsby’s War Between the States allows […]

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It’s hard to believe that Rome: Total War is almost four years old, let alone that the Total War series is not new anymore. Shogun: Total War debuted in 2000, was an instant hit, and Creative Assembly has never really paused since. Aside from a couple of ill-advised forays into action gaming (Spartan: Total Warrior […]

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I love post mortems on game design. You can learn a lot about the business and about developers as individuals. It’s always astonishing how close some games come to failure before they even hit the marketplace, where most of them will fail anyway.
Sins of a Solar Empire was not a failure. Read about how success […]

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My Europa Universalis: Rome review is now up at Crispy Gamer. I did an interview with Johan Andersson that doesn’t seem to be up yet, but I’ll let you know when it goes live.
The review was based on a gold review build; the day one patch has fixed some of the issues. You can’t just […]

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I have few illusions that this will be a great game, but if Stalin vs. Martians doesn’t make you just a little curious, you have are clearly a soulless creature.
Maybe even a commie space man.
Vopros: Can we play as Stalin himself?
Otvet: Yes, but not from the start. Stalin is our commander and he gives us […]

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a transcript of John Walker’s dinner conversation with EA Sims VP Rod Humble. Like all interesting dining chats, it covers a lot of ground.
And this bit from Rod Humble shows that the Redwood City campus isn’t staffed by corporate robots.
The one game that affected me, and it didn’t stop me playing […]

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My new Print Screen column is up at Crispy Gamer. I review Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson’s Grand Theft Childhood.
There is a lot in the book that I didn’t go over in any detail in the column. One thing I do want to add is how aware Kutner and Olson are that gaming is, at […]

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Romance of the Three Kingdoms is coming back to the PC this July.
You may now dance.

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There’s an interview with Creative Assembly’s James Russell up at IGN that adds some new details and the usual pre-release puffery.
Things to note:
The scale is a lot greater than previous Total War titles. The campaign map now encompasses not only the whole of Europe and the middle-East, but also North America and the Caribbean, and […]

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