An update on upcoming games from the distant past and possible future.

The future first. Battlefront has launched of the website devoted to its modern warfare game, Combat Mission: Shock Force. It has a NATO force taking on Syrian fundamentalists in both traditional armored combat and assymetric warfare. Judging from the screenshots, this will be a very, very pretty Combat Mission game with the same attention to tactics and terrain. This is one of my all time favorite series and it’s been too long since the last game in it. Given the nature of modern warfare, this could be a challenging game to pull off. The whole point of suicide bombers is that they mix in with the civilian population. Instead of facing up to this challenge, the designers have just decided to make the civilian vehicles (always hostile) difficult to detect. I suppose it’s a better compromise than letting players kill every civilian they see – just in case.

In the distant past, the History Channel has teamed up with Slitherine Software to produce the multiplatform Great Battles of Rome. The game will include over a hundred Roman battles. But those of us who enjoy the real historical setups could be a little puzzled that you will be able to assign skills to your units. Is this simply Legion: Arena redone? Glad that our console brethren will get another historical strategy game in any case. And there will be History Channel documentary clips to accompany the game.