There are 40 new screenshots of the long in development Histwar: Les Grognards here.
Pretty, but it looks awfully dark. Is it always raining in Europe? Or in a state of permanent twilight?
Les Grognards Screenshots
November 12th, 2008 by Troy Goodfellow · Battlefront, Napoleonics
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East is East and West is West
November 12th, 2008 by Troy Goodfellow · AGEOD, Wargames, WW1
Quick question for AgeOD, a studio whose games I’ve championed for the last few years:
Why in the name of Mercator would you do a wargame with the continent of Europe as the centerpiece and have the map turned 70 degrees? I thought I could deal with this since a) I’m not a moron, and (b) there are (allegedly) performance reasons that mean the map can run better on lower powered machines if they make it more tall than wide.
In fact, this is harder for my old brain to handle than I thought. Part of the problem is that you don’t usually see the entire map when you are moving your units. So it feels a little unnatural to move your units in an unexpected direction, especially in the Balkans. Yeah, in the great scheme of a dimensionless universe there is no up nor down. But you tinker with conventions at your own peril.
As for World War One itself, print out the manual and have it readily available. There is no way you will figure this out by going through the Click To Proceed tutorial or by jumping in. And the manual itself is only a couple of dozen pages with generous screenshots. Somehow, I think this is not going to be enough.
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Too Much To Do
November 10th, 2008 by Troy Goodfellow · AGEOD, HPS, Me, Paradox
I spent the last week writing an article that, it seems, won’t see the light of day for another few weeks. But it consumed a lot of my time, so I haven’t had much of a chance to look around. Until now.
And there is a lot to see.
AgeOD released World War One: La Grand Guerre. Ludovic Grousset was good enough to send along a review copy, so I’ll be getting to this very, very soon. If anyone else out there has a copy and wants to explore it in multiplayer, drop me a note.
HPS Simulations has released two new games, one from their Squad Battles series (Spanish Civil War) and another from their Modern Air Power line (War Over the MidEast). I’ll probably buy one of these, but not both. I hope to do a lot more wargaming in the next month or so, mostly because I’ve been slacking in that area and no one else out there is picking up the slack.
Paradox Studios has been continuing its weekly development diaries for both the upcoming Vae Victis expansion for EU:Rome and Hearts of Iron 3. So far I have read nothing about either of these that makes me especially excited.
Storm Eagles Studios has announced that Jutland is coming out – soon. This is one I am very much looking forward to. I liked Distant Guns, their Russo-Japanese War game. It’s not clear how different this will be, but the Kriegsmarine versus the Royal Navy…what’s not to love?
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Print Screen 10: Rogue Leaders
November 6th, 2008 by Troy Goodfellow · Crispy Gamer, Print Screen
I was lucky enough to get an early look at Rob Smith’s Rogue Leaders, a history of LucasArts. It’s available for pre-order at Amazon and is linked on the scrolling ad to the right.
It’s a big book with lots of inside stuff and documents from the Lucas archives. Never before seen concept art, design docs…if you are looking for a lot of inside dirt or a summary of which games were good and which games were bad, look elsewhere.
Smith and Chronicle Books do a great job of integrating images and text, and I highly recommend Rogue Leaders.
I do not recommend Max Payne.
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Elemental: War of Magic
November 4th, 2008 by Troy Goodfellow · Stardock
For years, Brad Wardell of Stardock Studios has been talking about making a Master of Magic type game.
We finally get a name and a website.
We wanted to just call it Elemental but but trademark reasons we needed to come up with a sub-title. We wanted to give it a sub-title that was a bit corney to harken back to the classic 4X days when game names were a little more generic.
By the way, it’s supposed to be “corny” and “hearken”
The writing about the various clans is equally corny, by the way.
On dragons:
Dragons are solitary creatures and powerful beyond imagination. Most dragons remain isolated in the wilds of Elemental but some will join a cause they believe in.
On men:
Men are good at tilling the soil, making and trading goods and building things. Some are honest, some are vile, some are brave, some are ruthless, some are craven. They come in all hues and sizes.
There is a cataclysm that hurts the world and now a bunch of rival empires need to put it together or rule it. It’s all a little silly. But fantasy worlds inevitably are.
It looks a lot like Civilization, which isn’t surprising given its inspiration. We get a look at a map, and it’s one of those pseudo-Tolkien jobs. Apparently a city is researching “Lingering Death”, which I imagine means that they have Season 3 of Heroes in this world, too.
The map looks good, and I like the idea of labels on maps. Does this mean that there is a database of maps or are there random maps that are generated to have these titles on them?
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Date Finalized For War Plan Pacific
November 3rd, 2008 by Troy Goodfellow · Shrapnel, Wargames, WW2
I had a look at early build of War Plan Pacific and liked some of what I saw. It’s now on schedule for a November 20 release.
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